“Has the divorce been finalized?”
“No. Well…” Then she stopped and shook her head. “I actually can’t confirm that. She did meet with the lawyer yesterday, and I’m not at all sure what the latest is.”
“Okay, good enough. Do you happen to know the name of her attorney?”
The woman looked at her, and her bottom lip trembled. “No,” she whispered. “Why is it I don’t know these things?”
Kate reached out a hand to the obviously distraught woman. “I’m sorry. It’s not as any of us are ever prepared for this conversation.”
She looked at her and blinked. “No, you’re right. It’s not like we say, ‘Hey, honey, before you go for a run this morning, doyou want to tell me who your lawyer is in case you get murdered by your ex-husband’?” Such bitterness and raw grief filled her voice.
Kate added, “Maybe you’d better sit down. Is there anybody you can call to be with you?”
She sagged onto a kitchen chair and shook her head. “She’s my only daughter. My son lives on the other side of the country.”
“Did Jenna have any children?”
“No, she always really wanted children, but Barry didn’t.”
“And what about your husband?”
She waved her hand. “He’s been gone a long time now. It’s one of the reasons why I was quite happy to move here with Jenna,” she shared. “There’s just the two of us. I knew that she would find another partner soon enough, and I’d be in the way again, but—you know, for the moment,” she whispered, “I was just going to enjoy it. And hopefully, before too long, it wouldn’t be an issue.”
Her odd wording caught Kate’s attention. “What do you mean by that?”
The woman looked up and gave her a half smile. “I have stage four breast cancer,” she shared. “We’ve been trying to decide about going through more treatments, though they can really do nothing more but delay the inevitable a bit.”
Kate took a moment as she absorbed the news she’d sensed was coming. “I’m so very sorry this is all happening to you.”
“You never think that the end of your life will come like this, and I was prepared to do what I could to squeeze every day I could out of this life, but now? I’m just thinking, ‘Please, let this be over, and then I can at least go join my daughter.’”
The shock was taking a toll, and she looked unsteady. “Are you sure there’s nobody I can call to come be with you right now? Or I can get social services to come in.”
“No, please, that’s the last thing I want,” she said. “I’ll just go upstairs and lie down and think about what I’m supposed to do now.” She looked over at Kate. “How long before I can have my daughter’s body?”
She hesitated and then spoke. “I’m sorry, but because of the circumstances of her death—”
“Not for a while then. I suppose that means there will be an autopsy.”
“Exactly. I’m sorry.… Do you happen to know Robin?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s her friend. She lives almost next door. They went running together every morning.” She stopped, turning to face Kate. “Wait. I just realized that I didn’t even ask how Jenna died. What did he do to her? How did he kill her?”
“First off, we don’t know for sure that it was Barry,” she reminded her. “We’ll need to do a full investigation before we can determine that.”
The woman just waved it away impatiently. “How did she die? Where did he take her?”
“They were running,” Kate explained. “Jenna and Robin, I mean. They were found together, just off a nearby jogging path. Both dead.”
The woman stared at her in shock and then slowly sagged back down onto the chair. “Both dead? What? Both my Jenna and Robin are dead?”
Kate nodded slowly. “Yes, while I understand that you feel sure it was the ex-husband, would he have had any cause to kill Jenna’s friend?”
“No, no. My God, they have two little children.” She stared blindly out the window, her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my goodness, Agnew will be just devastated.”
“Agnew?”
“Robin’s husband.” She pointed out the window. “A vehicle is over there at their place now.”