“I don’t know. He pulled into the garage when he came back. Lights were on in the house when we returned. They were still on when we went to bed. I didn’t see or hear the garage door open.”

“You didn’t call or check on her the second time?”

“No. It was quiet over here. There was nothing to be alarmed about.” Marnie wrung her hands together. “Julia looked so embarrassed when I checked on her earlier. There was no reason to do that to her again, not last night. If I thought something was wrong, of course I would have done something.” She stopped talking. Tears streamed down her face. “I was planning on seeing how she was doing today. I called several times.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Horvath. I’m going to give you my card, could you call me if you remember anything else. We might like to ask you questions again, at another time, if we need to.”

“Of course,” she said before getting up to leave.

Val watched Marnie walk to the door, the whole movement seeming to go in slow motion.

“Are you okay?” Gavin asked.

“No, I’m not okay,” Val said bluntly. “I just spoke to Julia yesterday. Jesus, I was coming here for dinner tonight. What she planned to make is sitting on the kitchen countertop. I should be having a drink with her instead of standing here answering questions about her…” Val choked. “Oh, my God, she’s dead!”

“We can do this another time,” Gavin said gently.

“No, I want to do it now,” Val said. Gavin looked at her doubtfully. “Really, I can do this. She was my friend. I want to help her in any way that I might be able to.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about her husband? Anything personal. I know some things about him but that’s mostly gossip.”

“She was kind of private about that. But you’re right. There was a lot of office gossip. She did open up to me yesterday. He sounded like a real bastard. She was happy. She said she’d figured it all out and he wasn’t going to win.”

“Figured what out? He wasn’t going to win in what way?”

“I don’t know. She was running out of work, to see her lawyer.”

“I’m going to bring her husband in. With the neighbor’s statement and what you told us about him, we have enough to do that. I also need to track down this lawyer. Why don’t you go home and get some rest. I’ll call you if I think of anything else I need.”

“No, I want to stay. I want to know what happened to her.”