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Smart cookie, Kara thought.
“Have you kept up with Cal since he moved to the San Juan Islands?”
“Sort of,” said Lisa. “On social media. I mean, that’s really the best way to keep up with friends who move away.”
“And Marcy and Cal dated?”
“Sort of. Why do you need to know this?”
“I can’t say, Ms. Fletcher. It’s an active investigation. If you would prefer, I can come down there and interview you in person.”
“No, I mean, it’s fine. I would just like to know what’s going on.”
“I understand that,” Kara said, but she still didn’t tell Fletcher what she was investigating.
“Well, they went out a few times. I never thought they were compatible, but Marcy really fell for him hard. Cal was happy-go-lucky, very sweet, everyone liked him—he’s the one guy who would come help you move if he said he would come. But at the time not ready for a serious commitment or anything. I mean, he was like twenty-one, twenty-two? Most twenty-one-year-old guys aren’t thinking love and marriage. Marcy’s five or six years older than him.”
“And how did people like Marcy?”
“I got along with her.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I don’t know what you’re looking for, Detective Quinn.”
Kara thought for a moment, then asked, “Were Cal and Marcy ever engaged?”
“Like, to get married? No. They really didn’t date much. It was more like a...well, you know that expression, friends with benefits?”
Boy, do I ever, she thought. “Yep.”
“I always thought Marcy kind of pushed Cal that way, and said she was fine with it, but she constantly talked about him, and I knew she was falling for him and it was not mutual. And then Cal put in his papers. He’d given five years and wanted to go to college. He went into the Coast Guard right out of high school. I don’t know what happened with college, but he posted on social media that he’d found a dream job in the San Juan Islands and loved that he could work on boats all day long. I congratulated him, we chatted for a while, then nothing—I mean, not nothing, but he doesn’t really post much on social media, and when he does, it’s mostly pictures of his cute little girl.”
“And Marcy?”
“When she left, I didn’t keep in touch with her. I mean, she tried—but I was busy traveling for the Guard, and her friendship could be...exhausting. There were some—Well, it’s not important.”
“It might be.”
“Why?”
Kara felt she’d get more information out of Lisa if she gave her a piece in return.
“Marcy moved to Friday Harbor and is now a deputy with the sheriff’s department.”
She paused. “Oh!And that’s where Cal lives.”
“I’m following through on a complaint—” sort of the truth “—that she abused her position of authority. I need to do a thorough investigation, which means talking to people who knew Marcy when she and Cal were dating.”
“First, they dated for a few months, if that, and it was casual. So ‘dating’ is kind of not what it was.”
“Okay. What were you going to say after you said Marcy’s friendship was exhausting?”
“Look, this is going to sound weird.”
“I can do weird.”
“We were roommates for a year. I would have left earlier if I could have, but we had a lease. At first everything was fine, Marcy pretty much kept to herself, worked out at the gym, did her work. But there were a few times I thought she was copying me. Like—okay, this sounds stupid.”
