Page 50 of Take Your Breath Away

Detective Hardy: She’s been missing since this past weekend.

Natalie: Oh my God. No one’s heard from her?

Detective Hardy: No.

Natalie: And you—Jesus—and you think I had something to do with it?

Detective Hardy: No, I—

Natalie: Because whatever my ex told you, it’s bullshit.

Detective Hardy: Okay. Tell me about that.

Natalie: And it was a long time ago, too. What did Conroy tell you, anyway?

Detective Hardy: Maybe you should give me your side of it.

Natalie: It was a one-time thing. And it was after we’d split up. I saw him with Charlotte, and—

Detective Hardy: Charlotte?

Natalie: The first one he went out with after we separated. I saw them at the Stamford Mall, in the parking garage. I was heading for my car and I saw them getting into his, and yeah, okay, I walked right past the car, but there’s no way he could prove it was me that keyed his Jag.

Detective Hardy: You keyed his car?

Natalie: The security video didn’t show anything.

Detective Hardy: So it wasn’t exactly an amicable split with him.

Natalie: All I’m saying is, I’ve got nothing to do with this woman going missing.

Detective Hardy: What I was about to ask you was, did Mr. Mason ever say anything about his wife that would lead you to believe he might want to harm her in any way?

Natalie: Oh, okay. Wow, I’m such an idiot. I thought—

Detective Hardy: Did he complain about her? Make disparaging remarks?

Natalie: No. He was pretty depressed a lot of the time, feeling guilty, you know? About seeing me. I mean, okay, there was the one time he said he could just kill her, but—

Detective Hardy: He said what?

Natalie: Andy said … I’m trying to remember now … but he said something like, “I could just kill her.”

Detective Hardy: He said that.

Natalie: He did. But it was more in a kidding way. Like, a figure of speech.

Detective Hardy: What was the context?

Natalie: I think they’d a fight about something. A disagreement. They’re renovating that house, right? And I think it was about picking out things for the kitchen. Brie couldn’t make up her mind about colors or taps or countertops or something. I don’t really remember, but Andy was annoyed because it was slowing the project down.

Detective Hardy: Okay. That does sound like an offhand comment. My partner wanted to kill me when we were trying to pick a paint color for our bedroom.

Natalie: I know, I’m making too much of it.

Detective Hardy: So there was nothing else along those lines.

Natalie: Not really. In fact, he said one time, about Brie, he said, and this got me thinking that maybe it wasn’t going to work out with him, and these were his exact words: “I love her to death.”