As if she sensed Spenser standing behind her, Layla looked around and cut the torch as she stood up. She tipped the helmet back, revealing the face of the woman from the DMV photo. Her eyes were puffy, her cheeks splotchy, and her nose was bright red. She looked as if she’d been crying beneath her helmet. Layla set her torch down then walked over and cut the music, plunging them into a silence so abrupt, it was jarring.
She took off her helmet and set it down on a table, then unzipped her coveralls and pulled the top down to her waist, revealing the gray tank top she wore underneath. She was about four inches shorter than Spenser’s five-nine frame with a petite figure that only accentuated her pixie-cut, giving the woman an appearance that reminded her of one of the fae folk from legend. She grabbed a rag from the table and wiped the sweat from her face.
“Layla Li?”
“That’s right. I assume you’re here about Seth?”
“I am.”
Spenser walked around what Layla was working on. Made of a mix of wood and metal, it was a stylized totem pole that was striking. The sunlight glinted off the steel fins of the fish layered in amongst the faces of the bears that had been carved into the wood. It combined traditional elements with others that were thoroughly modern and created something entirely unique.
“This is beautiful,” Spenser said and meant it.
“Thanks. It was commissioned by an art gallery on the Muckleshoot reservation,” she said. “It’s not done yet, but it’s coming along.”
Spenser walked around the piece again, admiring it from all angles and finding something new with every glance. She wasn’t an artist and didn’t understand a lot of what passed for art anymore, but what she was looking at was most definitely fine art as far as she was concerned.
“Can I offer you a glass of iced tea?” Layla asked.
“That would be lovely. Thank you.”
The woman nodded and led her out of the area she was working in—a concrete space between the house and the offset garage. Her small Craftsman-style bungalow was laid out almost exactly like Seth Hamill’s. The biggest difference Spenser noted was that Layla hadn’t built on and expanded her garage. Like Hamill, though, she wasn’t using it for her car. It was her studio.
Spenser followed her into the house through the back door. Layla motioned to a high table that stood in a rounded nook that overlooked her workspace outside. Spenser perched on the edge of one of the tall stools as Layla went to the refrigerator and pulled out a glass pitcher of iced tea. She walked over and set it on the table in front of Spenser, then retrieved a pair of glasses that she filled with ice, then brought those over as well.
She silently poured out the tea, then pulled three packets of Splenda from the caddy on the table and added them. Spenser studied the woman closely as she raised her own glass and took a sip. There were dark half-moons beneath Layla’s bloodshot eyes, and she just had a heavy air of exhaustion about her. It wasn’t difficult to see the woman hadn’t been sleeping well. She looked like a woman caught deep in a web of grief.
“So, have you learned anything about what happened to Seth?” she asked, her voice low. “Do you know what happened?”
“We’re working a number of different angles.”
She nodded and cupped her glass in both hands, staring down into the brown liquid, seeming to be lost in her own head. She looked like a woman in pain and Spenser’s heart went out to her. But she had a job to do.
“How was your relationship with Seth?” Spenser asked.
“It was good. I mean… we had our ups and downs like everybody else. But we were happy.”
“It’s my understanding the police were called out when you guys were fighting,” Spenser said. “A few times, actually.”
“No charges were ever filed.”
“No. But I still have to ask about it.”
She sighed. “Yeah. We had a few fights that got a little loud. But it’s not like we were beating on each other. My neighbors just like to stick their noses where they don’t belong, so they called the cops. But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that nothing ever came of it. It was just a few disagreements that got loud.”
“And what were these loud disagreements about?”
“Honestly, Sheriff, we’re both passionate people. Most creatives are. It’s just how we tend to be. Passion is necessary to create art,” she said. “And yeah, we both have a bit of a temper. But things never got out of hand. It was just… passionate disagreements. That’s all.”
A wan smile tugged at the corner of Spenser’s mouth. “And what were these passionate disagreements about, Layla?”
She shrugged. “Honestly, they were so long ago, I don’t even know anymore. Things between us have been really good for a while now. We were good. We haven’t had one of those kinds of fights in a long time, Sheriff.”
Spenser took a drink of her tea as she listened to Layla speaking. She sounded sincere. More than that, she sounded absolutely heartbroken. It was impossible not to hear the pain in her voice.
“Layla, can you think of anybody who might have wanted to hurt Seth?”
She shook her head. “Nobody I can think of. Everybody liked him. He was a popular trainer and people loved his music.”
“Are you aware somebody was going at him online for his steroid use?”
Her full lips curled downward, and her expression darkened. “Yeah. I know about that. But I don’t know who it was.”
“Did you know about his steroid use?”
She took a drink and nodded, unable to meet Spenser’s eyes. “Yeah. He tried to hide it from me, but I found out. We had an argument about that, actually. Mostly, he listened while I yelled at him. I told him I wouldn’t be with somebody who did drugs of any kind,, and he promised me that he’d stopped. I believed him. He’s been clean ever since we fought about it.”
“So, you think Seth was clean?” Spenser asked.
She nodded. “I do. He told me he’d stopped using.”
Layla said it like Hamill’s steroid use was a thing of the past and like she didn’t know he’d still been using. Which, since he’d still been using, suggested that her boyfriend had been lying to her. Which, given that he had clients upset about his steroid use, suggested she wasn’t the only person in his life he’d been lying to. It suggested he was leading something of a double life—one he showed the world and the other he lived out in private, behind closed doors in his music room. In Spenser’s mind, it raised more questions about who Seth Hamill was.
The other side of that coin, though, had her wondering what Layla would have done if she’d found out about Seth’s lies? If she’d found out he was still using. Would being lied to and finding out Hamill was using again be enough to push a woman like Layla, a self-proclaimed passionate person with a temper, over the edge? Would it be enough to make her kill? Spenser wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure if Layla had it in her to kill. She didn’t get that hit off her, but she couldn’t afford to dismiss her out of hand either. Hell hath no fury and all that.
After a moment, Layla’s ears perked up and she raised her head. “Wait. You just asked if I thought he was still clean,” she said. “That would seem to imply that he wasn’t. What aren’t you telling me, Sheriff? Was he using again?”
Her voice was thick with desperation that was tinged with anger. Spenser took a sip of her tea to give herself a moment to decide how to answer the woman’s question. Part of her didn’t want to ruin Layla’s image of a reformed man. Part of Spenser wanted to let her go on believing that he’d kept his word and stayed clean. But that wouldn’t serve the investigation and no matter how much she might empathize with Layla, she needed to do her job.
