interrupted again, her voice going just slightly higher than normal. “Detective Browning, have you ever been married?”
The woman gave a quick nod, her thick chin-length hair bobbing at the gesture.
“Divorced?” Maggie asked, noticing there was no ring but not wanting to assume.
Detective Browning hesitated, then nodded again. She wasn’t conventionally attractive. Her cheeks were round and smattered in freckles, her forehead broad, and her body gave the impression of being ill-suited toward exercise. But Maggie prided herself in recognizing kindness, and this woman had it, even around her impatient bluster.
Maggie met her eyes and hoped to reach a kindred spirit. “I don’t know what kind of divorce you had. Maybe it was the quiet, irreconcilable differences kind. But mine was…” Maggie pursed her lips and searched for the right word. “ Eruptive .”
“Your divorce was eruptive?” Poyner asked.
Maggie flicked her gaze to his. To his silver wedding band. “Yes, it was.”
So was the marriage.
But they didn’t need to know that part.
“So you and Mr. Hansen aren’t on good terms.”
“We’re not on any terms,” Maggie said a little desperately.
“So you haven’t seen him since the divorce?”
Maggie shook her head. “Well, I guess technically I saw him at the grocery store when I was still living in New Jersey, right after the paperwork was finalized, but we didn’t speak.”
Not for Eddie’s lack of trying.
Browning glanced at her notes. “Captain said you’ve been divorced about a year and a half. No contact whatsoever in that time?”
Maggie hesitated, and they both sat up imperceptibly straighter. No dummies, these detectives.
She fiddled with her coffee cup. “The divorce was my idea.”
There was a world of meaning in those words, and she saw immediately that Detective Browning recognized it, either because of her status as a woman or fellow divorcée label.
“He didn’t take it well,” Browning said.
Understatement. Such an understatement.
Maggie shook her head. “No.”
Poyner’s eyes narrowed. “Has he been harassing you?”
“No,” Maggie said quickly. “Not recently, anyway. But for a while there he called a lot. Texted. E-mailed. Facebook messages, the whole deal. I tried to just ignore it, thinking he needed time to come to grips with the fact that we were over…”
“He didn’t stop?”
Maggie’s lips twisted in a half smile. “For a man who couldn’t keep a job for more than a couple months, he was surprisingly persistent.”
Poyner folded his hands on the table and leaned in. “So he’s still contacting you.”
“No. I changed my phone number.”
And my e-mail. And got off Facebook and quit talking to all of our mutual friends who might give him my address…
“Ah,” Browning said, as though she understood perfectly. And perhaps she did. “How long exactly since he last contacted you?”
Maggie took a sip of now cold coffee, thinking back. “I changed my number about eight months ago when I moved to the city. There’s been nothing since then.”
“What about his last known address?”
“He got the house in Jersey when we divorced. I can give you the address, but I have no idea if he still lives there or not.”
Both detectives nodded, and she didn’t think she imagined their look of disappointment. No doubt they were hoping that they’d be able to get to Eddie through her.
Maggie set her cup aside. “Look, I’ve answered all your questions, I’m helping as best I can, but at least tell me why I’m here…what he’s done.”
They exchanged a look before Poyner cleared his throat and spoke. “The picture you’ve identified as your ex-husband is a suspect in a series of burglaries on the Upper West Side. So far there have been eight break-ins, and this sketch is the closest thing to a clue that we have.”
“Eight break-ins,” Maggie said, jaw dropping slowly. “Are you saying that Eddie is Smiley ?”
Browning
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