The Perfect Murder

by Brenda Novak

  “Yeah, I know him,” he said while someone cut the deck. “He used to come in all the time.”

  Like magic, her exhaustion disappeared. “Have you seen him tonight?”

  “No, not for a while. Several weeks.”

  “When does he normally come in?”

  Obviously feeling some pressure to get back to work, he looked uncomfortably at the people waiting for him to deal. “He done something wrong?”

  He had only a few seconds. She had to convince him to reveal what he knew before he brushed her off. “He might’ve kidnapped two teenage girls.”

  The dealer whistled and shrugged off his hesitation. “Comes in late, usually on the weekends when it’s crowded.”

  “Do you know his name, where he lives?”

  He dealt the next hand. “No.”

  The man on the left was already asking for a hit, and the pit boss was coming to see why she was interrupting business, but Jane had to ask one more question. “Does he have any friends here? Anyone who might be able to tell me more about him?”

  She realized from his manner that the dealer knew his boss was on the way. He kept his eyes on the cards. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said. “Keeps mostly to himself.”

  “Thank you.” Before the man with the microphone in his ear could shoo her away, she walked over by the slot machines to call Sebastian.

  “I just talked to someone who’s seen him,” she announced.

  “So did I. Apparently he’s a regular. But he hasn’t been in tonight.”

  “The dealer I spoke to hasn’t seen him in weeks.”

  “I’m guessing he’s had other things on his mind.”

  She bit her lip. “Latisha and Marcie?”

  “Something’s been keeping him busy.”

  “Maybe he’s been looking for you, trying to figure out what you’ve got on him.”

  “He could be doing that, too,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But instead of going to the exit, she perched on a stool. “I’d rather stay. Maybe he’ll come in tonight.”

  There was a long pause. “I have a better idea,” he said when he spoke again. “Meet me at the door.”

  Sixteen

  “Do you think that security guard you just paid will really call us if Malcolm comes in?” Jane asked.

  Sebastian signaled before taking the Howe Avenue exit off Highway 50. “I do.”

  “He’s already got your money. How do you know he won’t forget?”

  “Because I promised him more money if he remembers.”

  “How much more?”

  The money he’d offered might make him appear far wealthier than he was at the moment. But he didn’t want to make a bigger issue of it by refusing to answer. “Five thousand.”

  “Dollars?”

  “I tried pesos, but…no go.”

  She wouldn’t be diverted by his flip remark. “Five thousand dollars just for making a call.”

  “No. Malcolm has to be there when we arrive. I have to get a glimpse of him.”

  She adjusted her seat belt so she could turn toward him. “You don’t mind throwing away that kind of money?”

  His bank account couldn’t hold out much longer. He figured he might as well use what he had left to full advantage. “If this works, it’ll be the best money I’ve ever spent, don’t you think?”

  “Saving Marcie and Latisha is worth any amount. It just seems like a lot to pay someone who’s already on the clock,” she said. “I bet he would’ve done it for less.”

  Maybe that was true, but Sebastian wasn’t taking any chances. “We want to give him enough incentive.”

  “At that price he’ll study every face.”

  “That’s the point. Now we can go to bed with some confidence that he’ll do his job.”

  “True,” she murmured. “And I’m tired again.”

  He pulled into her condominium complex and parked. “I’ll walk you to the door.” He didn’t ask. He stated it as if she didn’t have a choice. Because there was no way he’d let her walk up there without knowing she got in safely.

  Fortunately, she didn’t argue. She actually surprised him by asking him to check inside, too. He thought it was her background that had her spooked until she explained that she’d been getting some harassing phone calls from Latisha’s father, someone she called both Luther and Lucifer.

  Jane had left the kitchen light on, but the rest of the apartment was dark. They flipped switches as they walked from room to room. Sebastian had expected to see a fairly standard condo, furnished in a fairly standard fashion, but there was art everywhere—sculptures, paintings, handmade pottery, blown glass, metal objects. One painting, in particular, caught his eye. It was hanging on the wall in her bedroom and showed the outline of a man and a woman in a naked embrace. There were no details—no eyes or ears or specific body parts—just shape and color, but it brought the image vividly to mind.

  “You like art,” he said.

  She’d followed him into the room to watch him look in the closet, the bathroom and under the bed. “Yes. But it’s actually a fairly new passion for me. I never really thought about it or noticed it much before, but since Oliver…I don’t know. It helps me cope with the ugliness of the past.”

  “This is nice,” he said, gesturing at the painting. “What is it, watercolor?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have excellent taste.”

  “I’m no expert,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I just buy what I like.”

  “I don’t recognize any of the artists.”

  “Because it’s all new talent. I can’t afford the more established painters and I don’t want replicas.”

  “Only the real thing.”

  “For me, it has to be original.”

  “Then I’m especially impressed you were able to spot such gems.”

  “I like helping new artists get started,” she mused. “As far as I’m concerned, they make the world a better place. Art is another way to fight back, to fill the world with beauty and inspiration instead of hatred and anger. Don’t you think?”

  “I’ve never thought of it in that way, but I guess you’re right.” He turned to face her. “Where do you find new pieces?”

