Stolen(85)

Caitlin took the chair—Asta and Spense the couch.

“Special agent. What is that?” Asta asked, stifling a yawn.

“FBI, ma’am. I hope we didn’t wake you.”

“I don’t really sleep, just snooze a little here and there, when I can.”

Caitlin was surprised that Asta’s expression remained unchanged. Most people got a little nervous around FBI agents. But from Asta’s slumped posture and slack jaw, it seemed as though she didn’t care one way or the other who sat down beside her on the couch.

She’s depressed.

“We’d like to talk to you about your sister,” Caitlin said—still no change in expression.

A long silence followed then finally, “May I offer you a coffee or something?”

“If you’re having some, thanks.” Sharing a food or beverage put people at ease, though Asta didn’t look as though she could be any more at ease if she were curled up in her jammies in front of the tube.

Spense stroked his chin. “Got anything stronger? A whiskey, maybe?”

Asta smiled. “Neat okay?”

“Neat’s great.”

Good job on Spense’s part. Caitlin had pegged Asta for a drinker, but still, she wouldn’t have thought to suggest a cocktail at 10 a.m.

“All righty then, you and me will have an eye-opener and toast my dead little sister and her poor, pitiful, grieving husband.”

A glimmer of emotion flicked across her flat eyes.

Clearly Inga’s death had affected her sister more deeply than it had Grady. And the sarcasm in her voice was telling.

Asta went into the kitchen and returned with two glasses nearly half-filled with an amber liquid.

Apparently Caitlin would be driving.

Asta looked at her and frowned. “I forgot your coffee.”

“No worries, really. I’ve changed my mind.”

“Suit yourself.” Asta flopped down on the couch and handed Spense his drink, somehow managing not to spill a drop despite the way the cushion bounced.

“Why don’t you like Grady Webber?” Spense didn’t beat around the bush.

“Does it matter? Everyone else loved him. My parents, for example, were ecstatic when he married Inga.” She tossed back a slug of whiskey. “All that money. Brilliant future. A doctor and what-have-you. You think they even cared that Inga was a doctor, too, and could’ve had a brilliant future all on her own? Once she met Grady, she barely managed to finish residency. All that work, all that education, and then she just gave up her own career to traipse around the country after that piece of crap. She never got to practice psychiatry a single day.”

Caitlin hadn’t been aware of that.

“Toward the end, just before her accident . . .” Asta continued, “. . . she’d decided to go to work. She was going to try to start her own practice, but Grady didn’t like that, because it meant she couldn’t drop everything for him and those Chaucer family junkets he was always going on. He called her ungrateful. Implied any wife should want to travel the world with her husband and grovel at his feet while he tended to the mind of that poor little rich girl.”

“You mean Laura Chaucer.”

“Yes.” She tossed her whiskey back again. “That child’s been through it, I know. But talk about spoiled. If Laura so much as looked at something in the window, the next day it was wrapped up with a bow waiting for her to open it. If you asked me, that whole family needed better boundaries. But of course no one did ask, because I’m not a psychiatrist. No one listens to anything I have to say about the Chaucers, or about Grady, or about my own sister because what would an uneducated woman who works at the supermarket know that Grady Webber does not. If Grady says he and Inga were blissfully happy, well then, I guess they were.”

Caitlin raised her eyes to meet Asta’s. “I’d like to hear your opinion. What you think matters.”

“Too late now. She’s already gone. After Inga’s funeral I tried to tell the cops I didn’t think it was an accident. She hiked all the time, and she was very careful. I told them I thought Grady might’ve pushed her off that mountain. And they told me that was impossible because he had an airtight alibi. He was at a symposium with a group of doctors—he’s got six witnesses and security cameras that place him at the hotel while she was out hiking.”

“But you still believe he pushed her off the trail?” Caitlin asked.

A tear ran down her face. “I don’t think all of those witnesses are lying, but that doesn’t mean Grady couldn’t have hired someone to do the dirty work for him. I don’t understand why the police just took his word that they were happy.”