“A key ring,” he said as if it were another one of their mantras. “Which, by the way, is waiting in the ignition.”
Connor carried Nora into the garage and placed her gently in the driver’s seat. Then he raced around to the other side, removing the bow along the way. “Shotgun!” he yelled like a schoolboy, hopping over the door into the passenger seat.
Nora sat admiring the car’s interior, running her fingers along the stitched leather of the steering wheel. “What do you think? Should we break it in?” she asked.
“Absolutely. That’s what it’s for.”
She looked at him, the corners of her mouth curling mischievously. Her hands were suddenly nowhere near the ignition. They were playing between Connor’s legs.
“Oh,” he said happily, his deep voice cracking.
Nora nimbly climbed out of her seat and over to Connor. On top of him, knees bent, she began to run her fingers through his thick black hair while gently kissing his forehead, both cheeks, and finally his mouth. She unbuttoned his sports shirt.
“How far back do you think these seats go?” she asked.
“I’ll have to check that out.”
He reached down along the side of his seat, and like that, it began to recline with a low-pitched hum. They began to undress each other, and it was as if their clothes were on fire. His shirt, Nora’s blouse and bra. Trousers and skirt, briefs and panties.
“I love you,” Connor said, staring up into her eyes. There was no way not to believe him and to feel something for him.
“I love you, too,” she replied.
And right there in the garage, Nora went for a ride in her new car.
Chapter 17
“DO YOU REALIZE there’s only one room left in this house we haven’t made love in?” Connor asked. He looked as if he was doing the math in his head.
“Well, I suppose the night is still young,” said Nora.
He pulled her tighter in his arms. “You’re insatiable.”
“And aren’t you the lucky one.”
They’d finally come in from the garage and were standing in the kitchen, holding their clothes as well as each other.
“Speaking of insatiable…,” he said.
She stifled a laugh. “How did I know that was coming? All right, naked boy,” she said. “How does an omelet sound?”
“It sounds fantastic. Or we could just go out? I could call the Inn at Pound Ridge? Or the Iron Horse?”
Nora shook her head.
“What do you want in your omelet? I want to cook for you.”
“Surprise me,” he said. “In fact, we’ll make that the theme of the evening—surprises.”
And for the first time, Nora felt a pain in her stomach. This is it.
He went off for a quick shower but not before bringing in her suitcase, which had been sitting out in the driveway. She opened it in the kitchen and removed a neatly folded pair of jeans and a white cotton T-shirt.
Then, like an old friend, a little voice inside her head showed up.
C’mon, Nora, keep it together now.
She got dressed and began preparing the omelet. With a look in the Sub-Zero she found half a Vidalia onion, a whole green pepper, and some Virginia ham, a quarter-inch thick. That was settled. She’d make a western omelet.
You’ve already made your decision. It’s just nerves, that’s all. You know you can get past this—you’ve done it before.
The kitchen had a magnetic strip along the backsplash for holding large knives. Nora stared at them. They all hung in a perfect row, razor-sharp. She reached for the biggest one and gripped it in her hand, her fingers adjusting to the slight curve of the handle before squeezing tight.
Forget about the car. And the ring. Especially the ring.
The eggs were cracked open and whipped, the green pepper diced. Nora was making small cubes of the ham. She stood at the cutting board by the sink, her back turned to the entrance of the kitchen. She could hear Connor.
“I’m so hungry, I could eat a restaurant,” came his voice, getting louder by the word.
Do it, Nora!
He was walking right toward her.
Do it, now!
She cut off another piece of ham and stared intently at the knife, her knuckles going stark white as she gripped it tighter. The lights from the ceiling shone down and danced off the blade.
There was still time to change her mind.
Connor’s footsteps were just behind her now, getting closer and closer. She felt his warm breath on the back of her neck. He was right there, within reach. She spun around quickly, her hand raised high.
Chapter 18
“DOES THIS TASTE okay to you?” she asked.
Connor opened his mouth for the piece of ham hanging from her fingertips. He chewed for a few seconds. “Delish.”
“Good, because I didn’t know how long you’ve had it,” she said. “How was your shower?”
“Felt great. Not as good as you feel, though.”
Nora finished cubing the ham and began slicing the onion. Still time to change your mind.
Connor, wearing only sweatpants, his wet hair combed back, went to the fridge and grabbed an Amstel. “You want one?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I’ve got my water.” She raised a bottle of Evian for him to see. “Watching my waist—for you.”
He opened his beer and took a swig. He looked at Nora from the side. “Honey, are you all right?”
She turned to him, a lone tear streaking down her cheek.
“Oh,” she said, realizing it was there. She wiped it away and forced a smile before averting her eyes. “I guess onions make me cry after all.”
Nora cooked up the western omelet soft, no burn on the outside, the way he liked it. She placed it in front of Connor at the kitchen table. He doused it with salt and pepper and dug in his fork.
“Fantastic!” he declared. “This could be your best.”
“I’m glad you like it.” She sat down next to him. He took a few more bites and she watched.
