Flashes of Insight by Lynda Allen

Author:Lynda Allen [Allen, Lynda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Ihad no idea who Jane meant, which Gomez must have read on my face.

“Define less-than-ideal,” she said.

Jane sighed, resigned. “There was a young man who worked for me who I had a brief affair with.” Her eyes darted to mine.

“What?” I exclaimed. I was more shocked by not having heard about it before than by it being a young man.

Gomez tapped her pen on the surface of desk, either to get our attention or out of amusement. “How brief?” she asked.

“Six weeks or so,” Jane replied.

“Who was it?” I knew I shouldn’t have asked, but I was intrigued.

She glared at me momentarily, but then turned to the detective. “Since you will also insist on knowing”—she stressed the word also—“his name was Spencer.”

She didn’t share his last name, but Gomez just waited patiently, and Jane had no choice but to give in.

“Spencer Minor.”

“Spencer Minor.” I said it quietly without thinking and found Jane and Gomez watching me.

“Do you know him?” Gomez asked.

“No, but the name Minor rings a bell.”

Jane gave me another withering stare before we both focused on Gomez, who had not missed the exchange. She looked inquisitively at Jane.

Jane slumped even more. “The Minor family is fairly well-known in Fredericksburg and shows up throughout the town’s history. Their family tree is tangled with the Maury’s’.”

That’s when I remembered the name Minor had come up at one of the trivia nights at the museum when the topic was local history. She was right about the tangled part. The two families had a very public falling out a few generations ago if my memory of it was accurate.

“As in the Maury School?” Gomez asked, referring to the original high school building downtown. It was built in 1920 and had been renovated and converted into condos, though the adjoining field and stadium seating were still used for sporting events for James Monroe High School.

“Yes,” was all Jane said.

Gomez made note of it in her notebook and refocused her questions on the relationship. “Who ended the affair?”

“I did. He’d recently graduated from college, and I realized how foolish it was, despite—” she stopped herself, blushing.

“Despite what?” asked Gomez.

Jane was studying her hands clasped in her lap. “Despite how enjoyable it was at first.” She reluctantly lifted her eyes to meet Gomez’s. “It didn’t take me long to recognize he was too young and too needy.”

“Needy in what way?”

“He started calling me at the store on his days off and texting me at all hours. Despite our age difference, he was more interested in it becoming a serious relationship than I was. He even began to act like it gave him seniority over some of the other employees. I could tell it was going in a direction that wouldn’t be good for me or the store, so I ended the relationship.” Once she’d started, the words kept coming. “I hadn’t planned to fire him. I hoped we could get past it, but it didn’t seem to be possible.”

“Why’s that?”

“He kept on texting and calling me night and day, wanting to talk about what went wrong and telling me we could work it out.

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