Page 65 of Sins of Arrogance

It is easy to project be­cause most peo­ple want to be­lieve you are sin­cere. Even other syn­di­cate mem­bers.

“Why were you sit­ting here in the dark?” I ask Dier­dre.

She shrugs. “Just wanted a quiet place to think.”

And she just hap­pened to want to do that think­ing in the dark, while sit­ting in Kara’s chair? Dier­dre is fully self-in­volved, but she does not lack most emo­tions like I do.

Is she jeal­ous? She said this morn­ing that me mar­ry­ing Kara was hard on her. That she couldn’t stand to at­tend the wed­ding.

I as­sumed she was play­ing for sym­pa­thy. How­ever, she didn’t at­tend the wed­ding, even though the rest of our fam­i­lies flew to New York to be there.

If she has more feel­ings for me than I gave her credit for, it should be eas­ier to get the in­for­ma­tion out of her that I want.

“Think­ing about what?” Broad open ended ques­tions are the main­stay of soft in­ter­ro­ga­tion, of­ten re­veal­ing more than pointed ques­tion­ing would.

Peo­ple go on their guard when an­swer­ing ques­tions they think could trip them up, but since most peo­ple like talk­ing about them­selves, broad ques­tions lu­bri­cate their vo­cal cords.

“Mem­o­ries,” Dier­dre replies and then sighs art­fully. “Your wife has ex­cel­lent taste in fur­ni­ture. This is the most com­fort­able chair in the house.”

“Aye.” That’s on pur­pose.

Kara told me it’s her cozy read­ing chair. I didn’t pay much at­ten­tion at the time to the width of the chair and the gen­er­ous match­ing ot­toman.

But now, de­tails about the piece of fur­ni­ture take on sig­nif­i­cance my gut says not to ig­nore.

The fact that Dier­dre’s feet are curled un­der her, rather than rest­ing on the ot­toman where they would more likely be seen from the door­way. The way the large ot­toman blocks the sight of her shoes on the floor from the same van­tage point.

She’s got her glass of wine to sell her pres­ence in case she’s caught, but un­less she over­poured to be­gin with, she hasn’t taken a sip from it.

She was def­i­nitely sit­ting in the dark hop­ing to ear­wig.

Too bad for her, all our men know bet­ter than to dis­cuss any­thing sen­si­tive in any of the pub­lic ar­eas of the man­sion, whether they think they’re alone, or not.

I’ve proven to them enough times that they weren’t in fact alone and that the pun­ish­ment for sloppy chat­ter isn’t worth in­dulging in. Now, our men rarely talk at all when they are in the main ar­eas of the house.

Dier­dre makes a sound be­tween a sigh and a hum. “She’s a lucky woman.”

She’s not talk­ing about the chair, but I don’t take the bait and pre­tend like I think she is. “I’m sure Kara would tell you where to buy one just like it to be shipped back to Dublin, if you asked.”

Dier­dre draws her fin­ger slowly around the rim of the wine glass, mak­ing the crys­tal sing. “I wasn’t talk­ing about the chair, Micky.”

“What were you talk­ing about then?” I pre­pare my­self for more melo­dra­matic claims about miss­ing me, with the hope it will lead to more sub­stan­tial top­ics.

Soft in­ter­ro­ga­tion is all about pa­tience and tak­ing the cir­cuitous route to in­for­ma­tion.

“I just needed some quiet af­ter din­ner. I told you it would be hard for me, and it was. If Bro­gan hadn’t talked to me, I wouldn’t have any­one to talk to at all.”

“That’s a bit of an ex­ag­ger­a­tion.” She’d done her best to mo­nop­o­lize the con­ver­sa­tion at the din­ner ta­ble and no one had made any ef­fort to stop her.

Cer­tainly not my wife, who sat in near to­tal si­lence through­out the meal af­ter her con­fronta­tion with Bro­gan.

“You think so?” Dier­dre wipes at her eyes, like she’s hid­ing tears.

The lack of mois­ture on her fin­ger­tips is ap­par­ent in the bright lamp­light. I won­der if she re­al­izes that?

The way she wipes them against the skirt of her dress says she’s still try­ing to sell it.

I don’t call her on it. “I was glad you joined us for din­ner.”