  “I visit galleries wherever I go. I check eBay. Lots of places, really. I love the discovery process. You could say it’s become my hobby—my only hobby now that I’m working so much.”

  He indicated a blown-glass piece on her dresser. “That looks expensive.”

  “It was about three hundred dollars. Not bad, considering how much it’ll be worth someday.” She smiled. “If the artist makes it big, of course.”

  He jerked his head toward the watercolor. “This painting had to cost more.”

  “It did. I used my tax refund to buy it. I should’ve been more conservative and put the money into savings, but…I just had to have it.”

  He could see why it appealed to her. The painting depicted two halves coming together to make a perfect whole.

  “The blues suggest peace and tranquility,” she said.

  The painting suggested a lot of things. But, at this moment, it was the sensuality of those figures that struck Sebastian most deeply. He wanted to make love to Jane in her own bed. “Is Kate at your in-laws’?” he asked, instead of commenting on the colors.

  “Yes.” She was no longer at the door; she was standing right beside him. Within reach.

  He turned to watch her expression while she gazed at the painting and found her watching him instead. Caught up in the artist’s vision and the energy that crackled between them, they stared at each other for several seconds without speaking.

  Demanding honesty of himself, Sebastian refused to mask what he was feeling. He wanted her again, but this time he planned to make love to her tenderly—to take all night, if necessary. He wanted her to relax and to trust him.

  But just as he was leaning forward to kiss her, she stepped back and shoved a self-conscious hand thro
ugh her short hair. “Thanks for checking the place. I—I know I shouldn’t let Lucifer rattle me, but it’s a bit unnerving.”

  It took so much effort to put those barriers up again. He didn’t understand why she bothered. What was she fighting?

  Instead of filling the silence, he waited, hoping she’d change her mind. When she gave no indication that she might reconsider, he was disappointed, but he didn’t push. It wouldn’t be what he wanted if he had to pressure her into it. “Will you do me one favor?” he asked.

  She seemed hesitant to commit herself. “What’s that?”

  “Will you tell me what the tattoo is on your breast so I can sleep tonight?” He grinned by way of enticement.

  “My tattoo? It was dark when…in your motel room. How’d you see it?”

  “I didn’t see it then. I saw the edge of it above the neck of your sweater when we were in the car yesterday.”

  Her chest rose as if she’d just taken a deep breath. “I—it’s nothing. Hard to explain.”

  His eyes riveted to hers. “Then why don’t you show me?”

  He expected her to refuse, but she didn’t. She gave him the kind of smile that said she’d take that dare and unfastened her blouse, parting it so he could see the portion of the tattoo that extended above her bra.

  Suddenly he understood why she hadn’t been able to explain. It wasn’t a rose or a character or a butterfly. It was a beautiful, artistic decoration—so ornate that he almost didn’t see the letter R scrolled among the curving loops and lines.

  When he did, he lifted his hand and, encouraged when she didn’t step away, ran a finger over it. “A lover’s name?”

  “No.” She wouldn’t meet his eye.

  Taking it one step further, he lowered the lace of her bra far enough to see the rest. The R wasn’t the only letter. There was an I and a P. “Rest in peace,” he said. “This is for Oliver?”

  Her breathing had gone shallow. He wanted to kiss her—but she chose that moment to move out of reach. “No. Someone else. Someone who wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t been stupid and lonely and weak.” She’d said it with finality, as if she wouldn’t elaborate, but her words triggered a memory, a snatch of something she’d told him before. He left me for dead, lying beside his murdered brother.

  “Another member of the family?” he asked.

  She started to button her blouse. Her fingers worked quickly as if she’d exposed too much—of her body and her pain.

  He took her hands, which were ice cold. The fact that she was trembling suggested there was more to the story. “What happened, Jane?”

  She shook her head. “Like I said, I was stupid.”

  “Oliver thought you were having an affair with his brother?” Was that why he’d tried to kill her?

  Tears swam in her eyes.

  “Jane?”

  “Yes.”

  Yes, he thought it? Or, yes, it was true? “Was he right?”

  “I was so lonely,” she whispered miserably.

  That was another yes. Sebastian wasn’t sure how he felt about this revelation. It certainly wasn’t what he wanted to hear, wasn’t what anybody would want to hear. “How?”

  She pulled away to finish buttoning her blouse. She had to feel for the buttons with her fingers because she kept her head high, almost challenging him to see the monster she believed herself to be. “Oliver came from a wonderful family. He had a brother, Noah, who was everything Oliver seemed to be but wasn’t.”

  Her eyes glazed over. He could tell she was remembering and hating herself for what those memories brought to life. Seeing her emotions made Sebastian regret asking. The subject was too close, too private. He didn’t even plan on staying in Sacramento. He had no right to pry into her pain. “Jane, I’m sorry. This is none of my business—”

  She held up a hand. “No, now that you’ve asked, now that you know this much, you might as well see how terrible I am.”

  He could barely hear the last two words. “Jane—”

  “Let me finish,” she said.

  Realizing it was too late, he deferred with a slight nod.

