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“It doesn’t seem to matter much, but I didn’t get very far with her. She’ll be thoroughly interrogated. After which, we’ll determine what the charges against her will be.”
“Did she tell you anything of value?” I asked.
“Charlene confirmed her husband died and that they were only married two years when it happened. She also said she’d had a miscarriage, and apparently, she was far enough along to know it was a boy.”
“Interesting. I wonder when it was.”
“I do too. The only other thing we had the chance to discuss was travel. She said she’d done a little but nothing specific about where.”
“What do you think will happen with Francesca?”
“As Zeppelin said, Cayman and Bexli are with her. We need to determine how much she knew about Ananke’s criminal activity.”
“She left Gozo when she was fourteen and hadn’t been back since.”
“Which means Francesca probably knows very little. On the other hand, my gut is telling me Charlene knows quite a lot.”
“I think Francesca is innocent.”
“I do too.”
I was happy Magnet agreed with me.
“Do you want to talk about the rest?”
I didn’t, but as I told him, I knew I had to. I picked up my cell phone that I’d brought outside with me and turned on voice recording.
“Ananke came out of the kitchen approximately five minutes after my arrival at ten hundred hours. She held a gun and ordered me to sit.
“She asked if I was looking for her, and that’s when she told me she’d left the island forty-five years ago, which would’ve made her fourteen at the time. She also said she hadn’t returned until today.”
Magnet paused the recording. “Do you need to take a break?”
I shook my head. “I just want to get through it.”
He nodded and restarted the recording.
“She told me she’d had high hopes for me when we first met, but that I’d always disappointed her.”
“Did she say in what way?”
I thought it over for a minute but couldn’t recall anything specific. “Negative.”
“Go on.”
“I apologized, insincerely, and made sure to call her Mrs. Strousberg. That annoyed her, which was my intent. She said I knew it wasn’t her name.”
“Is that when she told you A was for Ananke?”
I nodded. “She also told me the name was for a goddess who ruled over several things. The only thing I distinctly remember is her saying all forms of slavery.”
“Interesting,” Magnet muttered.
“I know, right? She started out by saying she was Mrs. Salvatore Rávdos, though, and pointed out she was the only woman he married. She added he’d had mistresses, who were eventually discarded. The words she used were, ‘He tossed them aside like the trash they were.’”
The next part would be the hardest for me to recount, but I had no choice. “She said Cronos wanted me, and that at the time, I looked much like she did when she left Gozo.”
Magnet’s eyes opened wide.
