“It’s okay, Sara,” he said in his quiet, almost fatherly voice. “You’re okay. You’re among friends here, right?”

She nodded, squeezing her eyes shut against gathering tears.

“Between me and Tony here, we’ve heard about every kind of wild story there is,” Vince went on, trying to put her at ease. “So nothing you come up with is going to shock us.”

Sara drew a shallow, shuddering breath. “I think my husband might have killed Marissa.”

Vince’s brows sketched upward ever so slightly. “What makes you say that, Sara?”

“I suspected he was having an affair with her,” she said. She was shaking so hard, she wrapped her arms around herself as if she were freezing.

Mendez stood up, took his sport coat off and draped it around her, giving her shoulders a comforting squeeze.

“When did you first start thinking that?” he asked, sliding back into his seat.

“Last winter when the project for the poster for the Thomas Center started. Then I found out she was a client—that she’d been a client for a while. Do we have to go over all of this now?”

Vince reached over and took one of her hands in his. “I’m sorry, honey. I know it’s hard. This is a tough time for you. You know you’re not alone, right? We’re here for you.”

Sara nodded and glanced at Mendez. “I told him to leave. I told him to get out.”

“You told Steve to get out?” Mendez said. “When did you do that?”

“Last night. He never called in the morning to tell us what had happened. Wendy saw his car in the driveway, but he wasn’t home, and there was blood ... We didn’t know what to think. Wendy thought he’d been killed.”

Mendez wanted to bang his head against the wall, feeling stupid and guilty. “Oh, Sara, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe he didn’t call you. I would have called you if I had known.”

“It’s not your fault my husband is a bastard,” she said. “Just like it’s not my fault his mother was a prostitute.

“Everything is somebody else’s fault where Steve is concerned. He didn’t used to be that way,” she said. “He’s changed so much in the last year and a half, I don’t even know who he is anymore.”

“His behavior has changed?” Vince asked. “How?”

“He used to be happy. He loved us being a family. We were his dream come true. And then he started working more hours and getting more wrapped up in his work for the women’s center, and he just started to change.