“Do you feel like you need a lawyer?” Spenser answered her question with a question.
“Well… no. I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why would you need a lawyer?”
“Because having a cop show up to my place of work then grill me about the death of my former trainer makes me nervous,” she said. “Just having you in my face makes it seem like I did something wrong even though I didn’t.”
The corners of Spenser’s mouth curled upward slightly. It wasn’t an unusual reaction to have when there was a cop, as she said, in her face grilling her about a murder. Dina Edelstein was the last name on her list. The first two people Spenser spoke with answered all her questions without hesitation and offered up their prints and DNA quicker than that. She didn’t think either one of them had killed Hamill. Dina, though, had been cagey from the moment she’d sat down.
Twenty-seven years old, Dina was a tall woman—an inch taller than Spenser—and had a lean, athletic frame. Honey blonde hair framed a face that was lean, bordering on gaunt, and she had warm, brown eyes that never seemed to stop moving.
They sat at a table in the corner, far away from the counter and the front door, which afforded them a modicum of privacy. Dina’s eyes flicked to the left then to the right, looking everywhere in the shop but at her. She raised the oversized coffee cup, covering half her face while she took a drink. She eventually put the cup down but immediately picked up a napkin and started tearing small pieces off, completely unable to sit still.
“Dina, what are you so nervous about?” Spenser asked.
“What? I’m fine.”
Spenser sat forward. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I can tell the difference between somebody who’s just nervous about being questioned by the cops and somebody who’s nervous about something else. You are the latter. So, what has you so jumpy right now?”
“Like I said, all these questions about Seth’s death just… I’m not used to being interrogated by the police. That’s all.”
“I’d like to think of this as a casual conversation more than anything. This isn’t an interrogation,” Spenser said. “Trust me, if I were interrogating you, this would feel a lot different.”
“Still…”
“Did you have something to do with his death?”
“Of course not.”
“You had some pretty harsh words for him in your emails.”
Her mouth fell open, and she finally turned her gaze to Spenser. “You read my emails?”
“Seth kept a file of all the nasty correspondence he got. You sent him half a dozen messages that said some pretty tough things.”
She closed her mouth and looked down at the table as she resumed tearing pieces off the napkin. At the rate she was going, that napkin was going to be nothing more than a pile of confetti in about five seconds. Spenser finally couldn’t take it anymore and reached out, putting her hands over the woman’s just to stop her fidgeting.
“Let’s focus here, Dina.”
“What? I don’t know anything.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! I’m sure,” she snapped, her voice tinged with panic.
“And your emails? Some might construe those as threats.”
“I didn’t threaten him.”
Spenser shrugged. “The tone of those emails was definitely threatening.”
Dina sighed and dropped the ragged remains of her napkin as she sat back in her seat. She ran a hand through her hair, then scrubbed her face, taking a couple of beats to herself. When she finally dropped her hands, she looked up at Spenser, her gaze clear and focused for the first time.
“Look, I was upset. I’m still upset,” she said. “Seth lied to me. He misrepresented himself. He preaches—preached—hard work and clean living only to find out he’s full of it. That he’s not living by his word. It was upsetting.”
“I can tell it upset you,” Spenser replied. “But at the end of the day, Seth was just a trainer. Why get so upset about it? I mean, you obviously found a new trainer.”
“I did. I found a trainer who is who he says he is. Somebody who walks the walk and lives the kind of life they preach.”
“That’s good, Dina. But why threaten Seth then? You’d moved on and—”
“Because I was upset! Okay, I was hurt! He lied to me, Sheriff. He lied to everybody.”
Spenser heard the words she was saying, but the heat in her voice and the forlorn expression on her face told her there was more to it than just being lied to by her trainer. A lot more.
“How long were you sleeping with him?” Spenser asked.
Dina’s face turned a deep shade of red, and she kept her gaze focused on the table. She licked her lips and her hands trembled.
“I—I don’t— I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice trembling as hard as her hands.
“Let’s not play this game, Dina. You were sleeping with him. Right?”
“Sheriff—”
“Please, don’t insult my intelligence by lying to me.”
Dina chewed on her bottom lip and dropped her trembling hands into her lap. She looked like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and giving serious thought to getting up and fleeing.
