THE FUTURE WIDOW'S CLUB

by Rhonda Nelson

  While other kids were interested in Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney, Sadie's girls—little curly-haired miniatures of their mother—were watching the Food Network, HGTV, and the Style Channel. Jolie felt a smile tug at her lips. They were undoubtedly going to be a force to be reckoned with when they grew up.

  Jolie had hung around and pitched in, then helped clean up the kitchen, bathed the girls, and put them to bed. Tucking them in had been particularly bittersweet, their little round faces bathed in the glow from their angel night-lights. It had conjured back-burner dreams of having her own family, but she couldn't help but be eternally thankful that she hadn't brought a child into the mess she'd created with Chris. In addition to everything else, she didn't think that she could bear the guilt of making such a poor choice for her child.

  After the girls had gone to bed, she and Sadie had talked about her meeting, her plans for after she left Chris—which had gotten Sadie's enthusiastic stamp of approval—and regular Moon Valley gossip.

  Sadie had updated her on the continuing problem the mayor had been having with skunks. Reeking of skunk perfume and tomato juice, the mayor's wife had come into The Spa for her regular set and had bemoaned her lack of sleep due to the "screeching, howling and humping" going on beneath her house. Evidently the mayor had called in the County Agent, and after investigating, he couldn't find any particular reason why the odiferous animals had decided to burrow beneath the mayor's home, nor could he suggest any further technique of removing them that hadn't already been employed.

  As for the continuing debate over the restoration of the statue in the town square, the city council and Civic Club were engaged in the proverbial Mexican standoff, with neither party inclined to acquiesce. In the mean time Jebediah's stately bronze body was slowly oxidizing, turning black a result of the process. Jolie figured the Civic Club would blink first. A feeble smile caught the corner of her mouth. They'd been too proud of him to let him stand there and ruin.

  Jolie wheeled her car onto her street and winced when she saw Chris's BMW in the drive. "Damn," she muttered, supremely disappointed. She'd hoped that he wouldn't be home—he usually wasn't—but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. What the hell, she thought, unwilling to let him wreck what had been a nice evening. She'd just do what she usually did—burrow in her room, curl up with a good book, a block of chocolate and try to avoid him. If he annoyed her too much, she'd pack her bag and spend the night in Sadie's apartment.

  She didn't remember locking the door when she'd left earlier this evening, so evidently he'd been out and come back, she decided as she let herself into the house. With luck, he'd be passed out, sleeping off whatever he'd managed to get into tonight. A quick look in the living room confirmed that he wasn't holding down the couch—his preferred pit-stop after a night of drinking and whoring, she thought with an uncharitable smirk—and her first thought was that he'd probably gone on to bed. But then a curious sound reached her ears. Jolie stilled. The shower.

  Again? Jolie thought, her brow folding into a puzzled frown. Granted Chris was rather meticulous when it came to his daily grooming habits, but three showers in one day was a little excessive, even for him. Jolie didn't know why, couldn't account for it, but the oddest sense of foreboding shivered down her spine. Her gut hollowed, then filled with a combination of fear and dread. Oh, God, she thought. What had he done this time? She carefully set her purse on the couch and slowly made her way toward the back of the house to the master suite.

  The first thing she noticed were the clothes he'd carelessly discarded before she'd left. They were left in an untidy heap at the foot of the bed. His wallet, too, didn't appear to have been moved from the dresser. Strange, because if he'd gone out, his things shouldn't be in the same place.

  In the nanosecond it took to make this observation, her gaze darted to the bathroom door, from which no steam billowed out, and she noticed something that did look different. The bathroom door—which had been slightly ajar—was wide open … and from her vantage point she clearly saw something that made her stomach lurch with alarm.

  Chris's leg was stuck at an unnatural angle out the shower stall door and a puddle of pink water had pooled on the floor.

  Unable to stop herself, she gravitated toward the bathroom, moved though she suddenly couldn't feel her feet, could barely remember to breathe … and the rest of the scene came into view. The shower beat down on Chris's prone body. His eyes were open, unblinking, and a small hole cut through his chest. A silent shriek formed in the back of her throat. Then her voice caught up with the horror and she screamed.

