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“Thank you.”
“I was expecting test tubes and Bunsen burners.”
“You might find those in the chemistry department. Not in the mathematics faculty. We wouldn’t know what to do with them.”
“That makes two of us.”
He pulls out a notepad, licks the tip of his finger and flicks it open.
I point at it with my chin. “I would have thought police would have gone full tech by now.” That and invisible films over their hands to capture fingerprints.
“What, this?” He holds up the notepad. “I only trust my good old Moleskines. Not that it matters, as I can’t imagine my department issuing us with iPads anytime soon, if that’s what you meant.” He flicks pages back and forth, finds the right spot, and looks up.
“Mrs. Sanchez, do you know Isabelle Wilcox?”
I sit very still. My immediate instinct is to apologize—nothing new there—to say how very sorry I am and I willneverdo it again. Suddenly, I don’t know what to do with my hands. I feel like an amateur being asked to act on stage and I can’t remember where they’re supposed to go. I hook one arm over the back of my chair, then decide it’s far too casual for the circumstances, so I bring my hands together in a steeple and rest my chin on my fingers, a pose I can safely say I have never held before.
“My husband just called me,” I say, my chin bobbing over the tip of my index fingers. “I was very sad to hear the news.”
“Was she a close friend of yours?”
“No. More like an acquaintance. She curated my husband’s exhibition, at Perry Cube Gallery. Not that it needed much curating—I mean, he’s just one artist with a limited body of work, not sure what’s the curation part there, but you could say they got close, friendly I mean. How did she die?”
He stares at me for quite a while and my stomach clenches.
“She fell down the stairs,” he says, watching me. “She hit her head. She was found too late.”
I have to work harder to take a breath. It’s as if the air has been sucked out of the room.
“An accident?” The stupidity of what I’ve just said makes me want to laugh. It’s the anxiety. I rub both hands over my face to make it stop. I stand up and open the window a notch.
“When is the last time you saw her?” He ignores my question.
I look up to the ceiling, tap my fingers against my chin. Internally, I can barely breathe. I want to ask a million questions before I answer his.Did anyone see me? Is that why you’re here?
“Lemeseee…we had Isabelle over for dinner last Friday, so that would be the last time I saw her.”
It’s funny, the power of words. I was at a fork in the road just now. I could have told the truth, or a version of it anyway. I could have said that I was there last night and we had a big, big fight, that I almost smashed her vase and snatched her stupid gold chain from her pretty neck and I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. Then I’d just tell June not to worry about what we agreed to before.Tell the truth!I would have said.I just did! It’s liberating!
But I panic. I lie. And when he asks if I’ve ever been to her house, I say, no. I don’t even know where she lives, I say.
“What happened to your hand?”
I sit up and check my palm. The red welt goes all the way to the outer edge, around my little finger.
“Gardening. Pulling weeds.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t you hate that?”
“I sure do.”
He checks his notes. “Last Friday night you said?”
“Yes.”
“How did she seem?”
I think about this for a moment. “She seemed fine, friendly.”
