flinched. “Gotta love when the media turns a crime into entertainment.”
Maggie hardly heard the detective. Her mind was racing. Between work and writing, she hardly paid attention to the news these days, but there was a TV at the diner that was set to the local news more often than not. It was impossible to miss mention of the celebrity criminal known as Smiley, apparently so dubbed because of cheeky notes left at the scene of the crime.
The details on the guy were sparse, probably because the cops wanted them to be, but even still, that couldn’t be Eddie. Not her Eddie.
Could it?
Doubt gnawed at the back of her mind. The man was lazy as crap, but he was also smart, in a wily sort of way. And she could totally imagine him getting an absolute kick out of earning a name like Smiley while evading the police.
“Ms. Walker, I understand that you haven’t heard from your husband in a while, but if there’s anything you can tell us about him—the way he operates, the way he thinks, you’d be helping us out.”
Her fingers picked up the police sketch again and she studied it. “You really think my ex-husband is breaking into people’s homes and stealing…what, exactly?”
They shrugged. “His MO’s not consistent. Sometimes he takes a computer, sometimes it’s jewelry, other times it’s nothing more than a crystal decanter. Best as we can tell, he seems to be in it for the thrill more than for the money.”
Maggie didn’t take her eyes off the picture. “Oh, trust me, if Eddie really is Smiley, he’s in it for the money. At least partially.”
“What does Mr. Hansen do for a living?”
Maggie snorted. “Drink beer? Eddie was unemployed more often than not, but to hear him tell it, that was never his fault.”
Eddie had always gotten along well with her brother. Eddie and Cory could rant for hours about how The Man was working against them.
“We pulled up his record,” Browning said. “A half dozen unpaid parking tickets, numerous traffic citations, and an altercation at an O’Malley’s pub a few years back, although all charges were dropped?”
There was a question there.
“He’d had too much to drink,” Maggie said quietly, remembering that night all too well. “Got into it with one of his friends.”
Eddie’s “friend” had been Jonah Morton, one of the few decent guys that Eddie hung out with and the only one of Eddie’s crew that Maggie had been able to tolerate. Over beers, she and Jonah, who’d just remodeled his house, had gotten into a discussion about the best method of removing wallpaper—quite possibly the least sexy topic in the history of conversation—and Eddie had lost it. He’d accused Jonah of making a move on his woman about five seconds before launching himself across the pub table.
Jonah hadn’t bothered to fight back, but the rest of Eddie’s crew had thrown themselves into the mix. The night ended with four of them in handcuffs.
Luckily, Maggie had had plenty of experience with the whole bail process thanks to an alcoholic father and a delinquent brother. By midnight the same night she’d been driving Eddie home, and he spent the entire next day sleeping it off.
He never acknowledged the incident. Not to apologize. Not to thank her. Nothing.
Maggie told the detectives none of this. She was happy to fill them in on Eddie’s history, but not her own.
“Ms. Walker, it would be extremely helpful if you could put together a list of any way we might be able to get in contact with Mr. Hansen. Family members, mutual friends, favorite hangouts…”
Maggie shrugged. “I can try, but it’s been awhile. I’d like to think Eddie’s moved on from his life with me.”
“All the same, Mr. Hansen is the closest thing we have to a suspect, and you’re the closest thing we have to him . The captain wouldn’t have asked you to come down here if he didn’t think you had something useful to share.”
Maggie’s eyes flicked to the mirrored window behind the
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