“I think you need to watch out for possibly well-meaning friends who are feeding you unfounded fears. Don’t let them add to your worries with nonexistent problems. David’s dead. I don’t think the police will find anything that’ll make much difference or mar his reputation in any way.”
“Well, it will to me,” she cried out passionately.
“Are you saying you’d want to keep whatever happened to your husband a secret?”
“Maybe,” she said, her voice getting hesitant again, as if she didn’t know how to answer.
Simon knew that from the tone of her voice it was more because it wasn’t a question that she had thought to ask her friend, so now she didn’t have a planned answer to give. “Do you want me to talk to Helena?”
“No,” she said in a rush. “She didn’t want anything to do with any of this.”
“And yet she’s pressuring you to get the laptop back before the police are done with it. Helena obviously thinks badly of the police and is trying to get you to do the same thing. And you do realize that wanting the laptop back before the police check out all information about David’s death just raises suspicions and may make the investigation take longer?”
Silence.“Suspicion of what?” she said, her voice rising, “I didn’t do anything.”
“No, but now you’re acting weird,” he said bluntly. “I understand concern. I understand the fact that, from your perspective, as a civilian who knows nothing of how an official investigation works, that there’s no reason for them to have it. But having given it to them voluntarily and not having any viable reason why they can’t have it to investigate the death of your husband,” he said, “I think demanding it back will just cause them to look at you sideways.”
“Oh,” she said.
“After what happened to David, you need to be careful about who and what you believe.”
She swallowed loudly. “How long do you think they need his computer?”
“Hopefully not very long,” he said. “Why don’t you simply call and ask Kate about that, if it will make you feel better? And watch out for those negative thoughts taking over in your mind. That’s what David did too. Don’t listen to Helena’s negativity either. Ask the source. Call Kate and say that there’s material on there that you want for his eulogy or something. And ask how soon you can get it back. It’s just that simple. Don’t let Helena make it into some big conspiracy.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” she said in a rush. “Thanks.” And, with that, she hung up.
He stared down at his phone, wondering what the hell had just gone on. He didn’t know Louisa anywhere near as well as he did David, and apparently—after not knowing that the guy was suicidal—Simon didn’t know his friend all that well either. But this just ranked up on a level of bizarre. He shook his head, sent a text to Kate, mentioning that Louisa was looking for the laptop back. And then he put it out of his mind and carried on for the day.
Chapter 9
Kate’s Saturday Morning
Kate saw thetext, wondered at it, shrugged, and carried on, as she walked toward the station. It was a beautiful sunny day and promised to be an absolutely gorgeous afternoon, but, as far as she was concerned, she wouldn’t get much chance to enjoy it. She and her team were still interviewing families of other suicide victims, and they had begun this process over the past week. She had copious notes, and what she was trying to figure out was some methodology for finding similarities between them. She’d done a couple cases in note form, bringing out the salient points, and now needed to do the same for the rest of the cases.
When she got in, she found a full pot of coffee. With a grin, she snagged a cup, sat down at her desk, grabbed her notepads, brought up her Excel document, and transferred her summary information into the spreadsheet.
When Rodney sauntered in, a little bit later with a cup of coffee in hand, he looked over at the spreadsheet on her computer screen and winced. “I can’t stand those things.”
“No,” she said, “but at least we can use them for data sorting.” He looked at her with a grimace, and she shrugged. “We have so many cases year-to-date, I just couldn’t figure out the best way to compare for similarities.”
“You know there is a search feature online.”
“There is,” she said, with a nod, “but, when you consider how much information there is, what if somebody didn’t put in some of these points? So then, when you do run a search, it doesn’t come up with any of the stuff that you’re looking for.”
He shook his head. “Looks like a ton of man-hours wasted to me.”
“Did you have something else you wanted to do?” she asked, looking at him. “Some other case that we need to work on?”
“We don’t need any more cases,” he said, with a groan. “We’ve got too many already.”
“Nothing new on the drive-bys though, huh?”
“No,” he said, “nothing new anywhere.” He tossed down his pencil, looked at her, and asked, “You want me to do some?”
“No, I got this.”
Just then, both of their phones rang.