The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,99
when I knew there was another woman.”
An officer came in to tell Pollack that the search warrant had arrived, and Pollack excused himself and went outside.
“How about Tuesday night? Where was he then?” Gil asked. He wondered if Strunk was somehow connected to Scanner Lady’s murder as well.
Mrs. Strunk looked down at her hands. “Well, after he was so distant on Monday, I decided we needed to see my therapist.”
“What time did you go there?” Gil asked, as Pollack came back and sat down quietly.
She got more embarrassed. “Ken won’t go see Dr. Shepard, so I invited her over for dinner to kind of ease us into the discussion. It didn’t go very well. Dr. Shepard was here when Ken came home from work, about five thirty P.M. We had dinner about an hour later. Ken felt very defensive. Dr. Shepard left about nine P.M.”
“And then?”
“We got into a disagreement.”
“You mean a fight? When did you finally go to bed?”
She shook her head. “I had to …” She paused. “When I get agitated, I sometimes can’t breathe very well, so we went to the hospital. We didn’t leave there until after three A.M.”
“You have panic attacks?”
Mrs. Strunk nodded. “I have to be careful. If someone even raises their voice to me, it can start up.”
The time frame meant that Strunk couldn’t have killed Lucy’s Scanner Lady.
Gil got up and found some coffee mugs made of glass. They seemed impractical: why have a coffee mug that won’t hold the heat? Gil pretended to busy himself pouring the coffee, but he was really trying to figure out how Manny Cordova was involved. Had he and Strunk worked together to kill Melissa? Maybe Manny knew that Strunk had killed Melissa and was blackmailing him? The two of them could have met when Manny went to the school to arrest Sandra Paine. Maybe Manny was blackmailing Strunk about his relationship with Sandra?
Pollack must have been thinking along the same lines. “Mrs. Strunk, is it possible that your husband was being blackmailed?”
“I don’t see how. He doesn’t really have any money. Everything is in my name, the house, the cars, our portfolio. It was to make sure his ex-wife never got it. The bank account is mine; we don’t have a joint one.”
“What if he needed cash?” Pollack asked.
“Well, he used to have a credit card, but I took that away from him months ago. Ken had to declare bankruptcy after his divorce. When we first got married, he had real problems saving his money. We have this system in place to help him control his spending habits.”
“What if he needed to get a large amount of cash?” Gil asked. Then he realized that to the Strunks, a large amount of cash would be in the hundreds of thousands, and added, “Or even a little bit of money. Say, a thousand dollars at a time?”
She thought about this and shook her head. “I really don’t see how. He doesn’t have access to his own salary. He’s on a budget.”
“Do you mean an allowance?” Pollack asked.
She looked down and smoothed the tablecloth. “I guess that’s more accurate. He has to explain to me what the money is for before I give him any cash. I know how this sounds, Officers, but Ken wanted to get his spending back on track. He was determined to do it.”
“Does he own anything of value?” Gil asked. Maybe Strunk had sold something to pay off a blackmailer.
“Everything we own is mine. He sold off all his things when he went bankrupt. We talked about him buying some pieces of art as an investment, but that was a few years down the line, when he had proved himself.”
Gil sipped his coffee. Manny Cordova couldn’t have been blackmailing Ken Strunk since Strunk had no access to money. But how were Strunk and Manny connected to Melissa’s murder?
Gil watched Mrs. Strunk stare at her coffee, wondering if she knew that every forced therapy session and every talk about an allowance backed her husband, step by step, into a corner. All of Ken Strunk’s life was under her complete control. He was inadequate at home; Sandra Paine was his way to regain some power. A twelve-year-old has no expectations, only devotion. Strunk might have been happy to see Melissa killed if it meant that he could keep Sandra.
Gil watched Manny Cordova through the two-way glass. Cordova was surrounded by people—his lawyer, a district attorney, Pollack, and a state police officer Gil didn’t recognize. He