by Kyra Davis
“Oh.” I let out a low laugh. “This is going to be good.”
Bianca lived only a little over eight city blocks away from me, so Anatoly and I opted to hike up to her building. Unfortunately, I was wearing a mid-thigh-length skirt that was a tad too tight and rode up with every five steps. But the constant tugging at my hemline did serve the purpose of getting Anatoly to look at my legs, and damn if he didn’t seem appreciative.
When we finally reached her building Anatoly pushed the button for her apartment.
I gazed at the little park across the street where the hired dog walkers were attending to the pocket-size poodles of their socialite clients.
“Yes?” The woman’s voice that came through the speaker was not Bianca’s. It was less girly and had a bit of an edge to it.
“Hello, my name is Anatoly Darinsky. I’m here to see—” The buzzer that released the door activated before Anatoly could finish his sentence.
When we got up to the correct floor we found a woman with cropped golden-blond hair blocking the entrance to Bianca’s condo. She was about Bianca’s size, but her features were more chiseled and her overall look more severe. She wore a pair of tailored pants and a red button-down shirt that nipped at her nearly microscopic waistline.
“Hello, Mr. Darinsky—and you must be Ms. Katz.”
Anatoly nodded, his eyes doing a quick appraisal of the woman, much to my annoyance.
“I’m Porsha Whitman, Bianca’s sister. I’ll be staying with her for the next few weeks.”
“Ah.” Anatoly smiled and extended his hand. “I’m glad Bianca has family she can—”
“I’m also an attorney,” she said, cutting him off without accepting his hand. “I’m here to look out for Bianca and to ensure that our family name isn’t marred by this mess.”
“Whitman isn’t exactly a rare name,” I pointed out. “I’m sure it’s dragged through the mud with a certain amount of regularity.”
“I’ve instructed my sister not to talk to you. If there’s something she wants to say, she’ll say it to the police.” She turned on her heel and started for the door.
Anatoly took a step forward. “Miss Whitman, it must be obvious to you that the Katz/Miller families desire the same level of discretion you do.”
“Lots of things are obvious to me, Mr. Darinsky.” Porsha turned and stared directly into his eyes. “It’s obvious that Bob Miller took advantage of my sister’s innocence. It’s obvious that his wife is unstable. And it’s extremely obvious that this little surprise visit of yours is completely inappropriate—”
“Porsha, please—”
I glanced behind the gatekeeper to see Bianca looking as sweet and innocent as ever.
“I don’t mind talking to them,” she whispered.
“Bianca, don’t be an idiot.”
“Just for a few minutes, Porsha.” Bianca looked at the ground. “I owe them that much.”
Porsha shook her head in disgust as Anatoly and I followed Bianca inside. If Porsha was staying with Bianca she was an extremely neat houseguest. Bianca’s apartment was as immaculate as it had been the last time Anatoly and I had been there. As far as I could tell the only thing that had changed was the flower arrangement on the end table—this time the lilies were yellow instead of pink.
Bianca flinched at the sound of Porsha slamming the door. “Can I get you two anything?”
“For God’s sake, we don’t need to entertain them, B,” Porsha spat. “What exactly are you doing here?”
I swallowed my irritation and attempted a smile. “I hope you can forgive our barging in, but we’re just trying to figure out who really killed Bob so that my family can have some peace again.”
“I can help you with that,” Porsha said with a sneer. “It was your sister.”
“See, I don’t think so,” I said, maintaining my friendly tone. “I think it was yours.”
“What?” Bianca gasped. “I would never hurt Bob! I loved him!”
Porsha waved off my accusation with a flick of her hand. “I understand that you want to pin this on someone else, but you’ve made a bad choice in scapegoats. My sister has no motive.”
“Sophie misspoke,” Anatoly said quickly, and shot me a look of warning. “We don’t suspect you of anything, Bianca. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that Leah isn’t guilty, either. Think how horrible it would be for Jack if he not only lost his father, but also lost his mother to prison, particularly if she is innocent.”
“Oh!” Bianca put a hand to her mouth and spoke through her fingers. “I couldn’t bear that!”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to happen,” Anatoly said reassuringly. “If the real murderer is brought to justice, Jack will have his mother, and everyone who loved Bob will have a sense of closure.”
I did a double take. Hearing Anatoly use a word like closure was kind of like listening to President Bush talk about his “posse.” It was just utterly out of character. But one look at Bianca’s quivering lower lip told me he was getting the desired response. Maybe he was worth twelve thousand dollars.
“How can I help?” Bianca’s voice came out in a squeak.
Porsha smacked her left fist into her open palm. “Bianca, he’s playing you!”
Bianca shook off Porsha’s warning. “I want to help,” she repeated with more determination.
“All I need right now are the answers to a few quick questions.” He sat down on the couch and gestured for her to sit beside him.
Bianca avoided looking at Porsha and took her assigned place.
“During the time that you were with Bob, did you ever go with him to the Gatsby?”
“Hotel Gatsby?” Bianca wrinkled her forehead. “You mean to dine?”
“No, I mean as a romantic getaway.”
“No, Bob and I never got a hotel room together. It would have made what we shared seem cheap.”
