“Yes, I know the people from the program out there, of course. You know how it is with research these days, share and share—”
“Can you think of any reason Nina Martin would be carrying around your telephone number?” Matt asked, cutting in.
Poor Lorna. In the last few minutes she’d straightened out two metal paper clips. Good-bye steepled fingers.
“Well, no. I … uh … She had my phone number? I suppose it could have been a permutation or something.” Lorna sat up straight again, as if an idea had suddenly come to her. “Or maybe someone referred her to me. I’m responsible for recruiting people to the project. That must be it.”
“Would you mind telling me where you were last Friday, Ms. Frederick?”
His voice so sweet, the detective might have been asking her out for coffee. Which reminded me to look for signs of Lorna’s family life. She had so many rings on her fingers—I counted three on each hand, including an enormous silver/turquoise number that must have made it impossible for her to bend that knuckle—I couldn’t tell if a wedding ring was among them. I saw only one photo that didn’t include horses—Lorna with two men I recognized as local politicians.
Lorna hadn’t misinterpreted Matt’s question as anything but what it was—a request for an alibi. Her face lost its color; she put her hands on her desk and rolled back in her chair, as if to push herself away from the topic. She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes; I thought she might cry. Then, in the next minute, her eyes widened. I imagined her mind churning, angry that Matt had not been open with her from the beginning. Her nostrils flared, as I imagined her Appaloosa’s might. She stood and folded her arms across her chest.
“I rode my horse until ten or ten-thirty, then went home to bed.” She cleared her throat, ready to deliver an unpleasant message to an underling. “And now I’m going to ask you to leave.”
Matt nodded and closed his notebook, giving no sign he’d noticed her new hostility. “Of course,” he said.
The interview was over, and I hadn’t done a thing to earn my consultant status. I had to get a word in. “If you have another moment—before we leave, I’d just like to get a sense of what you do here as project director. Does that mean you have responsibility for funding, or do you also set the research agenda?”
Lorna glared at me, picked up a brochure from a pile on her side table, and handed it to me. “Everything you need to know is in here. Now, I have an important meeting.” Unlike this one, was the implication. She swept her arm toward the door. “So if you will kindly leave?”
We did.
For now, I thought.
“What did you think?” Matt asked, starting our traditional post-interview debriefing. We were in his Camry, headed for lunch at Russo’s on Broadway. In my mind, I’d already ordered the specialty of the house, eggplant parmigiana.
“She seemed too tall for horse-riding,” I said, only half teasing. I realized I was probably influenced by photos I’d seen of jockeys, who seemed not much bigger than Rose.
Matt laughed. “What do we know from this interview? Friendly with the mayor and Councilman Vega, for one.”
“I saw that. Windowless, inside office, not far up the ladder.”
“Still, able to maintain a pretty expensive hobby,” Matt said.
“More like an obsession.”
For a moment I wished I had a passion like Lorna’s for horses. I tried to imagine myself committed in that way to a sport, or to a craft, like the quilt-making craze I’d noticed among women I’d worked with in California. Rose’s current interest was in making glass beads for jewelry and decorative lamps. I’d resisted invitations to join her. Did reading science magazines and biographies count as the hobby Rose insisted I needed? I’d have to pursue that thought another time.
“If she didn’t know Nina Martin, she definitely knew something she didn’t want to share,” Matt said, still on the debriefing track.
“I wish I could have learned more about her work. I’ll do some checking.”
“Notice anything about her alibi?”
A quiz, I sensed, and concentrated on remembering the exact words Lorna had used. “Nothing unusual, just that she didn’t give any names.”
Matt waited, giving me more time to come up with the right answer, I guessed. “That’s it?”
“I’m afraid so. You’re going to have to tell me,” I said.
“I asked her what she was doing on Friday. What would you have answered, in her place?”
“Aha.” I got his point. “I would have started with being at work, during the day, but Lorna went right to the evening and nighttime hours.”