  Since being promoted to detective, Jake had handled exactly three homicides, two of which had been crimes of passion, the other a drunken family dinner in which Frank Bolen had shot and killed his older brother Amos over a tub of butter. Amos hadn't passed it quick enough to suit Frank, so rather than merely waiting, Frank had reached for the snub-nosed thirty-eight he kept handy in the back of his jeans. Frank had later claimed the shooting had been an accident, but according to other family members present, he'd calmly buttered his corn afterwards, then asked for the salt and pepper.

  When tonight's call had come in, Jake had been finishing up in the barn, his preferred after-work hang out. He'd spent some time watching Marzipan, throwing a little extra feed into her bucket. This was her first foal and while Mother Nature usually didn't need any help, he'd still feel better if he could be there during the birth in the event there were any problems. She'd started bagging up, so foaling was imminent. It was merely a question of when. Less than a week, he felt confident.

  Mike had taken the initial call, arrived on the scene, then per protocol, had contacted the detective on call—Jake. He'd been grim and direct. "Chris Marshall is dead. Poplar Street. You need to get over here."

  Jake had walked past Jolie in the living room, her face a white mask of shock, and followed Mike back into the master bathroom. Various men's toiletries littered the counter and shower stall, and the metallic scent of blood hung in the air. Chris Marshall lay sprawled on the floor of the shower, his brown eyes open and blank, a single gun-shot wound to the chest, right through where his heart should have been if the bastard had had one. But that wasn't the most startling injury.

  Jake blinked, certain his eyes had deceived him. "Where's his dick?"

  Mike passed a hand over his face. "We, uh… We don't know. It's gone."

  "Gone?" Jake repeated, unable to process the information. He looked at the neat cut where Marshall's penis used to be, then back at Mike for an explanation.

  "This is how we found him," Mike said, equally baffled. He scratched his head. "All I did was turn off the water, call you and the coroner."

  Okay, Jake thought, numbly shocked. So their killer had taken a trophy. And a sick one at that. "Have you had a chance to talk with Jolie yet?" he asked, unable to look away.

  "Just briefly. She made the call. Said he'd been in the shower when she left. She came home and heard the water still running, then walked back here, found him, and called us."

  "Any sign of forced entry?" Jake asked.

  "Not that I noticed, but I haven't done a lot of poking around. Jolie said she hadn't locked the door when she left, but it was locked when she got back. She'd assumed that Marshall had been out."

  Jake nodded, mentally running down everything that needed to be done. The Sheriff should be there any minute as well as the Evidence Tech, Nathan Todd. Jake imagined the only reason he'd beaten them there was because he'd all but flown to the scene.

  Sporting pillow creases and mismatched socks, Leon Turner, the county coroner, shuffled into the crowded bathroom. "What have we got?" he croaked tiredly, evidently suffering from a head cold. "Tell me it's natural causes. I'm too sick to handle a homicide."

  "Sorry, Leon," Jake said. "I hope you brought your vitamin C. We're in for a long night." In homicide cases, the coroner and law enforcement worked closely together as it facilitated preserving the evidence, which led to solving the crime
. Of course, in this case, some vital evidence was missing.

  "Shit." Leon passed a hand over his feverish cheeks. "Oh, well. I couldn't sleep anyway. Hard to sleep when you can't breathe. Gun-shot wound, eh?" He squatted down, inspected the body, then his ruddy face went slack. "What happened to his—"

  "It's gone," Mike said again. "Gone when we got here."

  Leon blinked, seemingly certain he'd misunderstood. "I… Hmmm." He frowned, looked closer at the body, at the hole in Marshall's chest, then gingerly tilted him to look underneath the body.

  "Good one," Mike said amiably. "We didn't think to check up his ass."

  Though he knew it was inappropriate—the man was dead, after all—Jake had to smother a laugh.

