by Margot Hunt
“It’s very nice to meet you finally, Alice. Kat has been raving about you for months. She said that you are the smartest person she’s ever met.” Mr. Wyeth smiled down at me. His eyes, which were the exact same shade of blue as Kat’s, crinkled pleasantly at the corners.
“That’s very nice of Kat and almost certainly not true,” I protested.
“Don’t listen to her, Daddy. She is brilliant and she’s funny as hell, too,” Kat insisted.
“My kind of gal,” Mr. Wyeth said. He laughed and patted me on the back.
Much as I’d been struck when I met Howard for the first time how mismatched he’d seemed with Kat, it was equally hard to imagine how a man who seemed as jolly as Thomas had ended up with the icy Eleanor. Had Eleanor once been a carefree young girl, and only hardened into a stiff-backed matriarch in her later years? Or was this yet another confounding example of opposites attracting?
“Did you sneak out here to smoke?” Kat asked.
Her father adopted an expression of innocent surprise. “Does that sound like something I would do?”
“Absolutely. That’s why Alice and I came here in the first place. I thought I’d find you here,” Kat said.
Thomas Wyeth winked at his daughter and slipped a cigar out of his pocket. “Just don’t tell your mother.”
“As though I would.” Kat rolled her eyes.
“That’s my girl.” Mr. Wyeth lit his cigar with an engraved jet lighter and took a deep, satisfied drag on it. The cigar smoke was spicy and earthy as it swirled in the cool air.
“Is there some sort of family reunion going on out here?” a voice asked. “And if so, why wasn’t I invited?”
I looked up and saw a lanky man with thinning hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He was followed by a blonde woman who was so painfully thin, her head looked like it was two sizes too large for her body.
“Oh, we make it a point to never invite you to family reunions, Josh,” Kat said drily as her brother joined us.
“Kat the Kidder.” Josh reached out to rumple her hair.
“Stop it!” Kat swatted his arm away. “Alice, this is my annoying brother, Josh, and his wife, Ashley.”
I shook each of their hands in turn.
“Why are you all out here? It’s freezing.” Then Josh noticed the cigar in his father’s hand. “You know Mom’s going to kill you if she catches you smoking again.”
Mr. Wyeth waved a dismissive hand. “I can handle your mother.”
“Famous last words,” Kat murmured.
Mr. Wyeth chuckled and turned to join a gathering of men who had clearly come out to the patio with the same idea. They were all lighting cigars while engaging in lighthearted conversation.
“Hey, did you know Zach Harris is here?” Josh turned toward his sister.
“Zach came?” Kat seemed surprised. “Where is he?”
“I saw him inside. He and his wife just got here.”
“Come show me.” Kat grabbed her brother by the wrist. She looked at me. “Zach is an old friend of mine. We used to date in high school. I’m just going to say hello. I’ll be right back.”
“Sure, take your time,” I said. I didn’t want Kat to feel like she had to babysit me.
“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit,” Kat answered over her shoulder.
I watched Kat and her brother disappear into the house. Kat was still barefoot, having left her shoes behind on the veranda.
I wanted to find Todd, but it seemed rude to leave Ashley on her own.
I smiled at Kat’s sister-in-law. “This is a great party.”
“How long have you known Kat?” Ashley asked.
“Just about a year.”
Ashley was pretty in a lacquered-over way. Her blond hair had been ironed straight, and her makeup had been applied with an expert if rather heavy hand. When she spoke and smiled, her face remained strangely flat and waxy, the telltale signs of Botox.
“Kat’s something else, isn’t she?” Ashley offered in a high, almost singsong voice that betrayed just a touch of a Southern twang.
“She’s great.”
“She has quite a habit of collecting people.” Ashley smirked. “I guess you’re the latest addition to the collection.”
The smile slid off my face. From the slight slur of her words, I guessed that the glass in Ashley’s hand did not represent her first drink of the evening. Then again, she was so wisp thin that it might not take much to make her tipsy.
I arched my eyebrows. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t? Well, let me tell you something about my sister-in-law. She comes across as, like, the coolest girl ever, right? And she’s so much fun and so put-together, and you’re so flattered that she wants to hang out with you all the time...and then, as soon as she gets what she wants out of you—” Ashley tried to snap her fingers, but in her lubricated state she wasn’t able to pull it off “—you never hear from her again. That’s Kat. She’s uses people, and then she discards them.”
“I should probably go find my husband.” I turned away from Ashley, wondering if Kat knew just how much her sister-in-law despised her.
Ashley grabbed my arm, pulling me back around toward her with a surprising and somewhat disturbing strength. I looked down at her bony hand gripping me with its long, red-painted nails. It reminded me of a claw.
“Ask Kat about Marcia Grable,” Ashley hissed, pushing her face far too close to mine. “Just ask her. I dare you.”
I twisted my arm out of Ashley’s grip and took a step back from her. “Excuse me,” I said coldly.