I suppressed a smile. I was pretty sure that nothing at the Gatsby was cheap.
Anatoly nodded. “I understand. So you’ve never been there?”
“Only by myself. They have a wonderful day spa.”
“But you didn’t go with Bob,” Anatoly clarified.
“No, never.”
“I know this may be difficult for you—” Anatoly reached over and gave Bianca’s hand a reassuring squeeze “—but in recent months Bob visited the Gatsby on several occasions with an auburn-haired woman who has been described by those who saw her as being tall, powerfully built and extremely striking. Do you have any idea who that might be?”
“I don’t understand.” She blinked a few times as if absorbing the new information was a challenge. “Are you saying…?”
“Okay, that’s it.” Porsha brushed by me and pulled Bianca to her feet. “We don’t need this. I’ll see you both to the door.”
Anatoly stood up. “If Bianca wants to answer the questions, then it’s not really your place to stop her.”
“I disagree. Bianca’s my little sister, and I protect the people I love from being needlessly harassed. Now are you both going to leave or do I need to call the police.”
“You can’t have us arrested for entering an apartment after we were invited in. But if you insist, we’ll leave.” He smiled at Bianca. “So you don’t know who the other woman might be?”
“No…I…I didn’t get to meet many of Bob’s friends. But I can’t believe…Bob would never…”
I leaned forward and tried to look sympathetic. “I understand why you would be skeptical,” I said, directing my comments to Bianca. “I mean, Bob certainly gave the appearance of being fairly devoted to you—what with the six-thousand-dollar bracelets and all.”
Bianca’s eyebrows drew together in puzzlement. “Six-thousand-dollar bracelets?”
“The Tiffany’s yellow-sapphire bracelet you showed me.” Was it possible that anyone could forget that particular token of Bob’s affection?
Bianca let out a short laugh. “I had that bracelet insured—it’s not worth six thousand do
llars.”
“How much was the bracelet worth?” Anatoly asked. “Five thousand?”
Bianca shook her head, clearly bemused. “I had it insured for fifty-one thousand dollars.”
My jaw dropped, and even Porsha looked a little taken aback. My mind flashed back to the necklace he had bought Leah for a similar price. Over a hundred thousand dollars wasted on two pieces of jewelry, yet the man couldn’t manage to invest forty dollars a month in a life insurance policy?
Bianca was looking at me as if she expected me to comment. “Wow,” I said, my voice coming out in little more than a whisper. “His other mistresses would be so jealous.”
Porsha walked over to the door and yanked it open. “Bianca, say goodbye to your guests.”
Anatoly nodded and we stepped out into the hallway. Porsha came out with us, closing the door behind her. She looked Anatoly over with new interest.
“You’re good,” she said. “You played on her guilt and feelings of loss in order to gain her trust, and then you just led her into the lion’s den. You should have been a lawyer.”
Anatoly laughed—a little too merrily in my opinion. “I think I’ll stick to what I’m doing now. I lack the necessary level of corruption to pull off a career in law.”
Porsha smiled. “Touché. All right, what’s all this about there being another woman? Were you just fishing or do you actually have witnesses to this third liaison?”
“We have witnesses,” I said. I’d be damned if I was just going to stand there quietly while she needled my antagonist.
Porsha turned her head in my direction. “And did these witnesses actually see Bob being intimate with this woman in any way? Were they holding hands, did they get a room, anything incriminating at all? And what’s the story with the bracelets?”
“We’re going to share the information we have with the police,” Anatoly said, regaining Porsha’s attention. “I might be convinced to share it with you if you would be willing to give me some more time with your sister.”
Porsha smiled and pressed the button to the elevator. “Have fun with the police.” She turned around and retreated into the apartment.
Once we were in the elevator, I said peevishly, “You’re attracted to Porsha.”
Anatoly smirked. “What gave me away? Was it the way I flagrantly ignored her demands that I leave until after I was done preying on her sister, or was it the cute way I sidestepped her questions?”
“It was the way you were checking out her body.”
Anatoly’s smirk faded into a wistful smile. “She does have a nice figure.”
“You may not get into bed with the enemy. That’s totally against the rules.”
“This from the woman who promised me sexual favors when she was really trying to set me up for murder.”
“Okay, so these are new rules. It doesn’t make them less valid.”
“Of course not,” he said, as we walked out of the elevator and lobby and into the cool spring air. “I’m going to the police station to update them on what we found out. It will be helpful if they have at least a few leads that point to someone other than Leah.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s not a good plan.”
“Why not?”
“Because so far the only thing you’ve done on these interviews is piss people off.”
“That’s not true! Besides I don’t think it’s possible for me to piss off the police any more than I already have, so there’s no problem.”
“When you get home, I want you to pull out your dictionary and look up the word logic.”
“Anatoly…”
“Do you want to end up as Jack’s legal guardian?”
I paused. “So you’ll call me when you’re done at the station?”
Anatoly smiled. “You have my word. Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
“Um, my place is right on the way to yours, so you don’t exactly have a choice.”
“Still, the offer was chivalrous.”
I giggled and we started walking down the hill. “Has Leah come up with any other ideas about why someone would break into her home to steal floppy disks?”
