“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not. None of this is fun or funny, Talia. Do you want to hear the rest?”
Tamping down her humiliation and anger, she bobbed her head.
“Gif and I were debating what to do about you when Locke and Menundez showed up. The transmitter was too far away to pick up what they were saying until you moved into the kitchen. For all we knew, they’d come to arrest you. We know now they asked you to make an ID.”
“If you already know all that, why are you bringing it up?”
“The time gap. Surveillance cameras show you leaving the airport at four forty-seven.”
“Eight,” Mike said.
Drex gave him a frown but corrected himself. “Four forty-eight. Talia, where were you between then and ten o’clock?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’ll matter to Locke, Menundez, and every other investigator on this case, county, state, and federal, including our own Bill Rudkowski.”
Mike said, “It’ll matter a lot if, during that five hours, you hooked back up with your husband, say on the beach, where you were flashing a light so he would know where to make landfall after ensuring that Elaine Conner was no longer breathing.”
Talia was developing a tremendous dislike for this man, and hoped that the drop-dead look she gave him conveyed as much. She went back Drex. “From the airport I drove downtown.”
“And did what?”
“Walked around.”
“Such a nice night for a stroll,” Mike said. “In the drizzle and rain and all.”
“I was unmindful of the weather.”
None of the men took issue, but they were regarding her with patent doubt.
“Where did you walk?” Drex asked.
“Along Bay Street. I went into a restaurant and lingered.”
“Lingered, why?”
“There was no rush to get home. I believed Jasper had gone to Atlanta.”
The men looked at one another and seemed to conclude that her answer was at least credible, if not truthful.
“Where did you park downtown?” Gif asked.
“I got lucky and found an empty parallel spot on one of the side streets.”
“Fucking lucky, I’d say,” Mike muttered.
Her temper snapped. “I’ve had it with you and your snide editorials. If you want to accuse me of lying, do it. If not, stop with the mumbling, all right?”
Drex patted the air in a calm down gesture and suggested that Mike dispense with his remarks unless they were pertinent. He asked Talia for the name of the restaurant. She told him.
“The waiter will remember me. I had two glasses of wine and ordered dinner. But I didn’t have an appetite and never touched the plate. The waiter noticed and asked if the food wasn’t to my liking. He offered to bring me something else. I declined, tipped him well, and left.”
“Did you pay with a credit card?”
“Yes.”