Chow Down (A Melanie Travis Mystery)

you.” Lisa’s eyes lifted briefly. They met mine, then skittered away. Her expression was somber. “I appreciate your concern.”
    “If there’s anything I can do . . .”
    “No, there’s nothing.” Her voice was soft and melodious, the kind of voice that dogs would respond to instinctively. Indeed, Faith had lifted her head and was watching Lisa intently.
    “I’d only just met Larry, but he seemed like a very fine man.”
    “My husband was a man of many admirable traits. He knew what he wanted in life and he went after it. He worked hard and he accomplished many things.”
    There was something almost routine about her response. The words sounded as though they’d been rehearsed. Then again, I thought, everyone dealt with grief differently. At our previous meeting, Lisa had struck me as an intensely private person. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she wouldn’t want to display her emotions in front of a virtual stranger.
    “Yoda is all right?” I asked, venturing to a safer topic.
    “Yes, physically she’s fine. You were the one who came to her rescue on the steps, correct? I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to thank you the other day.”
    “You’re welcome. It was nothing. I knew you wouldn’t want her to be running loose. I merely picked her up and held her until help arrived.”
    “So then . . . you were there? You saw my husband fall?”
    “No. I was in the stairwell when it happened, but I was two flights lower down. I didn’t see anything until after I heard the crash—” Abruptly I stopped speaking. I was sure Lisa wouldn’t want to hear the gory details.
    “Doug Allen called 9-1-1,” I finished lamely. “And Chris Hovick came running to see what was wrong. He took Yoda from me. I assume he gave her back to you?”
    Lisa nodded. “He came outside and told me what had happened. At first I didn’t believe him, I was sure he must have been mistaken. I had just been with Larry five minutes earlier. I couldn’t imagine that he could be gone. Especially in the manner in which I was told it happened.”
    Faith and I had an appointment inside. If we were to be on time, we needed to get moving. But now what Lisa had said brought me up short. I dropped my hand and gave Faith a silent signal to sit.
    “Why do you say that?” I asked.
    “Larry would not have liked me to talk about this before. But now that he’s gone, I suppose it doesn’t matter. My husband suffered from vertigo. Heights made him very uncomfortable. Usually he avoided places like that stairwell. It came as a great surprise to me that he would have chosen to go there.”
    And yet he had. That was clear to both of us.
    “Perhaps he didn’t want to take Yoda on the elevator?” I suggested.
    “We had come up on the elevator. Yoda doesn’t mind. She’s traveled all over the country with us. She goes wherever we do and it’s never been a problem.”
    So much for that theory. In that case, what had Larry been doing in the stairwell? Could he have ducked in there for the purpose of holding a private conversation with the person I’d heard him speaking to?
    “It’s not surprising to me that Larry lost his balance and fell,” Lisa said. “Just being in that stairwell would have made him dizzy. And with Yoda in his arms, he wouldn’t have been holding on to the banister. I can’t imagine what he was thinking.”
    “Are you sure your husband’s death was an accident?” I asked gently.
    “Of course.” Lisa didn’t seem offended by the question, but she didn’t give it much credence, either. “How could it have been anything else?”
    “I was just wondering because I thought I heard voices right before Larry fell.” And a scream, I thought, but I didn’t add that. “I thought maybe he was talking to someone . . .”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know. They were pretty high above me. I couldn’t hear what was being said.”
    Lisa was shaking her head, as if trying to make sense of this new information. “And this person Larry was supposedly with . . . He wouldn’t have tried to help him? To prevent him from falling?”
    Actually I’d been thinking just the opposite. But right that moment, looking at Lisa’s pale face and dark, red-rimmed eyes, I would no sooner have brought up that possibility than I would have kicked a defenseless puppy.
    Besides, I thought, Lisa’s revelation about her husband’s vertigo had cast the incident in a whole new light. Maybe I was the one who was wrong. Perhaps