“Yeah.” But she didn’t look it. “I booked it down here to get one of the specials. They run out so damn fast.” She stared at the two plates on the table and then looked up at him.
He smiled and said, “I hadn’t eaten, and I thought maybe you could use some food too.” Then he nudged one of the plates closer to her.
Her face lit up, like a sunrise in the morning.
He stared, enchanted. “Wow,” he said, “if that’s all I have to do—”
She pulled the plate closer. “That’s one of the reasons I came running,” she said. “The specials were always gone early in the afternoon.”
“They didn’t say anything about it.” But, even as he looked up, an employee posted a sign, saying that the day’s special was sold out. “Wow,” he said, “good timing.” They both sat here and enjoyed their lunch. He wasn’t even sure what kind of soup it was, but it was delicious, and a huge thick slab of bread rested beside it. He was happy to watch her eat the rest of hers. “You’re inhaling that.”
“I try not to,” she confessed. “It’s always so good, and it seems like I have so very few minutes in a day for a break.”
“That’s because you do,” he said, with a smile. “Unless you change that.”
Soon the food was gone, and she sat back with a happy smile. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
He nodded in wonder. “First,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting that your rush down here was to get lunch. Second, I wasn’t expecting that your full-on rush would completely stop when food was put in front of you.”
She chuckled. “It’s been one of those days.”
“Did the laptop help?”
“I won’t know for a while yet,” she said. “It should be a huge help, particularly that email. It’s taken us in a direction that we hadn’t considered. Honestly I really don’t want to go there, but—”
“Who would?” he said. “Louisa is a friend of mine. So was David. I had no idea what was going on in his life. I feel terrible about it.”
“That’s another reason,” she said. “I didn’t even think to ask her any questions. I don’t know if the officer who informed her of her husband’s death did or not. Even if he did, he likely wouldn’t have asked the questions I want to ask.”
“Go ahead and ask me,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Just about the relationship, what their marriage was like, things like that.”
He nodded. “I guess you have to ask that stuff, don’t you?”
She nodded. “It helps to set the scene, and it lets us know what’s going on.”
“Right.”
She brought out a notebook and asked, “How long have you known him?”
“David?”
She nodded.
“Easily fifteen years,” he said. “Beyond that, I don’t really know.”
“Good enough,” she said. “And his wife?”
“They’ve been married about twelve years I think,” he said thoughtfully, “so probably two years before that. Let’s call it fourteen years, give or take.”
“Any altercations, any problems between them?”
He looked at her in surprise and said, “Not that I know of. I’ve never seen any sign of it. You don’t think she’s responsible for any of this, do you?”
She looked at him and said, “I have to ask questions.”
“I get it,” he said, “but they’re disturbing.”