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“The strangeness didn’t start until after we married. Soon after, though, I began to notice oddities. For instance the way he phrased things. Words and expressions seemed to have a double meaning that escaped me. I felt particularly uneasy when we were alone, but I couldn’t account for it. I thought it might have been hormonal. I was going through some procedures.” She glanced at Drex. “But my uneasiness persisted. Over the past few months things he said and did became even stranger.”
“Did this strangeness intensify around the time Marian’s remains were discovered?” Drex asked.
Her brow furrowed. “Now that you mention it, yes. About that time.”
“That fits,” he said, getting nods of agreement from Mike and Gif. “That would have agitated him. Made him second-guess burying her alive.”
“Maybe it wasn’t his intention to,” Gif said. “When he nailed shut that box, he mistakenly thought she was dead.”
Mike jumped on that. “‘Mistakenly’ is the key word. A blunder like that is anathema to him. It would have set him off.”
Drex had followed their exchange with interest, but he didn’t want to address the particulars of it yet. “It would have set him off in either case. The discovery of that grave spoiled his perfect record.”
Back to Talia, he said, “You went out to dinner together one night this week. I waved at you as you were leaving.”
“Yes.”
“You two seemed simpatico. All dressed up. Hubby taking his best girl to dinner.”
“So you heard that conversation?”
He nodded.
She looked embarrassed. “The invitation surprised me. That was the first date night we’d had in weeks.”
“He was playing to me?”
“He must have been. But what I thought was that he was trying to cover an affair.”
Drex looked at his cohorts to gauge their opinions. Gif looked interested but as yet undecided. You could have cut Mike’s skepticism with a knife.
Drex turned back to Talia. “What shape did his strange behavior take? What did he do to make you think something was really out of joint?”
“Nothing threatening or overtly weird. He never mistreated me. On the contrary, he was solicitous, often to an annoying degree. But sometimes, when he looked at me in a certain way, it would cause a chill to creep over me. I began making up excuses to avoid intimacy.”
“How did he react?”
“Casually.”
“Not violently?”
“Not at all. Just the opposite. He was indifferent.”
She pulled one of the sofa’s throw pillows into her lap and hugged it against her chest. A shield, Drex thought, against what she was still reluctant to admit.
“His indifference seemed abnormal,” she said.
“It’s all kinds of abnormal,” Drex said, “because he is. Some of these guys can’t function sexually unless it is violent. But Jasper isn’t about sex. It’s the mind fuck he gets off on. Except for my mother, his relationships with the women have been platonic.” Mike and Gif looked like they’d been goosed. “Yes, I told Talia this morning, and I trust her not to reveal it to anyone else. But back to the point I was making. None of his other relationships have been characterized as love affairs.”
Mike said, “Even the solicitations he put on the match-up websites didn’t reference sex or romance. Only companionship.”
Looking at Talia, Drex said, “For whatever it’s worth, I doubt he was romantically involved with Elaine. I don’t believe she would have betrayed you. However, to you, an affair was a logical explanation for his quirky behavior.”
“Why was I the exception to his platonic relationships?” Talia asked.
“We’ll come back to that,” Drex said. “Go on with what you were telling us earlier. How did his strangeness manifest itself?”
“Small things, any one of which could have been overlooked, but collectively they bothered me. Like his obsession with his clothes, his closet.”