“So, what do you want to do tomorrow?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe we can take my new car out for a spin.”
“You mean actually leave the garage?”
He laughed and raised his fork for another bite. But with his hand halfway up to his mouth, Connor froze.
In a split second the color drained from his face. He was as white as milk. His head began to weave. The fork dropped to the plate with a noisy clang.
“Connor, what is it?”
“I don’t…” He could barely talk. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice straining. “All of a sudden I feel really…”
He immediately grabbed his stomach as if he’d been viciously punched. Or stabbed. His eyes rolled back into his head. He lurched in his chair before falling off with a horrific thud.
“Connor!” Nora sprang from her seat and tried to help him off the floor. “C’mon,” she said. “Try to get up.”
He struggled to his feet, his legs like rubber. She guided him to the bathroom in the hall. Connor fell to the floor again, nearly passing out. Nora lifted the seat of the toilet, and he tried to crawl to it.
“I’m… I’m… going to be sick,” he muttered between gasps of air. He was beginning to hyperventilate.
“Let me get you something to take,” she said, her voice ripe with panic. “I’ll be right back.”
She ran into the kitchen while Connor labored to raise his head above the lip of the toilet. His body was an inferno, and not just his stomach anymore. Sweat gushed from every pore.
Nora returned with a glass in her hand. In it was a clear liquid, fizzing. Looked like Alka-Seltzer. “Here, drink this,” she said.
Connor took the glass, his hands trembling. He could barely lift it to his mouth, so she helped him. He took one sip, then another.
“Take more,” she said. “Finish.”
He took another sip before clutching his stomach again. Connor clamped shut his eyes and c
lenched his teeth, the jaw muscles so taut that they looked ready to burst from his skin.
“Help me,” he begged. “Nora!”
Seconds later, it was as if his prayers had been answered. The awful trembling began to subside. As quickly as it started, it was ending.
“I think the medicine is working, honey,” said Nora.
Connor was back to breathing normally. Some of his color had returned. He opened his eyes, slowly at first, then wide. He breathed out a long sigh of relief. “What was that?” he asked.
That’s when it all started again.
Only ten times worse. The trembling was now a series of brutal spasms that shook his body. The gasping became a quick and horrible suffocation. Connor’s face turned blue, his eyes fully bloodshot.
The glass fell from his hands and shattered. His body violently convulsed, and he was writhing in pain. His hands reached for his neck, desperate for air.
He tried to scream. Couldn’t. Nothing came out of his mouth.
He tried to reach for Nora. She took a step back.
She didn’t want to watch and yet she couldn’t turn away. All she could do was wait for the shaking and convulsing to stop again, which it finally did.
Permanently.
Connor was lying on the floor of one of the bathrooms in his 11,000-square-foot Colonial.
Dead.
Chapter 19
THE FIRST THING Nora did was to clean up the broken glass off the bathroom floor.
The second thing was to scrape the remains of the omelet down the disposal, turn on the disposal, then thoroughly wash the plate, fork, and omelet pan.
The third was to fix herself a stiff drink.
Half a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue, straight up, and it was gone in about half a second. She poured herself a little more and sat down at the kitchen table. She gathered her thoughts. Went over her lines. Drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
It was showtime.
Nora calmly walked over to the phone and dialed. She reminded herself: The cleverest liars don’t give details.
After two rings, a woman picked up and said, “Nine-one-one Emergency.”
“Oh, God!” Nora screamed into the phone. “Please help me, he’s not breathing!”
“Who’s not breathing, ma’am?”
“I don’t know what happened, he was eating when all of a—”
“Ma’am,” the operator interrupted. “Who’s not breathing?”
Nora sniffed, her lungs heaving. “My fiancé!” she wailed.
“Is he choking?”
“No!” she cried. “He just started to feel sick and… and… then he…” Nora stopped. She thought unfinished sentences might be more convincing on 911 tapes.
“Where are you, ma’am? What’s your address?” asked the operator. “I need an address.”
Nora alternated between sputtered words and more crying until she’d finally given Connor’s address in Briarcliff Manor.
“Okay, ma’am, stay put. Try to be calm. An ambulance will be there right away.”
“Oh, please hurry!”
Nora hung up the phone. She figured she had maybe six or seven more minutes to herself. Plenty of time for the last bit of cleanup.
The bottle of Johnnie Walker would stay out, she decided, as would the glass she poured it in. After all, who could blame her for having a drink at a time like this? The pill bottle, on the other hand, would definitely not stay out.
She placed it back in her suitcase, burying it deep in her medicine bag, which itself was buried deep beneath her clothes. Were anyone ever to find it and read the label, they’d see that she took 10 mg tabs of Zyrtec for her seasonal allergies. Asking to borrow one would be extremely ill advised, though.
Nora zipped the suitcase closed and carried it up to the master bedroom. There, she applied the finishing touches in front of a full-length mirror. She untucked her T-shirt from her jeans and yanked on the collar a few times. She followed that by vigorously rubbing her eyes to make them red. With a flurry of blinks she forced out a few more tears to further streak her makeup.
