“Hi,” he said loudly, his shame quickly gone. “I didn’t know they let regular people like you two into clubs like this. I thought you had to be special.”
“Are you special, Matt?” Jessie asked, her pleasant tone hiding her distaste for him.
“I run one of the most successful west coast-based mutual funds in the country,” he informed them. “So yeah, I’m kind of a big deal.”
“That’s why we want to talk to you,” Jessie told him. “A guy as important as you could really be a help to us. At least that’s what a source told us.”
“What source?” he wanted to know.
Jessie looked over at Ryan, who indicated that she should continue.
“I can’t get into particulars other than to say it was a counseling professional that Scott and Bridget were seeing,” she said as vaguely as possible. “And that counselor seemed to think you know more than you told Detective Hernandez when you spoke before. Care to fill us in?”
Darcy’s bloodshot eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he grumbled, “Sounds like this ‘counselor’ got some bad intel.”
“And yet you were specifically mentioned,” Jessie pointed out.
Darcy stared at her lazily, then turned his attention to Ryan. After a few seconds of apparent indecision, he wheezed a response.
“I might have something to say, but not in front of her,” he said, pointing at Jessie. “This is guy talk—only for guys.”
“Hold on a sec—,” Ryan started to say, sounding irritated.
“That’s fine,” Jessie cut him off, standing up. “You boys have a nice chat. I’ll just head back down.”
As she turned around and headed for the stairs, she whispered to him through her ear buds.
“However we can get him to talk, let’s do it. I’ll be downstairs. Maybe I’ll check in on his lovely wife Ellie. It sounds like she’s a little tipsy too.”
With that settled, she focused her attention on surviving the walk back down the narrow metal staircase.
*
Ellie was still laughing as Jessie walked over. As she approached, she muted Ryan so that she could concentrate on her own conversation.
“Where’s Bridget?” Jessie asked Kat over the shared phone line.
“She went back to the restroom,” Kat said in her ear. “I don’t think she appreciated how festive her friend was being.”
“I see she’s at least removed the umbrella from her drink,” Jessie noted.
“Yep,” Kat said. “It was making it too hard to take big gulps.”
“Okay. I’m going to try to make this quick. Let me know if Bridget comes out of the restroom again.”
Jessie took a chair next to the loveseat where Ellie was loudly sharing a story with another woman, who didn’t look like she was enjoying it anywhere near as much Ellie enjoyed telling it. When Ellie took a breath, Jessie jumped in.
“I think you have a phone call,” she told the other woman, giving her a “this is your chance to get out of here” look. The woman understood immediately and stood up quickly.
“Sorry. I’ve got to go but it was nice talking with you,” she said to Ellie before mouthing a silent “thank you” to Jessie and darting off.
“Hey, I know you,” Ellie said, gripping the arm of the loveseat for balance. “You’re the famous profiler lady who came to Bridget’s place earlier. Solve the thing yet?”
“I’m sure you’ve been on pins and needles waiting for an update,” Jessie said, careful to keep her tone from betraying her disdain, “but unfortunately we’re still gathering information. Maybe you can help with that.”
“I doubt it,” Ellie said with an overly dramatic hand flourish, almost hitting a drink on the table and sending it flying, “but go for it.”
“Thanks,” Jessie said, glancing anxiously in the direction of the ladies’ room. She wanted to move this along so that they were done before Bridget got back, but if she pressed too much, Ellie might pick up on it, even in her state. “So this was kind of a couples’ retreat, right?”
“Yup,” Ellie confirmed between glugs, running her hand through her short, black hair. “We were all here to make our marriages the best they could be.”
“I think that’s great,” Jessie said, taking note of the insincerity in the woman’s voice. “So did you and Matt meet with any counselors yet like the Newhouses did?”
Ellie scrunched up her nose in confusion.
“I didn’t know they’d done that,” she replied.
“Oh, yes. Apparently they saw someone just yesterday,” Jessie said. “My understanding is that your husband’s name may have come up during their session—any idea why that might be?”
Ellie actually snorted at the question. She was so loud that Jessie heard Kat mutter “jeez” over the open phone line.
“I assume that’s a ‘yes?’” she asked leadingly.
“I can guess,” Ellie said bitterly. “It probably has something to do with the fact that Matt and Bridget used to date. She broke up with him when she met Scott but they ‘stayed friends.’ Of course, that means different things to different people.”
“What did it mean to each of them?” Jessie wondered.
Ellie finished the last of her drink and waved at a nearby server for another, then returned her attention to Jessie.
“To Bridget, it meant they stayed friends,” she said. “To Matt, it meant that even after she married Scott, even after he started dating me and we tied the knot, he mooned over her. He was like a puppy dog tripping over his own paws any time she called for him. I know that after all these years, Scott had gotten pretty tired of it. I bet it came up in their session.”
“And what about you?” Jessie asked. “You don’t seem as pissed off as I would expect from someone whose husband carried a torch for another woman.”
Ellie shrugged.
“I made my peace with it a long time ago,” she said resignedly. “I knew what I was getting into when I married Matt. It’s not like he was great at hiding it. He’s actually a pretty decent husband. He just has this one blind spot. Besides, I found ways to keep myself entertained.”
Ellie’s tone was provocative and Jessie was tempted to pursue more about the exact nature of how she kept herself entertained. But time was short and she had other, more pertinent questions. Again, she glanced at the ladies’ room. The door was closed.
Kat must have noticed and read her mind because she whispered over the line, “She’s been in there a while. I’ll go check on her status.”
Jessie wanted to acknowledge her words but couldn’t without giving herself away so she just pressed on.
“Do you think Bridget got tired of Matt’s mooning too?” she wondered. “Or was she maybe still interested in him?”
“I think she got the best of both worlds,” Ellie said, the resentment clear in her voice and her tightly drawn face. “For her, it was long over with Matt. But that didn’t mean she was above using him to make Scott jealous, or using Matt when she needed something. He’s gotten her opera tickets, backstage at concerts, invites to private parties, all things Scott could have gotten also but was often too busy to be bothered with. I’d say she considered him ‘useful.’”