Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights

by Kyra Davis

  “Trust me when I tell you that Jews born in the States don’t know how lucky they are.”

  I swallowed hard. Anatoly had always come across as strong and in control, but at that moment I realized that his bravado might be something he had cultivated for the sake of survival. I reached my hand out and let my fingers brush against the stubble that had begun to form on his cheek. There was so much I didn’t know about this man.

  My cell rang and I jumped up, spilling half my drink on Anatoly’s already stained carpet. I flashed him an apologetic smile before retrieving the phone from my purse. “Leah?”

  “Sophie, you’re never going to believe this. Jerome just called me. One of his sources told him that the police did find a hair at Erika’s place.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and crossed my fingers. “The DNA didn’t match up, did it?”

  “No, the hair they found wasn’t mine.”

  “Yay! Oh, Leah, that’s spectacular!” I turned around and gave Anatoly a thumbs-up.

  “It gets better.”

  “How can it get better than that?”

  “The hair was blond.”

  “Bianca?” I wrinkled my nose. “But this isn’t making sense. If the hair was blond they should have known right away that it wasn’t yours.”

  “It was dyed blond.”

  I felt my heart flutter. “Dyed?”

  “Mmm-hmm, and based on the lab results they know that whoever it belongs to was closely related to Bob.”

  My mouth dropped open. There was a God and he was magnificently vengeful. “That little bitch,” I said joyfully.

  “Come home. We need to break open the champagne.”

  We entered my apartment to find Leah putting several champagne flutes on my dining table. She looked up at Anatoly and me and flashed us a huge grin.

  I scanned the apartment and noted that while Mr. Katz was sitting on the couch in plain view, there was no child harassing him. “Where’s Jack?”

  “He was tired, so I put him down for a nap. He didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Yeah, I know. He was very vocal about his insomnia.”

  “A little early for that, isn’t it?” Anatoly nodded at the glasses. “All we know is that Cheryl might have been in Erika’s house. That doesn’t change a lot.”

  “It gives me hope,” Leah said quietly, “and that changes everything.” She looked at Anatoly and her eyes narrowed. “You know, I think it would be appropriate for you to refund my sister’s money. She’s the one who figured out who killed my husband. She knew it was Cheryl right from the beginning.”

  “I suspected,” I said. “I didn’t know anything.”

  “We still don’t know anything,” Anatoly pointed out again. “Even if Cheryl is implicated in Erika’s alleged murder, that still doesn’t mean that she’ll be charged with killing Bob.”

  “Now you’re just being a pessimist.” Leah dropped down into a chair by the table and causally crossed her legs. “Seriously, what are the odds that someone who wasn’t involved in Bob’s murder would up and kill his secretary days after his death?”

  “About the same as the odds that someone would kill my brother-in-law weeks after someone else tried to kill me. And yet, here we are.” I took my place next to my cat and was starting to scratch him behind the ears when a horrible thought came to me. “Leah, you didn’t tell Jerome that we were the ones to find Erika, did you?”

  Anatoly’s shoulders became more rigid and he stared at Leah, no doubt praying for the same answer I was.

  “Of course I didn’t,” Leah said. “But I don’t think he would tell anyone if he knew.”

  “But he doesn’t know,” Anatoly said again for confirmation.

  “No, no. He had heard about Erika’s death earlier and he knew the police thought it might be connected to Bob’s murder, so he’s asked his sources to keep him updated on any new developments. I certainly didn’t volunteer anything about what I knew, and Jerome didn’t ask me to. In fact, during the interview almost all his questions were about Bob and our marriage. Although he did seem interested in what kind of things I liked to do in my spare time and my views on parenting and private schools.” Her voice trailed off and she smiled. “He’s a fascinating man.”

  “How would you know?” Anatoly asked as he sat down next to me. “You just said that all the two of you talked about was you.”

  I giggled. “Why do you think she found him so fascinating?”