  “None of us really knew Oliver wasn’t what he appeared to be. He could make you believe he was Santa Claus, if he wanted.” She wiped a tear that rolled down her cheek and blinked away the rest. At that point he could almost hear her backbone snap into place. She was approaching this as one might approach a firing squad—determined to face her executioners with some dignity. “After he attacked Skye the first time, he was convicted of attempted rape.”

  “Did he go to prison?”

  She buttoned her top button, the one she usually kept open. “For over three years.”

  There was a photograph on her dresser next to that glass sculpture—a young girl who had to be her daughter, Kate. “That left you and Kate where?”

  “Adrift, mostly. I’d let myself depend on him and on our lifestyle so much that it felt as if I’d lost everything. I’d been out of the workforce for several years—and I’d never made much money when I was working. I had a cosmetology license but not a college degree, and I was rusty even at cutting hair. I guess you could say I’d grown spoiled. Lazy.”

  “So it was a financial shock, in addition to everything else?”

  She sat on the bed, which was covered with a large blue-and-green comforter and lots of pillows. “It wasn’t a smooth transition. I had no choice but to go back to cutting hair. But it’d been so long since I’d worked I didn’t have a clientele. None of the nicer shops would have me—my skills were out-of-date. I was also an emotional wreck. So angry and bitter, so sure Oliver had been wrongly accused and Skye had deprived me of my husband, my child’s father, our breadwinner, my fancy house, my high-class friends. Even my membership to the country club,” she added with a disgusted laugh. “And I thought she’d done it all out of spite.”

  Sebastian shoved his hands in his pockets. “Was there much proof that he was guilty?”

  “He admitted being in her house. He had to admit that. They had his DNA, his blood on her bed. But he claimed she invited him over for consensual sex, then freaked out because she was on drugs. He said she tried to stab him.”

  “So, as far as you knew, he cheated on you first.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “I’m not excusing you. I’m trying to figure out how it all happened. Did you know Skye at the time?”

  “I’d never heard of her before in my life. It was all so confusing. I couldn’t understand why she’d point a finger at my husband. There was no way he could be what she claimed. I would know, wouldn’t I? That’s what I kept telling myself. I lived with him, loved him, went to church with him….”

  He whistled under his breath. “Those accusations couldn’t have been easy to hear.”

  “Believing adultery to be the worst of his sins was easier than accepting the truth,” she said. “I was determined to forgive him and reclaim what we’d had together.”

  She would’ve been better off divorcing him while he was in prison. Then maybe she could’ve gotten away before he attacked her and left that scar on her neck. “So you believed your husband.”

  “He said he loved me.” She was no longer looking at him—or seeing him, at any rate. Her voice had fallen to a whisper, as if she was talking to herself.

  “Maybe he did, in his own way.”

  She shook her head. “No, Oliver never loved anyone. He was incapable of it. But his brother was different.”

  A twinge of jealousy surprised Sebastian. “How’d you get involved with Noah?”

  “He started coming over to help out, to make sure Kate and I had everything we needed—fix up the place, hang drapes, get us moved, whatever.”

  Sebastian could easily imagine the situation. At least Noah had been trying to do right by his sister-in-law. Or maybe it was just hard for Sebastian to blame Noah because he felt the same attraction to Jane. “And it turned out to be a little too much time alone?”

  “I was so needy…” H
e saw shame, even anguish, in her body language. She was shouldering all the guilt, but this Noah deserved some of it, too, didn’t he?

  “It takes two,” he reminded her.

  She managed a wobbly smile. “He didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “Did you?” Sebastian countered.

  “Of course not, but—”

  “People make mistakes, Jane.” Sebastian suspected there were some who’d hold this against her. But he’d been through a similar situation with Emily and he knew that even good people sometimes got involved in relationships they shouldn’t. Besides, how could anyone say what he or she would’ve done in the same circumstances? Although he’d never cheated, he had his own regrets. Some bad decisions were easier to correct than others.

  “This was more than a mistake,” she said. “Noah is dead because of me. He left a wife and three children.”

  In light of what she’d told him, the painting on her wall took on greater significance. Did the colors represent the peace she longed for but couldn’t quite achieve? Her emotional burden was so heavy, he was astonished that she’d been able to carry it for the past five years.

  Knowing what he knew now, Sebastian could understand why she hadn’t been able to heal. She wouldn’t let herself. She was still berating herself, still paying penance. That explained why she hadn’t met someone else and moved on, why she hadn’t made love since the attack. It even explained why she wouldn’t allow herself to enjoy making love with him last night. This morning, human need had won out—briefly—but she was already back to self-denial.

  He sat on the bed next to her. “How did Oliver find out about the two of you?”

  “Once he got out of prison, and he and I were trying to make another go of it, Noah’s conscience got the better of him. It was never as if I was trying to steal Noah from his wife and kids, I swear. I knew all along that our…relationship couldn’t continue. I cared about the entire family. I didn’t want to see them hurt.”

  “How’d his wife take the news?”

  “To this day, she won’t really speak to me. She thinks I’m the worst kind of…Well, you can imagine the names she reserves for me. And I can’t blame her.”