She licked her lips. “It was odd, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with Bennett’s death. Fifteen years apart. Why would it have anything to do with Ben’s death?”

“But why not?” Oliver said. “The similarities were right in front of your face. And if I may be blunt, Primo was one of your former lovers.”

Her laugh was derisive. “When my husband was murdered, that psychotic episode of my life had been long over.”

Decker said, “Let’s go back a little bit. How did that psychotic episode happen in the first place?”

Her eyes moistened. She put down her coffee cup and kneaded her hands. “Do you know what it’s like to be married to Jesus?” When there was no response, she continued. “Bennett was a saint and everyone told me so…how lucky and fortunate I was to have bagged him. My parents preferred him to me. So much so, they gave him my money.”

“Your trust fund?” Decker said. When Melinda gave him a quizzical look, he said, “We talked to your mother.”

“She hates me.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “The woman is so incredibly narcissistic that she was jealous of any attention not focused on her.”

Marge said, “Must have been hard having to live up to your husband’s image and dealing with a hurtful mother. Then as a topper, Mom gave away your trust fund to your husband.”

“Oh, you got that right, sister!” She got up and started to pace. “Can you imagine the betrayal? Trusting a stranger over her own daughter? I wanted to kill her!”

“What about your husband?” Oliver asked.

“What?” Face flushed with anger, she turned to him. “My husband? What about him? I’m talking about my mother!”

Oliver pulled back the rhetoric. “I was just wondering if you were as angry at your husband as you were at your mother.”

She stopped walking and let out an exasperated sigh. “Ben tried to be fair. He spent the money on things that he thought the whole family would enjoy. I wanted the Mercedes as much as he did. I don’t know. Maybe I was a little pissed at Ben for setting up the arrangement with Mom.”

“Like they were colluding against you?”

“What choice did Ben have? Either it was that or nothing. My mom was ready to take the money back and put it in trust for the kids. Ben was trying to act the peacemaker. But it was really hurtful.”

Marge said, “Is that when you started having affairs?”

“Maybe…I don’t know.” She shook her head and sat back down, looking at the ceiling as she spoke. “Ben was never around. Always doing something for someone else. For the kids, for the school, for my parents, for the community. I was always last.”

“Did you ever tell him how you felt?” Decker asked her.

“Tell Jesus what to do?” She pointed to her chest. “Moi?” She rubbed her eyes and looked away. “I got pregnant while we were engaged. The kid wasn’t his. I got an abortion and he married me anyway. Saint Ben. My first mistake. I shouldn’t have gone through with it. My mother loved Ben. I thought she might like me better because I chose someone she liked.”

Silence blanketed the room.

“Did you like Ben?” Marge asked softly.

“Sure I liked him. I loved him.” She slouched back into the oversized sailcloth chair. Her voice dropped to a hush. “I don’t think he liked me all that much. I mean, what kind of man marries a woman who fucks around on him?”

No one answered.

“You want my opinion? He filled his life with all these obligations to avoid me. To avoid sex. I don’t think he liked sex. At least not with me.”

“Maybe he was gay,” Oliver said. “Why else would he avoid sex with someone as gorgeous as you?”

That got a genuine smile. Every so often Oliver would do something like that and Marge remembered why she worked with him.

Melinda said, “I thought about that. I doubt if he had someone on the side-man or woman. His work and his extracurricular activities took up all his time.”

“Could he have been lying about some of his activities?” Marge asked her.

“He was always available for my phone calls. And he always left me his schedule-just in case. When I phoned him, he took my calls right away. Maybe he was wrestling with his sexual demons. Maybe that’s why he scheduled himself so tightly…so he wouldn’t have time to fool around.”

Marge said, “And in the meantime, you were home alone with two little boys making demands and no help. I’m a mother. I know it’s not easy.”

“Especially because I was on a very tight allowance…because of my ‘problem.’” She made quotation marks around the word with her fingers. “I had to beg for every dollar just like a kid. It was demeaning!”

“Who controlled the purse strings?” Decker asked. “Mom or Ben?”

“Both. Ben did the weekly grocery shopping, he bought clothes and supplies for the boys, he paid the bills, he paid all the expenses.” She gave a wry smile. “I was allowed to shop for my own clothing, but Ben had to account for every dollar spent or else Mom would take away my trust fund. That didn’t give me lot of latitude for my recreation.”

“By recreation do you mean gambling?” Oliver asked.

She picked up her coffee and took a gulp. It was lukewarm by now. “Everyone was so afraid that I couldn’t control my gambling that I started gambling just to prove them wrong. That’s when I got into deep debt.”

“How’d you pay it off?”

Melinda turned to Decker and raised an eyebrow. “I was creative. A couple of times I managed to forge Ben’s signature and withdrew my own money.”

“Did Ben find out?”

“If he did, he didn’t tell me about it. Maybe he was secretly glad. All this responsibility of taking care of me…I think it was a burden. And every so often, I’d win big at the tables and refill the coffers.”

Decker jumped into the touchy subject. “So when did you meet the Doodoo Sluts?”

The name caused her head to jerk back. “That part of my life was completely over before Ben was murdered. At least a year before.”

“I believe you,” Decker said, “but I need you to answer the question.”

“I met Primo first…at one of the poker casinos. I was about to bust and he bought me some chips. That night I won and Primo and I celebrated.” Again, she looked up at the ceiling. “Ben had taken the boys on a camping trip. No one was home. It wasn’t my first time being bad, but I hardly knew this guy.”

The room was silent.

Melinda said, “He drank, Primo did. He was loose with a buck. I liked that.” A shrug. “That’s it.”

“And how did you move on from Primo to the others?”

Her eyes became steely. “I don’t see the relevance between my psycho past and my husband’s murder.”

Decker said, “Let me tell you why we think it is relevant. We know for a fact that there’s a common link between someone in your past and a prime suspect in Primo’s death.”

Melinda seemed confused. “But they have Primo’s murderers behind bars. Punk kids. Certainly I don’t know them. The paper said it was a carjacking.”

“It was way more than a carjacking, and we’re just beginning to put all the pieces together. But there’s a key player, and I think we both know who that key player is.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“Figure it out,” Decker said. “We believe your husband’s death can be traced back to someone in the Doodoo Sluts. Primo’s dead. That makes three members left. Go down the list.”

She remained silent.

“Melinda,” Marge said, soothingly. “You’ve held in this terrible secret for so long. Get it off your chest. Unburden yourself. Tell us your side of what happened to your husband-”

“But I don’t know what happened!” She cried out. “I don’t know what happened! If I thought it had something to do with the Doodoo Sluts, don’t you think I would have said something a long time ago?”

“Maybe you were too scared to talk,” Marge said. “But now it’s all going to come out. This is your one chance to tell us everything you know.”