  “Very funny,” Leah said, but she didn’t look offended. “We talked a little about him, too. He’s different than any of my other male friends, or Bob’s friends for that matter.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Bob had friends?”

  “Okay—business associates. Anyway, Jerome is more…urban. When I first met with him today he was very professional, but as we spent time together he became more comfortable and he started using a lot of slang.” She looked off into the distance as if trying to recall something. “Is that kind of talk still called ‘jive’?”

  “I think the popular term now is ‘talking black,’” I said.

  “Right, right, I think he told me that.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I showed him a few home movies I had made of Jack. He said he was ‘a city of a child.’ I’m not sure I know what that means but I kind of like it.”

  For some reason the image of a Godzilla-sized Jack frightening a whole bunch of Japanese people popped into my mind.

  “He should be here any minute. I called and invited him over since he was the bearer of the good news,” Leah continued. “This way I’ll have the opportunity to kiss the messenger.”

  “What did you just say?” I scooted forward on the couch.

  “Kiss the messenger? Really, Sophie, it’s just an expression.”

  “Kill,” I corrected. “You’re supposed to kill the messenger, not kiss him.”

  “Really?” Leah cocked her head to the side. “That does sound right. Well, I’m certainly not going to kill him after he told me that Cheryl’s one step closer to wearing an orange jumpsuit.” She laughed. “Cheryl hates orange. It makes her look like a demented jack-o’-lantern.”

  “Here’s an expression for you,” Anatoly offered. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”

  Leah made a face. “And people call me a killjoy.” The buzzer went off and she got up to press the intercom. “Jerome?”

  “Hey, girl.”

  Leah smiled and buzzed him in. She waited impatiently for him to climb the stairs and then waved him into the apartment. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  She gave him a kiss on the cheek, which, to my eye, he received with a little too much enthusiasm. Then he exchanged greetings with Anatoly and me and quickly turned his eyes back to Leah.

  “Now that we’re all here, I’ll get the champagne.” She helped him remove his coat before retrieving a bottle of Cristal from the kitchen.

  “What exactly did your source at the police station say?” Anatoly asked as Leah popped the cork and started pouring our drinks.

  “Just that the police found a hair somewhere around Erika’s body that wasn’t hers,” Leah said, and handed Anatoly a glass. “For some reason they compared it to Bob’s DNA. Didn’t match but it was damn close. My man says that it definitely belongs to someone related to him.”

  “Well, well, that is incriminating.” I shifted slightly in my seat. “It was nice of you to call Leah and tell her, Jerome.”

  He nodded. “Leah and I are cool. I know she isn’t guilty of any of this shit.”

  Jerome leaned against the wall, and I was struck again by his impeccable physique. Under normal circumstances I would have advised Leah to go for him in a big way, but until she was completely cleared of all charges, I was determined to keep her chaste and mournful. I cleared my throat.

  “So now that you have all the information you need for your article, I guess we won’t be seeing you for a while.”

  “My article isn’t due for anothe
r week and I’ll need to come back to check my facts. If you’re worried that I’m going to be dogging Leah in print, you can relax,” he said, completely misreading my concern. “I wouldn’t do that, and even if I wanted to, Flavah wouldn’t publish it.”

  “Why not?” Anatoly asked as he draped his arm over the back of the couch.

  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get closer to me, but I inched toward the crook of his arm just in case.

  “Flavah’s a black magazine,” Jerome explained. “And when this Cheryl chick started talking smack, a lot of the sistahs and brothas sat up and took notice. Flavah wants to make sure the people see this for what it is—just another battle in the war the police have waged against us.”

  “Enough politics.” Leah lifted her glass. “We have things to celebrate. Let’s toast to Cheryl. May she rot in jail for the rest of her miserable life.”

  “Works for me.” I stood and lifted my glass.

  The buzzer rang again, and I looked at Leah questioningly. “Did you invite anyone else over?”

  “No, but it’s not exactly unlike your friends to drop by unannounced. Honestly, Sophie, I don’t know how you put up with it.”

