were there, in her apartment. You had a sexual relationship with her, and had one for months.”
“No, no! It was just the one time. I had too much to drink. I’m not even sure what—”
“Did you have too much to drink on May second?” Eve flipped open her file, read dates off the calendar. “Too much to drink on April twenty-eighth, on April twenty-first?” She looked up at Gwen’s shocked face. “I can go on, all the way back to last fall. She kept a calendar.”
“Gwen.” Voice soft, eyes all sympathy, Peabody leaned in. “We’re not going to be able to help you if you keep lying. We’re not judging you for having an affair. Planning a wedding, a marriage, is stressful. You needed an outlet, a friend. But we can’t help you if you don’t tell us the truth.”
Gwen turned to Peabody like salvation. “You don’t understand, you just don’t understand. You’ll ruin my life. I didn’t kill Ariel. What does the rest matter to anyone but me? It’s my private business.”
“Ariel’s dead, Gwen. It all matters. We need to know what happened,” Peabody continued, gentle as a patient mother. “For Ariel.”
“What does it matter to her? She’s dead. It’s my life now. And you’ll destroy it by saying these things. If Merit finds out, if my parents find out, I’ll lose everything. I didn’t kill her, so that should be enough.”
“It’s not,” Eve said flatly. “You gave a false report, you were in the victim’s apartment on the night of her murder. You returned to the scene of the crime, then fled it. Cough up the truth now, or we charge you.”
“You can’t charge me with her murder. I was in my apartment. You know that.”
Letting her disgust show, Eve leaned back. “Here’s what I know. I know the chances of you stalking out of her place after an argument and someone completely unconnected going in and beating her skull in with a hammer about an hour later are zip.”
“But that’s what happened!”
“If it is, you shouldn’t have any problem telling the fucking truth, starting now. Last chance, Gwen, or we charge you and let the lawyers hash it out.”
“You have to respect my privacy.” When she crossed her hands over her heart, her engagement ring shot light. “You have to keep what I tell you private. You have to promise me.”
“I don’t have to promise you squat.”
Both hands flew up—dramatically—to cup her own face. “How can you be so cruel!”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because I just spoke with the widowed mother of the woman currently on a slab in the morgue. I’m done with you. Gwendolyn Huffman, you’re under arrest for—”
“Wait, wait, wait!” Gwen covered her face with her hands. “All right. I was there, yes. I lied because I was afraid, and I was shocked, and I didn’t know what else to do. But she was alive when I left. You know that.”
“You’d been seeing each other romantically, sexually, for several months.”
“It didn’t start out that way. It was what I told you. I admired her work, and we became friends. She—she was so open, and free, so different from anyone I knew. She seduced me. I don’t have much experience, and I’d never been with a woman. I got caught up, I admit it. I convinced myself it wasn’t hurting anyone. It was just a fling, just a kind of interlude before I got married.
“She wanted more. I came to see that. She wanted more than I could give her, than I wanted to give her. I love Merit. I want to spend my life with Merit, and she knew that, but …”
“She threatened to tell him.”
“I don’t know what happened. We had wine. I arranged the flowers I’d brought her, then we … we were together. After, we were just talking, having more wine and talking. Merit texted me. I shouldn’t have answered—I realize it hurt her feelings, made her angry, but I answered. She said I had to call off the wedding. We argued, and she became angrier, furious. I’d never seen her like that. She said she was tired of being some embarrassing secret, and if I didn’t tell Merit, she would.”
She paused to drink more water, then bowed her head. “We had a terrible fight about it. I said awful things to her, and she said awful things to me. She threw on some clothes, said she was going to work, and I’d better think about how I wanted this