I was pretty much prepared not to like Marty Jost on general principles, seeing as how he was a marketing puke. Despite the fact that his conduct could be described as Presidential, I also was uneasy with his sleeping around on his wife. I was willing to allow as how they might have had some sort of an arrangement, but that kind of thing was outside my experience and pretty much beyond my understanding.
Marty let his wife enter the office before he did, sharpening the contrast between them. While she was tall and slender, wearing her black hair pulled back into tight bun, her skin tone was closer to cadaverous than it was the rich gold of his. She wore a black business suit over a white blouse and a strand of pearls that had mates in her earrings. She looked every inch a lawyer, right down to the narrowed slits of her brown eyes.
The only unlawyerly thing about her, in fact, was the redness in her eyes. I wasn't sure if tears cried because you'd learned your husband's lover had been killed would make eyes red like that. That she wasn't offering high-fives over the situation spoke well of her.
Marty was pretty much the anti-lawyer; but that's kind of the definition of marketing folks anyway. He had dressed in lime-green slacks and golf shirt - and should have been shot on sight for wearing those clothes anywhere besides a golf course. His left hand didn't seem as dark as his right. Using my deductive reasoning skills I assumed he spent a lot of time playing golf, with a glove on that hand. I took the golf resort logo on his shirt as a confirmation of my surmise. Marty smiled once his wife had swept past him, with his blue eyes bright and his medium-length blond hair perfectly in place.
Helen waited at the edge of the couch, then nodded to Marty to sit before she began speaking. "I'll be representing my husband here, and I'll terminate this interview whenever I see fit." Her voice came tight with upset. It was easy to assume she was outraged that her husband would be considered a suspect.
Bloodstone, who had risen as she entered, smiled and waved her to a seat on the couch. "Your willingness to participate is appreciated. Perhaps you would like some tea? Ti Kuan Yin for Mrs. Jost, Connor."
That surprised me, as Bloodstone had offered no one else refreshment. Ti Kuan Yin was supposed to be good for strengthening the spirit and calming folks, so I could see why he wanted her to have some. I rose and started making it as Agent Jensen went through the formalities. The occasional glance I shot toward the couch showed Marty leaning forward, elbows on knees, nodding positively. Helen sat back, her legs crossed, her left arm across her belly, her right hand covering her mouth.
I brought Mrs. Jost her tea and she accepted the mug with a silent nod.
Bloodstone let her take a sip, then began speaking in a low voice. "We have some questions, and we know this is difficult for you. As Agent Jensen and Detective Kent will tell you, a murder investigation often centers on the people around the victim. Mr. Jost, it has been suggested that you and Syndi Rooker had an ongoing and intimate relationship."
Marty hesitated for a moment, then hung his head, nodding. "When Syndi first approached me, Helen and I were having some difficulties in our marriage. A variety of things were weighing us down, and my affair with Syndi could have shattered what we had. We worked through it."
"So, the affair was over? When did it end?"
"My relationship with Syndi ended over a year ago." He glanced at his wife with no hint of shame on his face for telling such a bald lie. When the subject of those calls came up, he'd not be a happy camper.
Kent put an edge on his voice. "So, were you jealous that she and Exner were getting back together?"
The marketing man laughed. "Jealous of Ray? Not if he was on his best day and I was on my worst. Look, guys like Ray, they might be geniuses. He might, in Voyager, have created something that could fundamentally change the world as we know it; revolutionize everything, but what difference does that make? Without Lenin, where was Marx? Without St. Peter, where would Jesus have been? The innovators always hold someone like me in contempt, but I'm the guy who makes sure the world realizes it needs what they have to offer. Without me creating desire, informing people that they have a need, the inventors are nowhere.
"As for his relationship with Syndi, past, present or future, it didn't matter to me. She and I were history. I'd accepted that, especially because of what we were able to do with Voyager. It was taking Thothsoft to the top. The money from the stock options and stock we own would buy a lot of happiness."
Jost's reply kicked the money motive in the teeth, and did collateral damage to the idea that he'd killed her because of Exner or his wife had killed her over the affair. Theresa Jensen tried to salvage something from the interview by asking if Syndi had colored her hair. Jost said he didn't think so. In response to Kent's alibi question, Jost reported that he and his wife had enjoyed dinner at the Chart House, had seen a late showing of The Patriot, then had gone home and gone to bed. Helen had little more than a passing knowledge of tarot cards. Marty said he'd done readings in college for friends, as a gag, but said he used to just wing it and couldn't remember much anyway.
Jensen frowned. "Something I want to get clear: Mrs. Jost, you provided Thothsoft with an initial round of funding, presumably at Mr. Jost's urging, while he was having an affair with Syndi Rooker."
Helen Jost nodded. "I have a trust fund that allows me to finance businesses."
"Then you learned of the affair, and you still provided a second round of financing? It was suggested you did that to pay Syndi off so she'd leave your husband alone."