  I was tempted to point out that it was a lot easier to put up with surprise visits from friends than the extended stay of family members, but I bit my tongue and waited while Leah inquired over the intercom who was there.

  “Detective Lorenzo.”

  An uneasy silence fell over the room, Leah turned to me and Anatoly. “Do you think he’s come to tell me that I’m no longer a suspect?”

  Anatoly stood up, his expression serious. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Leah pressed the button to release the door, and in the blink of an eye Lorenzo was standing in my doorway, a uniformed officer at his side.

  “Ms. Leah Miller—” his tone was cool with disdain “—you’re under arrest for the murder of Bob Miller.”

  “W-what?” Leah stammered. “But I don’t understand…”

  The other officer took a pair of handcuffs out and started reading her her rights.

  “Wait a minute.” I stepped forward and looked desperately from Leah to Lorenzo. “You can’t arrest her, she didn’t do anything!”

  “She killed her husband,” Lorenzo said blandly.

  I glanced at Leah. She had lost so much color, she could have passed as white. “Listen, don’t worry about this,” I said lamely. “There’s obviously been some kind of mistake. I’ll call a lawyer and we’ll work this whole thing out.”

  Jerome stepped up behind me as Leah lowered her head so that her hair hid her face. “This ain’t gonna hold, Leah,” Jerome said. “These cops are desperate for an arrest and they probably dug up some circumstantial shit to get one. It’ll be thrown out of court in no time.”

  “But the hair,” Leah whispered to Jerome in a voice I barely recognized as hers. “You said it was Cheryl’s hair.”

  Anatoly stepped forward Don’t say anything, Leah. We’ll go over everything when we have an attorney present.”

  Leah looked up, and Jerome smiled at her. “Girl, you’re gonna be fine. You just keep a stiff upper lip and these cops will be unlocking those cuffs in no time.”

  Leah tried to smile back but she clearly couldn’t manage it.

  Lorenzo nodded at the other officer, who had finished with the rights. “Time to go.”

  I stood there, immobilized, as I watched them take my sister away. The sound of the front door to my building opening and then slamming shut jarred me out of my shock.

  “I have to follow them,” I said, reaching for my purse. “She can’t be alone.”

  I was halfway out the door when Anatoly grabbed me by the arm and stopped me. “You’re forgetting something.”

  “I’ll call a lawyer from my cell on the drive over.” I tried to pull my arm free but Anatoly’s grip was iron.

  “I’m not talking about the lawyer.”

  The sound of a cry came from down the hallway. My eyes widened and I looked at Anatoly in horror.

  Anatoly nodded without breaking eye contact. “That’s right, you have a child to think about now.”

  CHAPTER 16

  If God only gives us what we can handle, why are there so many suicides?

  —Words To Die By

  To say that the next hour was chaotic would be an understatement. I called the police station and found out where I would need to go to see Leah. Then I did the most difficult thing of all. I called Mama. Calming her down was a major challenge because I was far from calm myself. But she did have the presence of mind to recommend a lawyer that she knew from her synagogue. Anatoly held my hand and reminded me to breathe as I relayed the whole saga to the attorney over the phone.

  Surprisingly, the person who kept Jack under control through it all was Jerome. He simply took him into the guest room with some wooden spoons, pots and pans and taught him how to be his own one-man band. Normally I wouldn’t have been thrilled with this noisy child-care technique but at that moment I was just thankful not to have my nephew underfoot.

  By the time I was off the phone, Mama was at my door. It took a little effort but I convinced her to stay at my place with Jack rather than accompany Anatoly and me to the jail. Her arguments that Leah might be feeling the need for a little maternal love were not completely unfounded, but it was also unrealistic to assume Leah would be able to deal with Mama’s hysterics while she was barely keeping it together herself, and a jail was certainly no place for Jack.

  In the end I decided to let Jerome stay with Mama and help her with Jack, and Anatoly and I left to try to see Leah. Without argument, I let Anatoly drive my car.

