“Wow, you are really gorgeous,” he added. “You must know that, but still…”
She turned her head, ready to shut him down. Some small talk in class was one thing. She didn’t appreciate being hit on, though, especially when it maybe came with a dig about her being arrogant. But he was smiling now. And his expression was so open and hopeful, she was immediately disarmed. The boys she knew dispatched compliments like heat-seeking missiles—all calculation and no heart. But this was different. This odd boy with the shaggy hair and the sincere eyes was unlike anyone she had ever met.
“Oh, God, and smart, too. You can really see it, in your eyes.” He gave a low whistle. “That’s a dangerous combination.”
“Dangerous for whom?” Gretchen asked with remarkable poise, given how her heart was racing.
“Dangerous for me.” He laughed as his smile changed to something deeper and more serious. “Good for the world, probably.”
Gretchen decided she wasn’t going to fall for any of this. “Ah, yes, the threat of the smart woman,” she shot back. “Every man’s favorite backhanded compliment.”
“That sounded wrong, didn’t it?” He closed his eyes for amoment and lowered his head in mock defeat. “I’m Richard.” His eyes were much softer now. “Can we start again? I’ll try to get my foot out of my mouth.”
An uncomfortable flutter rose in Gretchen’s belly. Richard didn’t seem the least bit put off by her chilly manner—“patrician,” her friend Brooks liked to say (or “bitchy,” when he was teasing her). Still, as far as Gretchen was concerned, men were a threat until proven otherwise. Besides, she wasn’t at Dartmouth for boyfriends. She was there to plan her future. She wasnotgoing to end up subject to the whims of a man. She shook her head and looked away, just as the professor began his lecture.
Richard and Gretchen might never have spoken again had it not been for Brooks, who, it turned out, rowed crew with Richard (technically, Brooks was just the coxswain) and whom Richard asked to advocate on his behalf. Brooks assured her that Richard was a stand-up guy—a scholarship student who came from a small town near New Haven. Plus, he was genuinely smitten with Gretchen. So Gretchen gave Richard a chance. After all, Brooks was a good person, bookish and a little nerdy, sure, socially awkward even, at times. (The Dartmouth boys didn’t call him “Encyclopedia Brown” for nothing.) But he was kind, and he knew Gretchen in a way that few people did. Maybe in a way that no one did. They’d been friends since kindergarten, and she trusted him. But no one seemed more surprised than Brooks when she and Richard actually stuck.
Within weeks Richard and Gretchen were spending all their time together. With his longish hair, beat-up car, and thrift store clothes, combined with a pristine room and diligent study habits, Richard was different from the other boys. Even his handwriting was a work of art. He had things “to make up for,” he’d said earnestly when Gretchen teased him about it, and it was true. He needed to be ready to work harder than all the private-school kids. But he also gave the best hugs and had a contagious laugh. Gretchen couldn’t always match Richard in warmth, but she loved that he was nothing like her parents.
Within a month of dating, Gretchen had known Richard wasthe one. No, that was a lie. She’d known it that first day in class, hadn’t she? She’d known it the second she laid eyes on him.
***
“I’m sure this is all upsetting,” Detective Reyes went on—and it was either kind or patronizing, Gretchen wasn’t sure which. Everything felt slippery. But she needed to focus. She needed a foothold.
“Richard has health problems,” she said. “They can become dangerous very quickly.”
This was not true. Richard was very healthy and fit.
“Your husband has health problems?” Detective Reyes asked, gesturing behind him toward the hallway where Richard had disappeared. “He seems in a lot better shape than me. And I’m, no offense, a lot younger.”
“He has dangerously high blood pressure and an irregular heartbeat,” Gretchen said. “He takes two different kinds of medications.”
“Didn’t hejustclimb Mount Kilimanjaro?” the detective asked, pronouncing the name of the mountain with what seemed like deliberate awkwardness.Kee-lee.“Isn’t that how he knew Frankie Callahan? I thought they did the climb together.”
Gretchen laughed tightly and regretted it immediately. A woman was dead. “They didn’tknoweach other, Detective. It was a ten-day trip. They were acquaintances, at best.”
The detective eyed Gretchen silently for a long, uncomfortable moment. “There’s a lot we don’t know about this situation yet, Mrs. Falk. That’s why we asked you to come down here so you could answer some questions.”
Gretchen crossed her arms. “Well, I don’t know whatwecan possibly tell you.”
He flipped open a notebook. “How about we start with why you didn’t go on this trip.”
She wasn’t going to answer any actual questions without Bruce there, but she would entertain this chitchat if it got her closer to getting Richard out.
“Climb Kilimanjaro?” Gretchen laughed again, breezily this time. She could regain the upper hand in the conversation. It was so obvious that Reyes was fishing for problems in their marriage when there was nothing there to find. “Do I look like someone who would do that?”
He made a point of assessing her physically, though somehow respectfully. “I think so. Yes. Very much so, in fact.”
Gretchen felt pleased despite herself. She knew firsthand there was a certain novelty to the well-maintained older woman—even with very attractive, much younger men. And itwasnice to be reminded that she was still beautiful. She often passed for far younger, too. Some people even said forty (an exaggeration), but on a good day forty-five was a possibility.
“Well, thank you,” Gretchen replied, adjusting herself in her seat and crossing her hands in her lap—better. “But, no, I don’t climb. I prefer to do other things with my free time.” And that was enough with the flirting. “I do need to speak with Richard now, to see that he’s taken his medication. I’malwaysthe one to remind him.Everyday. With this kind of stress, he could have a heart attack.”
“What about when he was on that mountain?” Reyes asked.
“What?”
“His medication. You just said you remind him every day. Who reminded him while he was hiking?” Reyes had locked eyes with her. He knew full well that Gretchen was using the medication as an excuse.