I turned away and headed back into the house. But I did hear her singsong voice, the Southern accent even more pronounced than before, call after me, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
* * *
“What’s wrong?” Todd asked when I found him standing near the buffet on his own, holding a plate piled with an assortment of hot hors d’oeuvres.
“What do you mean?” I realized I was holding my arm where Ashley had grabbed me. I saw Howard Grant across the room, standing too close to a pretty brunette woman laughing flirtatiously up at him. He either didn’t notice me or, if he did, didn’t acknowledge that he recognized me. I wasn’t surprised. Howard hadn’t grown any friendlier toward me over the months since I’d first met him.
“You look a little freaked out,” Todd said. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I just had a... Jesus, I don’t know what that was.” I plucked a mini crab cake off Todd’s plate and bit off half of it. It was delicious. I popped the rest of it into my mouth.
“What?” Todd asked. “Did someone grab your ass?”
I choked on the bite of crab cake I’d been in the process of swallowing and pressed a hand to my mouth while my eyes watered.
Once I’d recovered my composure, I said, “Don’t do that!”
“What?”
“Make me laugh when I’m eating.”
“Asking if someone grabbed your ass makes you laugh?” Todd smiled down at me. Whenever he was amused, his eyes squinted up into two half crescents.
“This isn’t exactly an ass-grabbing sort of crowd,” I said, making sure to keep my voice a low murmur, aware of the heads that had swiveled in my direction when I was coughing.
“What happened, then?” Todd asked.
Before I could fill him in on my run-in with the unpleasant Ashley, Kat appeared in front of us, smiling, her face flushed.
“Here you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she said. “Todd, I see you found the food.”
Todd raised his plate in answer. “Everything’s delicious,” he said.
“Yes, nothing but the best for my mother.” Kat’s voice was heavy with irony.
“I’m going back for another round,” Todd said. “Alice stole all of my mini
crab cakes.”
“I did not! I only had one.”
“It’s your word against mine.” Todd winked at me and then turned and headed purposefully toward the buffet table.
“Todd’s great,” Kat commented. She sounded almost wistful. “You’re so lucky.”
“Why, because the man appreciates a buffet?”
“You know what I’m talking about. He’s a good guy.” I followed Kat’s gaze and saw she was staring at her husband, who was still chatting cozily with the brunette. Howard touched the woman’s bare shoulder, and she giggled in response. Kat tensed. “Better than most.”
If Howard’s flirtation and Ashley’s venom were common occurrences at her parents’ holiday party, I could see why Kat dreaded it. And she hadn’t even heard what Ashley had said to me. I wondered if I should tell her, but decided against it. Kat was in a good mood, happy and vivacious, or at least she had been until she spotted her husband ogling another woman. I didn’t want to spoil her night. Besides, Ashley was clearly a poisonous person, I decided, and she’d probably been jealous of Kat for years. Kat was certainly brighter and more personable and definitely more attractive than her aging sorority-girl sister-in-law.
No, I decided, I wasn’t going to play the part of Ashley’s tattletale. And I certainly wasn’t going to ruin Kat’s evening. Instead I was going to enjoy the party and drink champagne until my always-overworked brain was comfortably numb. To hell with the headache I’d have tomorrow.
“What did you think of Ashley?” Kat asked, almost as if she was reading my thoughts. “I saw you two chatting.”
I shrugged. “I think she’s had too much to drink. She wasn’t making much sense, and she was slurring her words.”
“That seems likely. She usually is.”
“Really? How does she stay so thin?” I asked.
“She never eats. She lives on a diet of wine and bitterness,” Kat said, which cracked both of us up.
“What are you two ladies laughing about?” Todd asked, joining us. He slid an arm around me and cupped his hand on my waist.
“I’m just so happy I met Alice,” Kat told him. She squeezed my arm. “She’s exactly who I needed in my life.”
10
Present Day
I drew in a deep breath, and then another. I’d always told Bridget, my child prone to anxiety, that worrying never helped anything. Worse, outright panic led to stupid mistakes. It’s always better to clear your mind of any distracting noise to appraise a situation once you’re calm.
Here was my current situation:
I had been brought into the police station to be interviewed about Howard’s death. The police believed that Howard had been murdered.
The police also believed that Kat had a financial motive for wanting Howard dead.
Sergeant Oliver was oddly hostile toward me. There was—or at least, Sergeant Oliver claimed there was—a witness who had come forward.
I hadn’t heard from Kat.
I set my logician’s brain whirring on the problem, but I got back...nothing. There were too many loose ends, too many unknown factors.
For example:
Was Oliver telling the truth about a witness who had seen someone push Howard off the balcony? I wouldn’t have put it past her to lie just to gauge my reaction. She clearly didn’t like me and had been adversarial throughout the interview. And if there really was a witness, who was it? Someone who knew the Grants, or a stranger?
And then there was the staggering amount of money that was presumably now Kat’s, and Kat’s alone.
There were a lot of factors to process before we even got to the meat of the matter. Which was—at least, to my mind—where was Kat in all of this? It was impossible to know, since I hadn’t heard from her since that singular conversation we had when she was at the airport ready to board a plane home to bury her husband.
