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Which means they can see us, too.
“I’ve been thinking about the honeymoon we never had, too,” Archer tells me.
“Yeah. Felix mentioned something about New York. He said you said we’re heading east.”
Archer snorts, but remembering where he is, what’s happening outside of our own little world, he lifts a hand as though to scratch his jaw, and covers his mouth so the woman outside my office can’t see his inappropriate grin. “We’re not going to New York, Mayet. And we’re especially not spending our honeymoon with my brothers. So you should think about where you do wanna go. Somewhere far from here. Coconut bras and fruity cocktails optional.”
“Come now, Mrs. Andrews.” Fletch opens the door and leads the sobbing woman into the room, his large form towering over her tiny stature. His muscular arm, wrapped over her shoulders.
Aubree follows them in, and Fifi trails behind with three mugs of coffee she somehow procured despite the broken machine in the break room.
Bless her to hell and back, she brings one my way and sets it down on my desk.
“Please, take a seat.” Fletch leads Mrs. Andrews to the couch lining my wall and lowers her down until the cushions expel air and the sound echoes across my office. Then, with a smile of appreciation for Fifi, he takes a second cup of coffee and sets it on the table in front of the distraught woman.
He settles on the couch beside her, while Archer turns his back to me and perches on the edge of my desk. And since Aubree and Fifi are curious too, they back away so as to become unobtrusive, but they don’t leave. They don’t dare walk out and miss the gossip.
“Alright, Diane,” Fletch begins. “We’re gonna have to ask you some questions, okay? We have a small mess that needs cleaning up.” He takes a device from his pocket and sets it on the small coffee table, directly in her line of sight. “Is it alright if we record this?”
She snatches a fistful of fresh tissues and crushes them in her hand. But she nods, jerkily enough to have tears plopping to her lap. “Yes. It’s alright.”
“Okay.” He shows her a gentle, friendly smile, the way he does to any person he wants to charm, then straightening his leg and leaning back to get access to his pocket, he takes out a notebook and pen. “So, my name is Detective Charlie Fletcher,” he says, both for her and for the record. “My partner,” he nods in our direction, “is Detective Archer Malone. We’re the detectives who had the news article ran.”
“Is-is he dead?” Diane scrunches her tissues to her nose. “Is Kyle dead?”
“We have a man here,” Archer speaks up, ever so gently. “The man you saw on the news. And unfortunately, heisdead.”
Diane’s head bows and bounces with almost silent cries. “God. It’s not supposed to be like this.” She brings her red and puffy eyes up to Archer. “This isn’t supposed to happen to good families.”
“The issue, Mrs. Andrews…” Fletch sits forward on the couch and angles his body to face the woman. “Is that someone else has already come forward and claimed he’stheirhusband. So we’re not sure if your Kyle is the man we have in this building.”
Diane’s spine straightens, and her eyes narrow.
“This other woman gave a different name, though,” Archer adds. “Not Kyle.”
“That’s just…” She sniffles back a long line of snot. “That’s impossible. Maybe this person is mistaken.”
Or maybe you are.
“They could be,” Fletch agrees amiably. “So that means we need to talk this through and figure out what’s going on. Let’s start with Kyle,” he murmurs, since evidently, Kyle is missing too. If the body in my zero-temperature fridge is, in fact, Roger Wilson, then we still have a man unaccounted for. “When was the last time you saw him?”
“Um…” She swallows so her throat bobs and her breath shudders. “Wednesday morning of last week. He had just gotten back from Portland the day before.”
“Portland?” Fletch writes his notes and works through his thoughts in his mind. “Okay. So you saw him Wednesday morning… and you weren’t concerned that he didn’t come home that night?”
“No.” She presses her tissues to her nose. “He was going to Florida for a few days for a business meeting. So I didn’t worry.”
“What does Kyle do for work?” I ask.
When both cops’ gazes come to me, ‘Interference!’ in their expressions, I lower into my seat and gently smile for the woman who studies me through tears. “Who was he in Florida to meet?”
“He’s an engineer.” Diane anxiously clutches to her tissues. “He had to meet with a client about a multi-story shopping center they’re building. Foundations were poured almost two weeks ago, so he had to inspect those before they could continue construction. While he was there, he agreed to meet with the architect.”
“Do you know this architect’s name?” Archer asks. “Or that of the project manager?”
“No. I—” She shakes her head. “I don’t. I have a general idea of what he’s working on at any particular time, but he’s always got several projects going at once. I don’t know their details.”
“Is there anything unusual about your husband’s body?” Aubree asks.
