I nodded in sympathy. At least I wasn’t the only one who’d been reprimanded by the surly detective.

Look, I have kind of a weird question,” I said.

Olga lifted her eyes. “About Sally? Ask away, I love talking about my job.”

My eyes widened in horror. “No,” I said quickly. “It’s about your brother.”

Olga waited, the container of blush steady in her hand.

“Did Olaf have any, like, enemies?”

She stowed the blush and pulled out a small container of dark powder. She dipped her pinky finger into the powder and blew off the excess before dusting it in the creases of Sally’s face. Under her nose,  a little on her chin, and Sally’s transformation continued. I couldn’t help it; I watched in complete and utter fascination.

“Can’t say that he did, no.”

“So no one that he didn’t get along with?” I pressed. “Or someone that he might’ve not gotten along with.”

She squinted at Sally and leaned over her, studying her intently. “My brother got along with everyone” she said firmly. “It was probably his biggest flaw.”

“How so?”

“The man couldn’t say no,” Olga explained. Lip liner was next. She brought her face within inches of Sally’s, her fingers steady as she traced the pencil along the woman’s closed mouth. “To anyone,” she continued. “Someone asked for help, he said yes. Someone asked for ten dollars, he said yes. Someone asked for a ride down to Rochester, he said yes.” She shook her head. “He just didn’t have it in him to say no.”

That sounded more like the man I’d met at dinner.

“Everyone liked my brother,” Olga said. She straightened and looked at Sally, tilting her head sideways as she studied her work. “And it was like that even when were kids. He always had lots of friends.” She smiled and tossed the lip liner back in the bag. “I used to get mad at him for that. We made a list of our friends one day. I had maybe seven? Olaf listed nearly a hundred kids.” She laughed. “I punched him in the ear.”

Her affection for her brother seemed genuine, not forced in any way. I pictured them as young kids, with Olaf looking out for his awkward younger sister.

“So then it’s fair to say that really the only person he didn’t get along with was Helen?” I asked.

Her smile faded and she nodded. “That’s more than fair to say.”

“But he must’ve gotten along with her at some point if they got married.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Olga said. She unearthed a lipstick and unscrewed the cap. “They met right after college. Helen seemed nice enough then. She’s from North Dakota and moved here because she got a job working for the cable company. Olaf worked there, too—until he couldn’t stand working in an office anymore.

Collecting dead animals for a taxidermist was about as far as you could get from an office job, so it seemed clear that Olaf must’ve gotten really tired of office work.

“So they met there at work,” she said, carefully applying the lipstick to Sally’s mouth. “They dated for a year or so, I think, and she seemed nice. At the time,” she clarified. “She came to family picnics, went ice fishing with us, attended church. They got married and then things went south pretty fast.”

“How did they go south?”

Olga walked around to the other side of the table, still studying Sally’s face. “For one, Olaf wanted to have kids. Helen told him she did, too, but turned out she didn’t really want to.” She glanced up at me. “Think she told him she did just so he’d marry her.”

I nodded. I was pretty sure Thornton hadn’t wanted kids, either. He’d been ambivalent about all the pregnancies and only slightly more enthusiastic when each baby was born.

“But Olaf—because he was Olaf—just sort of accepted it,” Olga said. She dabbed the lipstick at Sally’s lips one more time. “He let it go. It became pretty clear, though, that he wasn’t happy. And she turned into this completely different person. She quit her job and just wanted to stay home and watch soap operas all day. She stopped coming to church. She’d find all sorts of excuses to back out of family get togethers.” She shook her head. “Got so that we hardly ever saw her.”

I nodded, digesting all that. “Did it bother Olaf?”

“Oh, he blew it off, but I think it did,” she answered. “It wasn’t what he signed up for.”

“So why did she marry him, then?” I asked. “If she didn’t want kids and she wasn’t interested in the same things, what did she get out of it?”

Olga lifted Sally’s chin a little, scrutinizing something. “She wanted to be taken care of because she’s a lazy cow. She wanted a husband to take care of her. Olaf looked like that guy.” She looked at me. “I don’t think she ever thought he’d get so fed up that he’d ask for a divorce. That surprised all of us. But I guess he just realized how unhappy he was.”

I nodded again, sympathizing. I remembered those feelings. I’d tried to convince myself for so long that I could be happy with Thornton and what I’d chosen. I’d make excuses for everything, more for myself than for any other reason. But the more excuses I made, the unhappier they made me. I never in a million years saw myself as a divorced person, but I finally reached a point where it was the only option I felt would make me happy. It was a hard realization to come to and it made me sad to realize that was the direction my life had taken, but I knew it was a necessary evil if I wanted to be happy again.

“I went and visited Elliott Cornelius yesterday,” I told Olga.

She nodded. “Ah. Elliott.”

Her tone was different than it had been before. Not quite an edge to it, but there was…something.

“Did they get along okay?” I asked. “Did Olaf like the job?”

She thought for a moment. “Olaf liked the job just fine. He liked animals and I think he felt like he was helping them out by taking them somewhere after they were dead, rather than just letting them rot on the side of the road.” She nodded again. “Yeah, he liked that work just fine, I’d say.”

“And he liked working for Elliott?”

She dug back into the cosmetics bag. I wasn’t sure what was left to apply to the woman laying on the table in front of her. “Sure. For the most part.”

“For the most part?”

She shrugged as she studied Sally’s face. “It was tense for awhile.”

“Why?”

“Because Elliott did something stupid.”

“What did he do?”

“He went out with Helen,” she said, glancing at me.

My eyebrows lifted. I knew there’d been more to Elliott’s story. “He did?”

She nodded and brushed at some invisible speck on Sally’s face. “He did. Guess she’d been flirting with him for awhile. And, at first, he didn’t pay her any attention. But she got to him somehow because Olaf found out they spent an evening together.”

Stuff It’s owner’s unwillingness to answer more of my questions suddenly made a lot more sense.

“And I think the poor guy took a genuine liking to her,” Olga said. “And let’s be honest. I could see why. Helen’s not an ugly woman and who knows what she did with him on their date. But apparently he liked it. And her.”

That image was one I was going to need some bleach in my memory to get rid of.

“So Olaf found out and I guess they had words,” she continued. “Didn’t speak to one another for a couple days. Olaf was gonna look for another job, but he didn’t think he’d be able to find anything. And then Elliott started whining that she’d already dumped him.”

“To Olaf?” I frowned. That didn’t sound like the Elliott I’d met.

“Elliott’s not the brightest bulb,” Olga said, rolling her eyes. “But yes. To Olaf. And Olaf told him he didn’t care that she’d found someone else so he could take his pity party elsewhere.”

“So was she actually dating someone else then?” I asked, trying to keep up with everything Olga was divulging.

“Well, she said she was,” Olga said. She zipped the cosmetic bag shut and peeled off her gloves. “She told Olaf she was. She told him that the fling was over with Elliott and she’d moved on to someone bigger and better. I was at Olaf’s one day and she stopped by to have him sign some more stupid papers and she just kept going on and on about how wonderful this new man was. How sexy he was.” She rolled her eyes again. “She must’ve called him sexy about fifteen times before I asked if he was blind.”