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"Delray Marketing in Houston."
"I understand that he was fired from the company."
"Some months ago."
"Do you know why?"
"He wasn't a good fit," she replied. "At least that was the water- cooler speculation for why he was let go."
"Did you think he was a good fit?"
She turned to Deputy Nyland, who'd posed the question, and answered coolly. "It isn't in my job description to evaluate co-workers."
"Candidly, did you think Oren Starks was a good fit?"
"No, I didn't."
"Why not? Wasn't he any good at what he did?"
Berry gave a half smile. "Oren wasn't good at his job, he was exceptional."
"I don't follow, Berry," the sheriff said. "Ski said you painted this guy as an oddball."
"His personality has no bearing on his skill," Berry said. "Marketing is about creativity, and strategy, and making dozens of components come together to form a harmonious whole. One wrong element throws the whole thing off. At Delray, Oren was our go-to guy when a campaign wasn't coming together the way it should. He had a knack for isolating the piece that didn't fit."
"Yet he was a misfit at the company," the sheriff said.
"Ironically, yes. He made people uncomfortable. Women in particular. I wasn't the first he focused his unwanted attention on."
"Were sexual harassment complaints filed against him?"
She shook her head. "None officially. Oren didn't do anything overt. No touching. No obscene e-mails or lewd texts. He's too intelligent, too sly to do something that could have trapped him.
"But he was very clever with innuendos implying an intimacy that didn't exist." As an afterthought, she added, "If you took issue with one of his remarks, he could make you feel as though you'd mistaken his meaning."
"Was this your experience?" the sheriff asked.
"Yes. At first. I began to think I was reading too much into the things he said and did. But after he was fired, he became more persistent and aggressive. To the point where I grew frightened of him. I thought that if I came here and stayed the summer in Mother's lake house--which she'd been trying to get me to do ever since she bought it--if I came here, essentially disappeared for a while, Oren would become discouraged or simply lose interest and leave me alone."
"When you say stalking..." The sheriff leaned forward, inviting her to elaborate.
"Calling several times a day. Constantly sending me text messages."
"Why didn't you change your phone number?" Deputy Nyland asked.
"Too many people have that number. Clients, co-workers, people who need to reach me for a quick solution to a time-sensitive problem. It would have been very inconvenient to change it."
"More inconvenient than being stalked?"
"You don't have to answer that, Berry," her lawyer said.
She didn't answer. Instead, she redirected her attention to the sheriff. "Oren would show up at my house uninvited. Sometimes he would be parked at the curb, or even sitting on the porch, waiting for me when I returned home. He would appear at restaurants where I was having dinner and would send flowers with enclosure cards that suggested a romantic relationship. I assure you there was none. He sent me small gifts that--"
"Like what?"
Flustered by the deputy's constant and skeptical interruptions, she had to think for a moment. "He once sent me a video game. A Dungeons & Dragons kind of game. Fantasy stuff with wizards, evil sorcerers, castles with mazes. You know the kind of thing."
"You're into that?"
