neither had I expected such chilling indifference, and I wondered if it was exaggerated, a defense mechanism or something else.
Whatever had soured this marriage must've been catastrophic-- but was it enough to pump a bullet through her ex's head? She seemed to want us to believe that she did, but was that the truth or a perverse case of wishful thinking?
Theresa reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of half-andhalf, then opened a cabinet and withdrew a bowl of sugar so old it had metastasized into white granite. She poured two cups and handed them to Bian and me.
While I added half-and-half and made a big mess trying to chip off a spoonful of sugar, Theresa looked away from us and mentioned, "I need a little sherry to settle my stomach."
She stepped out for a moment. When she returned, in her hand was a tall cocktail glass filled to the lip with ice cubes and some blend of sherry that was peculiarly colorless. She said, "I'm sure it won't bother you if I smoke."
A cigarette was already dangling from her lips, spewing pollution into the tiny room.
"Do you mind discussing Cliff?" I asked her, stirring my coffee. "It helps when the investigators know something about the victim."
"Shouldn't you begin by asking where I was around midnight last night?" I took that for a yes.
So I asked her.
"Where I am every night." She laughed. "David Letterman is my alibi. Why don't you quiz me on his top ten?"
I smiled. This was getting weird.
Bian allowed a moment to pass, then said, "I'm not sure how to ask this."
"Just ask." She shrugged and added, "If I don't like your question, you won't get an answer."
"Fair enough. What made your marriage fail? In the wedding picture over the mantel . . . your expressions . . . you seemed to be in love once."
"The official grounds, the cause my lawyer filed, was infidelity." She added, "There was enough of that. Near the end. But that's only the superficial reason."
I don't really like to start a story at the end, so I asked, "How did you two meet?"
"At Fort Meade, in the late sixties. My father was a colonel working in the post headquarters. Cliff was a buck sergeant, an Arabic and Farsi linguist. I was young, eighteen, and I used to hang out at the NCO club. Officers' kids aren't supposed to mingle with enlisted soldiers, but I was too young for the officers and it was . . . I suppose . . . a way of thumbing my nose at my father. It was the sixties, after all. Everybody back then was dropping acid and screwing perfect strangers. I flirted with enlisted soldiers." She emitted a smoker's hack and took a long gulp of "sherry." "We dated. A few months later he asked me to marry him."
"It sounds like you were swept off your feet," Bian commented.
"Yes. I suppose I was. I loved Cliff. He was . . . back then . . . intelligent, kind, ambitious . . . not much to look at, but as you're going to learn, he could be very charming . . ." Also he could pole vault over tall buildings with his third leg, but she didn't mention it. Neither did I.
And so on, for the next twenty minutes, Theresa described what sounded like an ideal beginning, an ideal marriage, an ideal life.
Cliff completed his tour in the Army and happily took his discharge. His next step, due to his Army intelligence experience and language competencies, was to apply for a position in the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, where he was immediately accepted. Theresa worked administrative jobs for about ten years to add extra bucks to the kitty, Cliff and Theresa bought this house, the biological clock began wheezing--bang, bang--two wonderful kids, she quit working, became a Kool-Aid mom, and so on. By the numbers, the American dream in the making.
On the professional side, Cliff was bright, hardworking, diligent, and highly regarded by his bosses; in the early years, promotions and step raises came through like clockwork. Ultimately, however, the role of DIA is support for our warfighters, and during the cold war the action was with Sovietologists and Kremlinologists; the Middle East was a strategic backwater and Arabists ended up with their noses pressed against a glass ceiling. According to Theresa, by the time Cliff awoke to the unhappy reality that he had a big career problem, he was in his