She waited as our chef’s salads were served, then said, “She had a close friend from law school. I can’t remember his name, but I talked to him, asked him about her habits, activities. He said he was suspicious Jill was having an affair.”
“What made him suspect that?”, “Because during their third year of law school she drove to Richmond almost every week, supposedly because she was job hunting, liked Richmond a lot, and wanted to find an opening in a firm there. He told me she often needed to borrow his notes because her out-of-town excursions caused her to miss classes. He thought it was strange, especially since she ended up going with a firm here in Williamsburg right after graduation. He went on and on about it because he was afraid her trips might be related to her murder, if she were seeing a married man in Richmond, for example, and perhaps threatened to expose their affair to his wife. Maybe she was having an affair with someone prominent, a successful lawyer or judge, who couldn’t afford the scandal, so he silenced Jill forever. Or got someone else to, and it just so happened Elizabeth had the misfortune of being around at the time.”
“What do you think?”
“The lead went nowhere, like ninety percent of the tips I get.”
“Was Jill romantically involved with the student who told you this?”
“I think he would have liked for her to have been,” she said. “But no, they weren’t involved. I got the impression this was, in part, the reason for his suspicions. He was pretty sure of himself and figured the only reason Jill never succumbed to his charms was because she had somebody else nobody knew about. A secret lover.”
“Was he ever a suspect, this student?”
I asked.
“Not at all. He was out of town when the murders occurred, and that was verified beyond a doubt.”
“Did you talk to any of the other lawyers in the firm where Jill worked?”
“I didn’t get very far with that,” Abby answered. “You know how lawyers are. In any event, she’d been with they firm only a few months before she was murdered. I don’t think her colleagues knew her very well.”
“Doesn’t sound as if Jill was an extrovert,” I remarked.
“She was described as charismatic, witty, but self-contained.”
“And Elizabeth?” I asked.
“More outgoing, I think,” she said. “Which I suppose she had to have been to be good in sales.”
The glow of gaslight lamps pushed the darkness back from cobblestone sidewalks as we walked to the Merchant’s Square parking lot. A heavy layer of clouds obscured the moon, the damp, cold air penetrating.
“I wonder what these couples would be doing now, if they’d still be with each other, what difference they, might have made,” Abby said, chin tucked into her collar, hands in her pockets.
“What do you think Henna would be doing?”
I gently asked about her sister.
“She’d probably still be in Richmond. I guess both of us would be.”
“Are you sorry you moved?”
“Some days I’m sorry about everything. Ever since Henna died, it’s as if I’ve had no options, no free will. It’s as if I’ve been propelled along by things out of my control.”
“I don’t see it that way. You chose to take the job at the Post, move to D.C. And now you’ve chosen to write a book.”
“Just as Pat Harvey chose to hold that press conference and do all the other things she’s done that have burned her so badly,” she said.
“Yes, she has made choices, too.”
“When you’re going through something like this, you don’t know what you’re doing, even if you think you do,” she went on. “And no one can really understand what it’s like unless they’ve suffered the same thing. You feel isolated. You go places and people avoid you, are afraid to meet your eyes and make conversation because they don’t know what to say. So they whisper to each other. ‘See her over there? Her sister was the one murdered by the strangler.’ Or ‘That’s Pat Harvey. Her daughter was the one.’ You feel as if you’re living inside a cave. You’re afraid to be alone, afraid to be with others, afraid to be awake, and afraid to go to sleep because of how awful it feels when morning comes. You run like hell and wear yourself out. As I look back, I can see that everything I’ve done since Henna died was half crazy.”