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“Never?”
He shook his head. “And I never let the public know Clay wasn’t mine. He was a good kid. We had a nice relationship. Not father-son obviously. But I wasn’t just his mother’s ex either.”
“Did Clay know who his father was?”
“Not until years later. It’s complicated.”
Myron waited.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,” Ben Staples said.
“They were murdered. I want to find out who killed them.”
“You’re not a cop.”
“No.”
“But I asked some friends,” Staples said. “They told me you’re good at this—that you’re on the side of the righteous.”
“I try,” Myron said. “You were saying something about Clay finding out about his father?”
“Cecelia didn’t want him to know. She said it wasn’t relevant. But when Clay was old enough, he put his DNA into a few of those genealogy databases.”
“And he matched with his father?”
“It wasn’t that simple. I don’t know the details. Clay found a first cousin. He talked to them. He sought out relatives in that cousin’s circle. Process of elimination. Or maybe once Clay got close, Cecelia told him. She didn’t want him knocking on the guy’s door.”
“Did Clay knock on the guy’s door?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to me once Clay found out, he let it go. But I don’t know.”
“Was your divorce with Cecelia amicable?”
He turned to Myron. “Do you think—?”
“No, not at all. This is about Greg. I heard that Greg seemed upset about the divorce. Did you notice that at all?”
He thought about it. “Now that you mention it, yeah. Greg trashed Cecelia a bit. But he wasn’t alone. To the world, she got pregnant with another man and dumped me. That’s what everyone saw. Hell, that’s what happened, when you think about it.”
“Ben?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to ask a lot of this delicately, so I’m just going to dive in, okay?”
He nodded. “Part of the reason I agreed to see you.”
“I’m not following.”
“I figure you are here because you know more than you’re saying,” Ben explained. “So here’s the deal: You want to learn from me—and I want to learn from you. So go ahead. Don’t pull punches.”
Fair enough, Myron thought. Then: “Was your wife acting differently before she asked for the divorce?”
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“She was moody, withdrawn. Depressed, really. I wanted her to see someone. She wouldn’t. I think she was taking pills a friend got for her.”