  "I'm not looking—I—" Leon stammered, flustered. The top of his balding head turned pink. "I'm checking for lividity." He pointed to some purplish discoloration on Marshall's left butt cheek. "See this?" he said. "He's been dead for hours. Long enough for the blood to pool and mild rigor mortis to set in." His thick brows formed a line. "Seems like there'd be more blood loss," he remarked thoughtfully.

  "The water was left on," Jake pointed out. "Most of it likely went down the drain. What's your best guess on time of death?"

  Leon shrugged. "Leaving him in a cool shower's gonna throw his core body temperature off. Based on what I see here, four to six hours, but the M.E. will be able to tell you more." He grunted as he stood, arching a brow. "Who found him?"

  "Jolie," Mike said. Jake listened to him repeat the story.

  "Well, he was alive when she left and dead when she got home," Leon said. He glanced back at Marshall's prone form. "Based on my best guess, that's consistent with what I see here."

  Jake and Mike shared a brief look. Leon's shrewd gaze bounced between them and then his watery blood-shot eyes widened. "You don't think she did it?" he accused, his voice suggesting the very idea was blasphemous.

  Did he think she did it? Jake thought. No. He couldn't imagine her ever being angry enough to kill someone. Knew instinctively that it wasn't in her nature. Hell, he'd seen her step over ant trails, nurture baby birds. As a girl, she'd taken in every stray, every unwanted animal—be it the two-legged or four-legged variety—and though he didn't know if she still did it or not, she used to volunteer at the local animal shelter. She hadn't killed him—couldn't have. She had too much respect for life, even Chris Marshall's, though he certainly hadn't earned it.

  Nevertheless a good detective had to ask the hard questions, examine the evidence. And in most cases when a spouse was murdered, it was the husband or wife—whoever stood to benefit the most—who was responsible. And unfortunately, everybody in town knew that Chris had given Jolie a number of reasons to want to see him dead. Jake grimaced. Then again, that could be said of many people aside from Jolie.

  He and Mike shared another look, one that Jake knew suggested they'd each reached a simultaneous deduction—Sheriff Dean.

  Christ.

  "We can't rule out anyone just yet, Leon," Jake told him, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.

  "Hell, you know that." He could already feel the tension creeping into his skull. This was going to get nasty.

  Leon leveled a hard look at him and despite the fact that he bore an unfortunate resemblance to Boss Hogg, he looked quite impressive in that moment. "Just like you know she isn't capable of this."

  "She said she'd been at a meeting," Mike interjected. "That sounds like an alibi."

  He'd find out when he talked to her, which he wasn't going to be able to avoid much longer. The very idea made his stomach knot with anxiety. He hadn't actually spoken to her in almost two years, and these were… Hell, these were hardly ideal circumstances. Your husband's dead and his dick's cut of—you wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Jolie? Jake swallowed a morbid laugh.

  On the rare occasions he'd actually let himself imagine talking to her again, he'd never been quite sure what he'd say. But he knew the coming conversation wouldn't remotely resemble anything he could have envisioned.

  Leon passed a hand over his face. "Keep me in the loop, okay?" he asked Jake. "Her father and I were friends."

  Jake nodded. "I will. Why don't you see if you can round up some coffee? This is going to take a while."

  "Wonder where Dean's at," Mike said bemusedly after Leon left.

  Possibly destroying evidence, Jake thought, wincing as the unchecked notion popped into his head.

  Mike hesitated. "You, uh… You don't think he might have… That he…" He couldn't bring himself to finish, but Jake didn't need to be clairvoyant to know what he was suggesting, and the thought had certainly crossed his mind as well.

  "We hadn't told him yet," Jake said, shifting uncomfortably.

  "But that doesn't mean he hadn't found out. The guy's dick's missing, Jake. That's pretty damned personal."

  Yes, it was. And whether Dean knew it before or not, they were damned sure going to have to tell him now. Had planned on it anyway, but what they hadn't counted on was having to bring it up because of a murder investigation. One which, for the moment, their boss was considered a suspect.