There, that ought to do it.
Nora was ready for the next act.
Chapter 20
KIND OF EXCITING, actually. A rush. The all-important third act of the drama.
Flashing lights and the ascending scream of a siren filled the driveway. Nora ran out the front door, hysterical, screaming, “Hurry! Please, hurry! Oh, please!”
The paramedics—two young men with short-cropped hair—quickly grabbed their bags and hustled into the big house.
Nora rushed them to the hallway bathroom, where Connor’s large frame was sprawled out on the floor.
Suddenly she fell to her knees, weeping uncontrollably, her face flush against Connor’s chest. One of the paramedics, the shorter of the two, had to drag her back out to the hallway to make room for himself and his partner. “Please, ma’am. Let us work in here. He might still be alive.”
For the next five minutes, every effort was made to bring Connor Brown back to life, and every one of those efforts failed. Ultimately, the two paramedics exchanged that knowing glance, the silent recognition that there was nothing more they could do.
The older of the two turned and looked back over his shoulder at Nora, who stood by the doorway in a seemingly shock-induced haze. His face said it all, no words were required, but he uttered the redundant “I’m sorry.”
She took her cue and burst into more tears. “No!” she yelled. “No, no, no! Oh, Connor, Connor!”
Minutes later the Briarcliff Manor police arrived. It was routine procedure, Nora knew. Connor being pronounced dead at the scene meant they got the call. Another screaming siren and more flashing lights in the driveway.
A few of the neighbors had gathered to look on. It seemed that Nora and Connor had just been joking about their watching them have sex only moments ago.
The police officer who did most of the talking was named Nate Pingry. He was older than his partner, Officer Joe Barreiro, and clearly the more experienced of the two. Their purpose was simple: prepare a report detailing the events leading up to, and the circumstances surrounding, the death of Connor Brown. In other words, the necessary paperwork.
“I know how hard this must be for you, Mrs. Brown, so we’ll try to do this as quick as possible,” said Pingry.
Nora had her head buried in her hands. She was sitting on the ottoman in the living room, where the paramedics had practically carried her. She looked up at the policemen, Pingry and Barreiro.
“We weren’t married,” she said through a sob. She saw both officers glance at her left hand and the four-carat diamond ring Connor had given her. “We were just…” She paused and dropped her head back into her hands. “We were just recently engaged.”
Officer Pingry trod lightly. As much as he hated this part of his job, he knew it had to be done. Of all the skills it required, there was none more important than the right amount of patience.
Slowly, Nora took him and his partner through everything that happened. Her arrival at dusk, to the omelet she made for Connor, to the moment he said he was feeling sick. She described helping him to the bathroom, and the trauma his body seemed to suffer.
Nora rambled and, a few times, corrected herself. Other times she spoke with great clarity. As she’d read in books on forensic psychology, the major similarity among “grief-stricken” people was their ever-shifting cognitive and emotional states.
Nora even admitted to the officers that she and Connor had just made love. In fact, she was sure to mention it. The county medical examiner wouldn’t have a report for a day or so, but she already knew what the autopsy would show. Connor died from cardiac arrest.
Maybe the sex, even at the age of forty, had triggered it. That would be one theory. Stress from his job would be another. Perhaps there was a family history of heart disease. The bottom line was that no one would ever know for sure.
Exactly how she wanted it.
After Of
ficer Pingry asked the last of his questions, he read back the notes he’d taken. It was an outline of what Nora had told him—which was everything he needed to know. Except, of course, the little part about how she poisoned Connor, then watched him die on the bathroom floor.
“I think we have everything we need, Ms. Sinclair,” said Officer Pingry. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to take one last look around the house.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “Whatever you need to do.”
The two policemen went down the hallway, and Nora remained on the ottoman, which she’d purchased for slightly over seven thousand at New Canaan Antiques. After a minute she got up. Pingry and his partner may have seemed nice and flashed what seemed to be genuine looks of concern, but the moment of truth had yet to come.
What do they really think?
With furtive steps, Nora fell in line behind the policemen as they went from room to room. Close enough to overhear them, far enough away not to be noticed.
Along the second-floor hallway, she got what she was looking for. The two had stopped to chat inside Connor’s media room. The early reviews of her performance were in.
“Shit, will you look at this setup?” said Pingry. “I think the TV alone is worth more than my salary.”
“That girl was about to marry very rich,” said his partner, Barreiro.
“No kidding, Joe. Now she’s shit out of luck.”
“Tell me about it. She was this close to grabbing the brass ring.”
“Yeah, and then the brass ring drops dead.”
Nora turned in the hallway and quietly padded back down the stairs. Her eyes were bloodshot and she looked a mess. But on the inside the feeling was relief. Brava, Nora! God, you’re good.
The police didn’t suspect a thing.
She had committed the perfect murder.
Again.
Chapter 21
THE SHUFFLING OF mostly solemn strangers in and out of the house, the cacophony of noise and commotion created by it, lasted for nearly two hours. The irony was never lost on Nora: Things really get lively when someone dies suddenly.
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