“I heard about the accident,” Kate mentioned. “And that’s got to be tough for any runner.”
“Right. I can’t imagine. It’s like a painter losing a hand. It just wouldn’t work so much for me.”
“Well, I don’t think it works for anybody in that situation, but you do the best you can do with it.”
“I get it,” she noted, with a delicate tone. “I’m just grateful it’s not my life.”
“And what about the other husband? Did he continue to run afterward?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see much of him running at all. I think he did some solo running afterward, but yet I don’t really remember seeing him.”
“And the husbands never ran with the wives, did they?”
“Again I don’t know about the morning time,” she repeated, ‘but it seemed like, once the two women hooked up as running partners, they seemed to be a match made in heaven. So everybody else just backed off and let them go at it.”
“Yeah, they were pretty crazy about it all, weren’t they?”
“That’s one word for it,” she said. “Man, they were really fierce competitors.”
“But not against each other, right?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Then she stopped and thought for a moment. “You know though, some of that competitiveness fed into other things too.”
“Like what?”
“About their clothing, their makeup, just all of it really. It seems like, once they became that competitive, everything became open for a contest.”
“Interesting,” Kate replied. She wasn’t sure how that helped her or if it helped in any way, but it was an opinion at least. “Thank you for your time,” she said. “I appreciate it very much.”
The woman shrugged. “I’m sure I’ve not been much help at all.”
“Do you live here alone?”
“Well, I do now,” she murmured. “I divorced two years ago, and I ended up getting the house out of the deal,” she shared, with a bright smile.
“Good for you,” Kate replied. “It’s a gorgeous location.”
“It seriously is.” Someone called from inside the house just then. A male.
Kate laughed. “You don’t appear to be suffering too much.”
The woman winked. “Nope, not at all. I like my men with a little more backbone than those two you’re asking about. Neither of them had much of a spine,” she said, then she shook her head. “Honest to God, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if things weren’t pretty abusive in the opposite direction—if you know what I mean,” she added. “I used to hear this couple pretty frequently.” She pointed to the house beside her. “They used to fight all the time. It actually got pretty loud, and sometimes I heard blows being delivered and cries. I did ask at one point in time if she needed me to contact the police, and she just laughed at me. She said something aboutWhy would I need to do that because her husband was far too spineless to ever actually hit her.”
“Interesting.”
“Again I think it’s just, you know, the more competitive the women got, the more aggressive Jenna got too. Not exactly my kind of person.” She stepped back from the doorway, with a shrug, “But both women are dead now.”
“Exactly,” Kate murmured.
“That makes me feel terrible for talking about her in a negative light,” she said, curling up her lip. “You’re a bad influence, Detective.”
“No,” Kate disagreed. “Unfortunately talking about people after they are dead is what I have to do for a living.”
She winced at that. “I could never do your job. Have a good day now.” She stepped back inside and closed the door in front of Kate.
Armed with all of that not necessarily helpful information, Kate wandered to the next couple townhomes. She talked to everybody on the block, and, when she got to the very last one, she found an older lady, sitting on a rocking chair, out on the front porch.
“I wondered if you were coming my way,” the woman noted, with almost a cackling laugh.