  "If you'll wait on Nathan, I'll go ahead and talk to Jolie."

  Mike nodded. "Sure."

  Jake felt every muscle in his body atrophy with stress, mentally braced himself for the coming conversation as he made his way back into the living room.

  Jolie looked up and her pale green eyes tangled with his. That phantom sucker-punch hit him in the gut and for all intents and purposes the ground shifted beneath his feet. He cleared his throat and uttered the same words that had ended their relationship.

  "We need to talk."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "I just heard on my scanner that Chris Marshall has been found dead," Meredith said, her usually cool modulated voice panicked.

  The words had filtered through Sophia's sleep-muddled mind, and sat bolt upright in bed when their implication set in. "What?" she breathed into the phone.

  "Shot," she said. "Leon estimated time of death four to six hours ago."

  That ruled Jolie out, Sophia thought, because she'd been with them. Not that she'd truly suspected her, of course—if Jolie had wanted to kill her husband she could have done that a long time ago.

  But she'd need an alibi, which was undoubtedly what had put Meredith into a tailspin.

  "I haven't called Bitsy yet," Meredith said. "But I will."

  "Yes, call her," Sophia agreed, climbing out of bed. "We'll need to get over there."

  "Oh, Sophia, what are we going to do?" Meredith asked, her voice weak and wavery with worry. "I don't mind outing our Officials—they don't have anything to lose. But what about our Futures? It'll ruin them. Ruin the Club."

  Sophia wedged the cordless phone between her shoulder and ear, then shimmied out of her gown and blindly groped in her closet for something to wear. "We'll stick to the same story we've told for years. We were playing bridge. They can't prove otherwise, can they?"

  "No, no, you're right, of course," Meredith said. "Still, I just have a bad feeling about this, Sophia. A very bad feeling," she said ominously.

  Be that as it may they couldn't afford to lose sight of the immediate problem, Sophia thought, and that problem was that Jolie didn't know what to say, which was why they needed to get over there ASAP before she inadvertently outed them to the entire community.

  Meredith was right—it could be disastrous.

  "Don't worry, Meri," Sophia soothed. "Everything's gonna be fine. Call Bitsy, and then come pick me up. We'll hash it out on the way over."

  She just hoped they made it before it was too late.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We need to talk.

  Jolie looked up, her gaze tangled with Jake's and for the first time since she'd walked into that nightmare in the bedroom, she felt the hot rush of tears hit the back of her eyes. If her legs would have supported her, she would have launched herself into his arms. Someone had walked into her house�
��the place where she normally slept—and killed Chris. She kept seeing his face, his eyes, in particular, and though she'd honestly hated him, she couldn't—would never—wish death upon anyone. Any life, even his misbegotten one, was too precious.

  Jolie cleared her throat. "Okay," she said.

  His expression somewhat dark, Jake came around the sofa and sat down in front of her. "I need to ask you a few questions, and later, if you're up to it, we need to go down to the Sheriff's department and do an official report."

  She swallowed, then nodded.

  Jake's gaze darted over her shoulder and she heard the scuff of footfalls hit the hardwood floor. She followed his gaze and discovered Sheriff Dean and another man, one she vaguely recognized but couldn't name, standing in the room. Looking solemn, the Sheriff nodded at her, but didn't speak.

  "Excuse me just a minute," Jake told her, pushing up from his seat. He walked over to where they stood, briefing them, she supposed. She heard phrases like gun-shot wound, time-of-death and odd trophy, the last of which she didn't understand, but couldn't make her numb mind process anything beyond breathing at the moment.

  After a moment he returned and took the seat in front of her once more. He braced his elbows on his knees and let his hands dangle in the deep vee between them. His bleak expression didn't match the kind, concerned and somewhat helpless look in those silvery gray eyes. "Can I get you anything?" he asked. "Maybe some coffee? Water? A soda?"

  Jolie shook her head. Her mouth was dry as dust, but her stomach would undoubtedly protest so much as a grain of salt at this point. "No, thanks."