“Please, Sheriff, I need this conversation to stay between us,” she said. “My husband can’t find out about… Seth.”
“I’m not going to make you any promises about anything. But I will do everything I can to keep this to myself. I don’t see any reason it would need to come out, but again, I can’t promise you that it won’t.”
A frown touched her lips. “I didn’t kill him, Sheriff Song.”
“How long were you sleeping with him?”
“A little less than a year,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “We started shortly after I started training with him. I love my husband, Sheriff. But I loved Seth, too.”
“Are there problems at home?”
A strange look crossed her face. “Not really. I mean… Carl is a good man. He provides a good life. I love him…”
Her voice trailed off and Spenser gave her a minute to continue, but she remained quiet.
“But?” Spenser prompted.
She sighed. “Carl is just… life is really predictable. It’s good, but predictable. But Seth is—was—exciting. It was new, and he seemed to get me in ways Carl doesn’t. It’s selfish—loving two men like that. It’s like having my cake and eating it, too. But I really had the best of both worlds, and it was amazing. Each of them filled a need in me.”
The pain in her eyes and the anger in her voice made a lot more sense knowing she had such strong feelings for Seth.
“Did you want more from Seth than he was willing to give, Dina?”
She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t anything like that. He had a girlfriend and I’m married. We both understood what we had was all there could be. And I was fine with it. So was he.”
“Your anger tells me you weren’t.”
“I was fine with what we had. What I wasn’t fine with was being lied to.”
Spenser tapped her finger on the table and studied the woman’s face. “So, you’re telling me the only thing you were angry about was being lied to about his steroid use.”
“Yes. That’s what I’m telling you. It just made me realize he wasn’t the person I thought he was. It made me see him completely differently and just shattered the image of who I thought he was. So yeah, I was angry. But I was hurt, too.”
It seemed like a ridiculous explanation to Spenser. But part of her thought the explanation was so outlandish that it might be plausible. Would Dina offer up a reason so ludicrous if it wasn’t true? Throwing out an excuse as absurd as that, if not true, would be an incredibly crafty and sly maneuver. And as she studied the woman, she didn’t strike Spenser as that cunning.
“Okay, Dina, so when did you stop training with Seth?”
“About a month ago.”
“And you haven’t been to his place since?”
She shook her head. “No. I walked out and haven’t seen or spoken with him since.”
“Then why the email barrage? Why did you leave those reviews online?”
“Because people deserve to know what they’re getting when they work with him,” she huffed. “They deserve to know what a liar and a fraud he is before they jump into bed with him.”
As if realizing just how unfortunate her choice of words was, she looked down as her face turned an unnatural shade of red. Dina smoothed down her hair and collected herself then summoned her dignity and raised her gaze to Spenser again.
“Dina, where were you on the fourteenth?” Spenser asked.
“Home. With my husband.”
“All day?”
“Well, no. I ran some errands that day. But I was home in the early afternoon and made dinner for him. After that, we spent the night on the couch watching TV… like we do almost every other night.”
The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. As was the boredom in her eyes when she spoke about her husband. It did give Spenser a thought.
“What does your husband do?”
“He’s a pharmacist,” she replied. “Edelstein’s Emporium is his shop. Well, he inherited it from his father who inherited it from his father. It’s a family tradition.”
Spenser had been to Edelstein’s before. It was like a Rite-Aid or CVS and had been in Sweetwater Falls for more than fifty years, which was why it did better than the big chain stores. People in town loved their local, homegrown, Mom and Pop shops. It was something she loved about the town, too. The fact that Carl Edelstein was a pharmacist pinged in Spenser’s brain and highlighted the thought that had started bouncing around in her mind.
“And you’re certain Carl didn’t know about Seth?” Spenser asked.
She shook her head. “I’m positive. Seth and I were very discreet.”
“Okay. One last thing. Will you consent to giving me your prints and a DNA sample?” Spenser asked.
“My DNA?”
“It’s mainly for exclusionary purposes.”
She hesitated but ultimately consented. The entire time Spenser was taking her prints and cheek swab, though, Dina looked nervous. Spenser could see her mind spinning as she wondered whether she was opening up a can of worms all over herself or not. To her credit, she sat through the process and didn’t lawyer up. Spenser counted it as a point in her favor.
“Great. Thank you, Dina,” she said. “If I have any other questions, I’ll be in touch.”