Marty and his wife both laughed, he more easily than she. Helen shook her head. "Whoever said that isn't privy to the financing agreement. It is quite favorable to us, not at all how it would be if Syndi were being paid off. Providing the financing was a sound business decision."
Helen sipped a bit more tea, then set the mug down on the coffee table. "If there are no more questions, this is a horrid day."
Kent was about to dismiss them, but Bloodstone held a hand up. "I appreciate your emotional turmoil, Mrs. Jost. I know how you feel."
"I don't think, Mr. Bloodstone, you have any idea how I feel."
My boss' amethyst eyes tightened over steepled fingers. "I made a misstatement. My apologies. You are correct. Unlike you, I've never had a lover butchered."
Were the tea still in her hand, the jolt that shook Helen Jost would have sprayed it everywhere. Her right hand rose to cover her mouth, then the left joined it and her face sank behind a flesh and bone curtain. Marty leaned toward her and slung his left arm over her hunched shoulders. I don't know what he murmured to her, but she gave no sign that she had heard him past the silent sobs wracking her.
Bloodstone's voice remained low and quiet, yet was not difficult to hear. "A year ago, in the paper, when you were made a partner in Cooper, James and Feldsen; it was noted you were one of Theodore Maltby's grandchildren. Detective Kent reminded me of your family ties moments ago. Your grandfather's conservative leanings are not unknown - rare is the man who considered Barry Goldwater a liberal. He believed in family and provided for you all, very well. And the trusts he left for you are well protected, as the news stories about the litigation in your cousin's divorce pointed out several years ago.
"My hope is that your marriage to Mr. Jost here was not purely a mercenary union. Discovering that you loved the woman he'd had an affair with, well, it might have come as a shock - but greater would have been your family's shock at discovering you were a lesbian. I suspect that would have revoked your trust. You invested trust money in Thothsoft because if the company paid off, your wealth would be independent of your grandfather's conservative strictures on it. You would be free to live your life as you wished, with Syndi Rooker as your partner."
Helen sniffed and took a tissue from the box I carried from my desk. "How could you possibly think...?"
Bloodstone's voice sharpened. "Helen, you are not a stupid woman, so playing stupid will not do. You cannot convince us that your tears are for a friend, a woman who had seduced your husband and used her relationship with him to con you out of money. Your husband's says he ended the affair with Syndi a year ago. Cell phone records indicated calls to your home in a similar pattern to when the affair was ongoing. Surmises about the nature of the second round of funding and the purpose of your investing so much in Thothsoft have combined with that call data and knowledge of Ms. Rooker's sexual appetites, leading to my conclusion. I would have suspected a menage a trois save that her death clearly affects you more than it has your husband. Rumors and public knowledge about your family's financial affairs made drawing the complete picture rather inescapable."
Helen looked at him for a moment, then closed her hands over her face again.
Kent shook his head. "Wait a minute. If she was having an affair with Rooker, then Jost here has a motive, since she's got the money."
Marty frowned. "Wrong. Neither of us wanted her dead. The thing about the trust is right. If she comes out as a lesbian, her trust fund evaporates. If Helen and I divorced, because of the nature of the trust and a prenup, I'd get nothing from her family. The only thing I'd walk away with is my share of assets acquired during our marriage, which includes the options and stock we got during the second round of funding. If anyone was getting paid off, it was me - but that's not how it was."
The detective raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, tell me how it was."
Marty started to speak, but Helen brought her head up and wiped away her tears. "It was like this, Detective. My family was very conservative and I spent years denying what I knew to be true inside me. I wanted to be straight. I hid my attractions. Marty and I met and I loved him, I really did. I didn't tell him about what I felt inside because I wanted to be his wife and for everything to be all right.
"That trouble he said we were having, well, I'd had an affair with a woman. The idea that your wife wants women is a gutshot to a lot of guys. They think they aren't much of a man. So he had an affair with Syndi, to get back at me, to prove he was a man, whatever. But he also said he still loved me, and I loved him. We worked things out and realized I had to be true to me. We knew my family would cut me off, so we figured out how to make sure I didn't need them anymore."
She sniffed, but as she spoke strength flooded her words. "Marty, he kept me sane during all of this. He's been very accepting and has helped me. The money we'll make when Thothsoft is sold to Microsoft is a fraction of what I owe him for being understanding. We're still friends, very close friends." She reached out and grabbed his left hand, holding it very tightly.
Bloodstone glanced sidelong at Kent. "They have no reason to want her dead, and every reason to want her alive."
Kent snarled. "No one does. We have a body and no reason at all for anyone to want her dead."
A new voice that I recognized all too easily, boomed from the doorway. "There's a damned good reason to want her dead," announced Maricopa County Sheriff Douglas Hastings. "I know what it is and, better than that, I've got the killer being booked downtown, even as you dumbasses sit there gawking at me."