“What?” Kate asked.
She shrugged, then continued. “I figured she was mad at me.”
“Why?”
“Because I had told her to break off the romance,” she whispered, looking around in a panic to make sure she wasn’t overheard.
“Ah. Okay, well, I do know about that,” Kate admitted. “Was there anybody else in her life?”
The woman shook her head. “No, it was just Tom, and he was really jealous.”
“Interesting,” Kate replied. “What can you tell me about her?”
“She was beautiful, inside and out,” she whispered, still in tears. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“Did you see anybody here who was interested in her? A client who caused her problems? Anybody in the building?”
She shook her head, then frowned. “Her ex-boyfriend is here in the building. She was quite devastated for a time after they broke up.”
“Did it end badly?”
She shrugged. “Is there ever a good breakup?” she asked, with a wry and teary smile. “It was a problem, but she got over it, and eventually they could at least be in the same elevator when they were going back and forth among the floors here,” she noted. “She seemed to finally let it go.”
“And yet this office relationship came on the heels of that one.”
“Exactly. That’s just what I told her. That’s why she went into it too quickly and without thinking it through… because she was on the rebound.”
“Was she looking at breaking it off?”
She shrugged. “I wanted her to. But she wasn’t really happy with the idea. She didn’t want to be alone.”
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt her or who hated her enough to kill her?”
She started tearing up again, wrapping her arms around her chest and rocking slightly. “No,” she whispered, “she was a really nice person.”
“She didn’t complain about anybody following her? Nobody watching her? Or was she getting strange texts or emails from anybody?”
The woman immediately shook her head. “No, I never heard about anything like that.” Then she asked, “How—how did she d-die?” Kate hesitated, then the woman teared up yet again. “It was bad, wasn’t it?”
Slowly she nodded. “Yes, it was bad. That’s why I’m wondering if anybody suspicious was in her life.”
The other woman sighed. “No. She was really close to her family, but they’d seemed at odds this last bit after they found out about her relationship, you know, with her boss.” She again took a quick look around the office.
“Does anybody herenotknow about the affair?”
She looked at Kate, horrified, and then she thought about it. “You know what? Probably not. But we all tried to keep it quiet because of his wife. She really is sweet,” she added on a sad note.
“And Cherry’s nice too?”
“Very nice. Oh, gosh, she would never willingly do something like this.”
“I hope not,” Kate replied, with a hard tone.
The woman looked at her and offered, “If there’s anything I can do…”
“We’ll be contacting her family for questioning as well,” Kate explained. “It is a problem though.” She stood and handed over her card. “If you think of anything, please contact me.”
The woman started to cry again, as she wiped her tears impatiently, then added, “It’s so unfair. Cherry had a lot of life to live.”