“She has yet to come up with a plausible theory, and I can’t even come up with an implausible one.”
“I know that burglary is significant in some way,” Anatoly mumbled. “Did she tell you anything more about her conversation with Lorenzo?”
“No, nothing she didn’t tell us already.” Actually, every time I mentioned Lorenzo’s name, since our last visit to the police station Leah became extremely busy. All of a sudden Jack’s diaper would need changing, or she’d have to call Miranda to set up a play date, or she’d pull out a pencil and a sketch pad and start to design her own line of children’s wear—anything that made talking about Lorenzo an impossibility. But I knew that Leah would voluntarily spill everything in the very near future. Long-term emotional repression wasn’t her forte.
We eventually arrived at my door and Anatoly waited as I got my keys out.
“Sophie, the possibility of a third woman is a good sign, but right now it’s still just a possibility. Leah is far from being out of the woods.”
“Are you trying to depress me?”
“I’m trying to prepare you,” he explained. “I don’t want you to be caught off guard if things don’t go the way you want them to.”
I hesitated with my hand on the door. “Thank you for being concerned, but it’s all going to be fine.” I looked up at him. “I won’t allow it to be anything else.” I pushed the door open and left Anatoly on the street. When I got up to my apartment, Mr. Katz was waiting by the door. I obediently made a beeline for the cupboard that held the kibble, but I barely had a chance to pour it before the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Sophie? It’s Erika. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”
“Not at all. What’s up?”
“The police say they’re done with Bob’s office, and I thought that Leah might want to pick up some of the personal things he kept here. You know, photos and the like.”
I leaned against the bookcase and pulled at a stray thread sticking out of my sleeve. “I’m sure she would, but she’s not home right now. I’ll have her give you a call when—”
“Maybe you could stop by and get the stuff? It might be easier for Leah if she doesn’t have to face all the employees here right away. Particularly with all the things they’ve been saying on the news.”
“Good point. Can I stop by tomorrow around lunchtime?”
“Um…okay…or maybe you’d like to come now?”
“I can come now,” I said cautiously. “Shall I just go straight to your desk?”
Erika audibly exhaled. “That would be great. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.” I pressed the hang up button and stared at the receiver. Since when had picking up a bunch of old photographs become a matter of great urgency? I flashed back to my last visit with Erika and her public displays of grief over her boss’s death. No question, the woman had a flair for the dramatic. Maybe that was all there was to it. Or maybe she knew something that could help Leah.
I grabbed my coat and booked it to my Audi.
CHAPTER 8
“When people say a woman is brooding what they really mean is that she’s found a way to make depression look sexy.
—Words To Die By
I caught sight of Erika at her desk the minute I stepped off the elevator. She was in the company of a tall woman whose back was to me. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but whatever was being said was not going over well with Erika. I had never seen her look angry before, and yet at that moment the hate in her eyes was visible from thirty feet away. As I approached, the woman pivoted in my direction. I froze. Her auburn hair was pulled up in a French twist, which showcased her handsome features. She wasn’t overweight but her large bone structure made her anything but petite. She fit the description perfectly. This had to be t
he woman Bob had been seen with at the Gatsby.
I forced a casual smile. “Hi, Erika.” I thrust my hand in front of the other woman. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Sophie Katz, Bob Miller’s sister-in-law.”
The woman grasped my hand and gave it a solid shake. “Taylor Blake.” She sounded like she had studied at one of those schools that still coached their students to speak with an upper-crust, tight-jawed accent. “I’m familiar with your books.”
My smile broadened. “Oh, are you a fan?”
“My housekeeper is,” she clarified.
Erika stood silently beside her desk and stared at Taylor with what looked to be a mixture of contempt and awe.
“Sophie Katz, what a pleasant surprise!”
I turned to see James Sawyer smiling down at me. He put a friendly hand on Taylor’s shoulder. “Have you met Taylor? She was our last CFO. She had the nerve to leave us for another company a few weeks ago. I’m still trying to muster up enough altruism to forgive her.”
“Nobody’s irreplaceable, James.”
Her smile accentuated her chiseled cheekbones. Everything about her exuded strength and self-assurance. There was no doubt in my mind that most men would find her intimidating.
She turned her attention to me, and her countenance took on a more serious expression. “When I left I thought my position would go to Bob.” She shook her head slowly. “It hardly seems possible that he’s gone.”
I thought I heard Erika suck in a sharp breath, but even I recognized that my imagination was on the active side.
James removed his hand from Taylor’s shoulder and used his other hand to pat Erika on the back. “Erika tells me she’s helping to plan Bob’s memorial service.”
“Yes, I can’t thank her enough.”
“Wonderful, wonderful.” James checked his watch. “Taylor was good enough to agree to walk me through some of the paperwork she and Bob had previously been handling, so we’ll go do that and leave you two to your business.”
He gestured for Taylor to join him and she gracefully excused herself without bothering to glance in Erika’s direction.
Erika waited for them to disappear into the elevator before sitting back down. She ran her palms along her skirt as if trying to wipe the sweat off of them. “You don’t like her, Erika?” I asked as I pulled up a chair.