  Thankfully he wasn’t overly conservative about the speed issue. “We’re going to figure this out,” he assured me as he weaved in and out of traffic.

  “But this doesn’t make sense!” I said as I searched my purse for Advil. “They didn’t arrest her before because they wanted time to build their case, so why arrest her now? Why would they risk losing in court just so they could rush the arrest of a woman for what is being described as a crime of passion? She’s not a flight risk and she’s obviously not a danger to others.”

  “It’s possible they found something new or…”

  “Or what?” I gave up on the Advil and threw my purse on the floor of the Audi. “Are Lorenzo and his fellow officers just trying to make all our lives miserable? Does he get off on seeing newly widowed mothers in handcuffs? What?”

  “Maybe they think she is a danger to others.”

  “Who would she be a threat to? It’s not like she has other husbands around town cheating on her, and she’s kept her distance from Bianca.”

  “Sophie, just because the hair didn’t match Leah’s doesn’t mean that they didn’t find something else in Erika’s house that linked Leah to the crime scene. A fingerprint, maybe a broken nail—there are lots of things a forensics team could have turned up.”

  A fresh wave of panic washed over me. “She broke a nail while we were there. She said so and I totally forgot about it.”

  I turned to Anatoly, hoping that he would tell me my oversight wasn’t as earth-shatteringly awful as I suspected. His expression offered no such assurances.

  I brought my fingers to my temples and tried to stave off the migraine that was forming. Right now Leah was being treated like a violent criminal. They would put her in a cell with the other violent criminals. I fought back a sob as I thought about the body search that she would have to endure. How could any of this be happening? And then there was Jack to think about! I couldn’t deal with him on a good day—how was I supposed to manage him full-time while sorting through all this?

  Anatoly glanced over at me. “Don’t overthink the situation. We need to take this one step at a time.”

  “You know when the guys in AA came up with that slogan they were thinking of beating alcohol and drug addictions, not murder raps.”

  “Did that lawyer say whether or not he was coming d
own to the station?”

  “Posthaste.” I sighed.

  “Can I ask why you didn’t bring an attorney on board before this?”

  I looked out at the cars in the lane next to us. “I don’t know—I guess I wanted to take my time researching people to make sure I retained the best guy for the job.” That was another lie. I had postponed hiring a lawyer because I didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that Leah would need one. Here I had been yelling at Leah for not facing the realities of her situation, while I hadn’t been willing to face them myself.

  Anatoly pulled into a garage and parked his car on the second floor. Next to us a tan Mercedes pulled in. The driver was a man with a pudgy face, a high forehead and wire-rimmed glasses. “That’s Timothy Weis, Leah’s lawyer.” I offered him a halfhearted smile and wave.

  Anatoly blinked. “That was fast.”

  “His wife is the woman who performed Jack’s bris and she loves my mom. She’d expect Timothy to go out of his way to help her daughter.”

  “So you think his wife’s expectations are enough to motivate him to get here less than forty minutes from the time you called to retain him?”

  I gave Anatoly a withering look. “If your wife was trained in the art of slicing up penises and she asked you to do something, would you do it?”

  Anatoly paused, then nodded. “Yes. Yes, I believe I would do it very quickly.”

  We got out of the car and greeted Timothy. I had met him on three or four occasions and he had never struck me as a force to be reckoned with, but his track record was phenomenal. Mama had even told me that he was considered to be one of the top twenty criminal attorneys in the country.

  The three of us slowly walked together to the Civic Center jailhouse and went over the important facts about the case once again.

  “The evidence is circumstantial but there’s a lot of it,” Timothy said as we approached the front steps. “The one thing she has going for her is Cheryl.”

  “You mean the hair they found,” I said, looking around to make sure no one could overhear us.

  “We don’t even know that the hair exists.” Timothy stopped and pulled from his pocket a small black cloth, which he used to clean his glasses. “We can’t base a case on the unnamed source of a severely biased reporter.”