“Divorce,” said Richard Corey. “As in she wanted one, sooner the better. No reason, no warning, nothing I’d done. I guess all three added up to the same thing: She was feeling trapped and wanted out. Was it hurtful? At first, but then she’d drop it so I basically tuned her out.”

I said, “What changed that?”

Corey shifted his weight. “I need to talk about that, huh?”

Milo and I sat there.

“Okay, what changed is that I thought I’d found someone so when Ursula started in for the zillionth time, I said sure, let’s do it. That really threw her. She got pissed, stomped out. Maybe she figured out I was bluffing when the next day she told me she’d hired Fellinger. I said sounds like a good idea and hired Cohen and the rest, as they say, is marital anti-history.”

“The stress points you mentioned—”

“Petty stuff we could deal with. I get pissed because she hasn’t sent in all her order forms, she gets pissed because I haven’t informed her about accounts receivable. Ridiculous stuff, we’d have a snit, make up, move on. But this was different. I found someone. Someone I thought I might develop something with. So when Ursula started doing her bullshit divorce routine and I told her fine, it was like a … runaway train. Was it stupid? Probably. But Ursula and I remained friends and frankly that was always the good part of our relationship, the friendship. So getting rid of the other stuff was almost a relief. And the business kept rolling. Better than ever, if you have to know, we had our best years since the divorce.”

Milo said, “Speaking of which, where’s your place of business?”

“You’re looking at it,” said Corey. “Both of us worked out of our houses. Cuts costs, keeps us out of each other’s hair.”

I said, “The person you found—”

“Is no longer in the picture,” said Corey. “I realized that soon after.” He laughed. “A Buddhist, how’s that for irony?”

“Someone you met in the course of doing business?”

He looked at me. “Good guess. But please don’t ask me more, she’s a good person, I don’t want to screw up her life. Now, is there anything else you need to know about Ursula? Because I still have to figure out how to tell my daughters their mother’s gone.”

All business, now. Eyes Sahara-dry.

Milo said, “We could tell them, sir.”

No answer. Corey’s face had gone blank.

“Sir?”

“Yeah, I guess so. You actually do that? With kids?”

“When necessary, Mr. Corey.”

“I don’t want them to think I punted …”

Milo said, “Up to you but we can tell them we insisted on notification because it’s an open homicide.”

Corey scratched his beard. “You think? Okay, sure.”