I wondered if I should insist on stopping the interview until I had the chance to consult with a criminal attorney, as Todd had urged me to do. And yet I still thought it was highly unlikely that the police considered me a suspect in Howard’s death. It was far more likely that Demer had been telling the truth when he told me their purpose in interviewing me was to gain background information on Kat and Howard. And I had to think that the more I found out about the focus of the police’s investigation, the better it would be for Kat.
The door to the conference room opened. Detective Demer entered and closed it behind him.
“Sorry about that,” he said. He pulled out his chair and sat down heavily in it.
I nodded. I hoped that my husband was right, that I did possess an inscrutable face. I needed one now.
“I don’t think Sergeant Oliver likes me very much,” I remarked.
Demer paused for a moment. Then, raising his eyebrows, he nodded. “I think you might be right about that.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “I wouldn’t take it personally. I’m not sure she likes anyone.”
“Why is she so convinced that I know what happened to Howard?”
Demer looked at me thoughtfully, tapping a pencil against the table. I got the feeling that he was trying to decide how much to tell me.
“What she said was correct. A witness has come forward,” he finally replied.
Goose bumps were rising up on my arms and shoulders. It was just the air-conditioning, I told myself.
“What kind of a witness?” I asked. “You can’t see into the Grants’ backyard from any of the abutting properties.”
“You seem quite sure about that,” Demer said, as though my observation might have some significant meaning.
“I’ve been to their house many times.”
I pictured the view from the Grants’ back patio, where Kat and I often sat, lingering over a glass of wine while watching the boat traffic pass by. There was a combination of high walls and manicured hedges that blocked any view into her backyard from the neighbors to both the north and south. And while you could see the houses across the Intracoastal—no one would block a multimillion-dollar water view with a privacy fence—they were far enough away that you could see only their facades. Maybe the witness had been on a boat? It seemed the only plausible possibility, although even then, it was hard to imagine anyone on the water would have a good view of the Grants’ house at night.
“The witness lives on the opposite side of the Intracoastal,” the detective said.
“On the other side of the water? But that has to be, what? Over a thousand feet away? How would they be able to see anything?” I asked.
“The man is an amateur astronomer,” Demer said. “He was looking through a telescope.”
“Pointed at the Grants’ house?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows arch.
Demer shrugged. “Maybe he had other hobbies, as well...”
“Okay. So you have a pervert who was hoping to see a free show and he instead saw...what?”
“He said he saw someone push a man over the railing.”
“Howard,” I clarified.
“Our witness couldn’t identify the victim, but as no other bodies turned up that morning, that seems the most obvious guess.”
“Did he see who pushed him?”
The detective again hesitated. “He didn’t see who it was.”
I stared at the detective, absorbing these words. The door opened and Sergeant Oliver strode in. She did not look chastened. If anything, her expression was almost smug. Demer glanced up at her and she nodded back at him.
“Mrs. Campbell, do you have a key to the Grants’ house?” Oliver asked.
I shook my head no. “Why?”
“But you know where they store a spare key. You know the code to the house alarm,” Oliver continued. These were technically questions, but she was stating them as facts.
Actually, I did know where Kat stored the spare key. It was in the garage
, hidden behind the light box. Kat and I had gone shopping one day, and when I dropped her off, she hadn’t been able to find her house key. She’d shown me where she kept the spare key and how to disarm the security alarm.
“Just in case you ever need to get in,” Kat had said at the time.
“Why are you asking?” I looked to Demer.
“Just answer the question,” Oliver snapped.
“No,” I said, crossing my arms. “Not until you tell me why you want to know. Because if you are attempting to implicate me in this in any way, I’m going to terminate this interview.”
Demer raised a placatory hand. “There wasn’t any sign of a forced entry, so at this point, we’re just trying to exclude all persons who knew how to access the household.”
“How many people fall into that category?”
Demer and Oliver exchanged a look.
“Just two of you,” Demer said. “You and the Grants’ housekeeper.”
“What about Kat’s family? They must have keys or know where the spare is.”
Demer shook his head. “According to Katherine Grant, you were the only two.”
According to Katherine Grant.
They were the most chilling words I had ever heard. Unless I was misreading the situation, or unless the police were purposely misleading me, it sounded very much like Kat had deliberately cast police suspicion on me.
Except that Kat would never do that.
I took a deep breath, quelling the anxiety that was starting to ferment. I needed to keep my head clear.
“I may be one of the only people whom Kat told where the spare key was,” I said. “But what about Howard?”
“What do you mean?” Sergeant Oliver asked.
“He might have told any number of people about the key and the alarm code.”
“We’ve spoken to Mr. Grant’s assistant, Ellen Propst, who frequently ran errands for him. He never gave her a key to the house or the alarm code, and she couldn’t think of anyone else he might have told. His only living relative other than his wife and daughter, who were both out of town at the time of his death, is an elderly mother, who lives in a nursing home.”
