He nodded. “Absolutely I would have come around,” he said. “I wasn’t anywhere near as competitive as she was, and it didn’t matter to me if I won or not.”
“And yet,” she noted calmly, “if that were the case, you wouldn’t have been winning in this instance—because you would have realized it would have pissed her off.”
He laughed. “Just because I didn’t care about winning didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy poking at her for fun. She had quite the temper, especially about getting beat, and sometimes it was pretty fun to watch.” He shook his head. “Listen,” he admitted. “I know it sounds childish, but, sometimes in relationships, you play a game that ends up being quite satisfying later in the day,” he admitted.
“Apparently it could also be quite dangerous,” she added, studying him.
“Absolutely, and apparently it was more dangerous than I knew.” He shook his head. “Christ, I still can’t believe I didn’t know she did it.”
“Ifyou didn’t know…” she began.
He looked at her and frowned. “What difference does it make whether or not I knew anyway? Why bring this up now? She’s dead and gone, and it’s not as if I can sit here and accuse her of it now. It just seems mean to even bring it up now, when she’s not even here to defend herself.” He glared at Kate in irritation.
“Yeah, I get it,” she said, “but it does lend itself to motive.”
“Motive?” He stared at her in surprise, then turned and looked at his lawyer. “I don’t understand.” Then his lawyer leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
“Seriously?” He twisted to face Kate in shock. “You actually think I’d kill my wife over something like that?”
“People have been killed over lesser things,” she noted quietly, but, in her heart, she started to doubt what had looked like a promising avenue.
“I feel sorry for you, Detective,” Agnew said. “Sorry that you have to deal with people who would make you even think such a thing. Our marriage wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but I loved my wife.”
He declared those words with such sincerity that she found herself believing him.
Agnew continued. “What she did—if she even did it, and I’m not yet convinced of that—was petty, small, and absolutely true to her inability to lose a competition,” he stated. “But that was a flaw in her own personality, not something to be killed over.” He shook his head again. “I can’t even believe that’s why you brought me in here.”
“We’re looking for a killer,” she stated. “And killers will kill for any number of reasons, and revenge is definitely one of them.”
He shook his head. “Well, that’s not the case with me,” he murmured. “I couldn’t have done that—and surely not for such a petty reason.”
“So what reasonwouldyou kill over?” she asked curiously.
His jaw opened, then closed. “I’m not even sure I can answer that because I don’t know of any instance that would cause me to kill.”
“And yet you were prepared to take your own life. Over what?” she asked.
He frowned. “I already told you that it was the booze talking at the time.” His back stiffened, as if talking about his drunken attempt at ending his life were even more of an affront than her accusing him of killing his wife.
“I get that,” she murmured. “And I’m glad to see that you survived whatever turmoil was in your mind at the time.”
“Me too,” he said, seemingly understanding what she’d been thinking. “So, have we put to rest the idea that what I recently did, however stupid, was most definitely not an admission or evidence of guilt regarding the death of my wife? Which, for the record, I’ll state again that I had nothing to do with.”
“Well, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time this had ever happened,” she stated.
Agnew stood and stated, “Not this time, Detective. Not this time. Now, can I leave?”
She let them go, watching as they walked down the hall and out of the station. As she headed back to her office, the same old frustration ate away at her.
Rodney stood there, waiting for her. “Hey, it was a really good theory.”
“And it still is, as far as theories go,” she noted. “But proving it? That’s another story. He has no way to prove he wasn’t out on the trails, but that would have meant he left the kids home alone for that time.”
“Right, and somebody surely would have seen him to place him at the scene of the crime at the hour of the murders.”
She nodded. “I can go knock on doors,” she suggested. “And I might just have to because nothing else, and I meannothing else, is breaking.”
“And you’re running out of time.”