Uncomfortable in her own kitchen, Sasha was surprised to find herself bustling around an unfamiliar space, but she knew her best chance at ensuring compliance from her drunk clients was to keep moving. They would be slow to process what was happening. With any luck, she’d have Nick halfway out the door before he could object.
Sasha pointed to the square oak table. “Have a seat,” she directed.
Nick hurried over, tripped, and landed sprawled in a chair.
Greg narrowed his eyes and stayed where he was.
She put the first mug of coffee, along with the cream and sugar, on the table in front of Nick, who dutifully started to fix his coffee. She got the second mug started on the coffee machine and then walked over and stood close to Greg.
“Nick’s going to need your support in a few minutes. And I’m going to need your assistance. It’d be nice if you were in a position to be helpful,” she said in a low voice, looking up at him and holding out the mug of coffee.
Greg sighed but traded her his tumbler for the coffee.
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “You’re welcome.”
He joined Nick at the table, and his drink joined Nick’s down the drain. Sasha rinsed both glasses and then made a final mug of coffee for herself. The only sound was the hissing coffee machine.
She joined the men at the table, carrying a cheerful red mug. Not until she’d taken a seat did she notice the words I Got Lei-ed in Hawaii! printed across the front. Judging by Greg’s snicker, it was printed on the other side as well.
“Nick, the police want you to come in and talk to them,” she said.
Anger sparked in his eyes, but he said, “Fine. I told you before, I don’t have anything to hide. Let’s go. The sooner they rule me out, the sooner they can catch the bastard who killed Clarissa.”
She put a hand on his arm to keep him in his chair and said, “They think you’re the bastard, Nick.”
He crumpled into himself. “They think I killed her?”
“Of course, they think you killed her. You’re the husband—the estranged husband, no less,” Greg said.
Sasha shot him a look that said you’re providing the support, remember?
Greg dropped his eyes to the table, and when he spoke again the tightness and bitterness in his voice were gone. “Just tell them the truth, Nick. It’s all you can do.”
Nick nodded slowly and looked at Sasha with large, sad eyes. Like a puppy.
“They just want to talk to me?” he asked, his voice betraying that he had not a shred of hope that was true.
“They’re probably going to arrest you and process you. I’ve reached out to Prescott to see if they want to post your bond, provided we can get a bond.”
Nick’s face turned gray.
“Before we go anywhere, though, you’re going to have a cup of coffee and a hot shower,” Sasha told him.
“Why?”
“Because you look and smell like you’ve been on a bender,” she explained.
Nick shrugged, a concession that it was true, and picked up the coffee.
Sasha turned back to Greg. “Have you two eaten anything?”
Greg squinted and bit his lip while he thought about it. “Not since lunch,” he said finally.
Just as she resigned herself to making them sandwiches or something, Greg pushed back his chair. “I’ll make some pasta. It’ll be done by the time Nick’s out of the shower.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Sasha asked. She didn’t want to add dealing with a house fire to her evening’s activities.
Greg didn’t answer but walked with exaggerated care to the cabinet and pulled out a shiny, new-looking pot then filled it with water and set it on the cooktop. Sasha watched for a minute to satisfy herself he could stay on his feet, and then she turned her attention back to Nick.
“Go take a shower and shave. See if Greg has any clothes that will fit you. Nothing flashy. Just clean and unwrinkled.”
“Okay,” Nick said, gulping his coffee.
“While you’re in the shower, I want you to think hard about your life with Clarissa. Is there anything you need to tell me? Anything at all that the police could view as giving you a reason to kill Clarissa?”
Nick nodded. “I will,” he promised.
“Also, think about anyone who Clarissa might have talked to about her plans to divorce you. Family, maybe? Or close friends?”
Nick shook his head. “Not her family. I would have heard about it. Our parents are old friends, from back in Greece. There’s no way she could have told her sisters or her mother that she was leaving me without my mom hearing about it. No way.”
He sounded sure, so Sasha accepted it. “Okay, then, friends?”
Greg was cutting up a sausage at the kitchen counter. Over his shoulder, he said, “Martine, Nick. If she told anyone, it was Ellen and Martine.”
“Martine Landry?” Sasha asked.
“Yes,” Nick confirmed, “Clarissa, Ellen, and Martine were really tight. They started at Prescott together.”
“The Terrific Trio, right?” Sasha said.
“Exactly,” Greg confirmed, as he passed by the table on his way to refrigerator. He selected a hunk of cheese and headed back to check on his pasta water.
“That’ll boil faster if you salt it,” Sasha offered, happy to share one of the few cooking tips she’d retained from Connelly’s lessons.
Greg didn’t acknowledge the comment, but he tossed a pinch of salt into the pot.
Sasha returned to the subject of Clarissa’s friends.
“Do you think she told Ellen or Martine?” she asked Nick.
He gave her a helpless look and spread his hands wide, “I honestly don’t know. She saw Ellen every day, practically. And it wouldn’t surprise me if she had confided in her. I mean, I know they talked about Ellen and Greg’s ...” he trailed off and nodded toward Greg’s back, then looked back at Sasha. “But the thing is, she really wasn’t unhappy. This divorce stuff came out of nowhere. We weren’t fighting. Everything was fine.”
Obviously not, Sasha thought.
What she said was, “Nick, there had to be something. Clarissa didn’t file for divorce because she was perfectly content in your marriage. That didn’t happen. When you’re getting cleaned up, I need you to really think about what could have precipitated that.”
Nick started to object, but she fixed him with the look she reserved for small children and idiots. She assumed he’d realize he wasn’t a small child.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll think about it, but we were happy. At least, I thought we were.”
“So, you think she may have told Ellen,” Sasha prompted him. “What about Martine?”
Nick shrugged.
Greg pushed the sausage around in a pan until it sizzled, then rested the spatula on a trivet, and joined them at the table.
“I doubt it,” he said, gesturing with his coffee cup like it was a conductor’s wand.
“Why?” Sasha asked.
“Well, I know Ellen didn’t tell Martine about our, uh, problems,” he explained.
“She didn’t?”
“No. I ran into Tanner, maybe two weeks ago, at the squash club, and he was talking about having us over for dinner. So, either Ellen didn’t tell Martine, or she did and Martine didn’t mention it to Tanner. Unlikely.”
“That’s the sort of news a person would generally share with her husband,” Sasha agreed.
The water on the stove bubbled over the edge of its pot, shooting white foam down the side and causing the flame to rise.
Greg hustled back to his dinner preparations and covered the pot with a lid. He lowered the flame.
“Why wouldn’t Ellen tell Martine?” she asked. “I thought they were tight.”
Greg dumped some ziti into the boiling water and stirred it.
Then he turned back to her and said, “The girls were close, but after Martine left Prescott & Talbott, there was a bit of a divide. Ellen and Clarissa were sti
ll in the belly of the beast, you know. And Martine’s focus was different. She had all those kids, and she dabbled in teaching and consulting, but she wasn’t the hard-charging ballbuster that she’d once been. The three of them would get together for drinks or a spa day pretty regularly, but it was just ... different.”
At the table, Nick nodded his agreement.
“Okay. How long until that’s done?” Sasha asked.
Greg checked the timer. “Twelve minutes.”
Sasha turned to Nick. “Go make yourself presentable. Can you do it in twelve minutes?”
A hint of the old, creepy Nick broke through his morose drunken fog, and he winked at her. “I’ll be looking good in no time.”
He stood, steadied himself, and headed for the stairs.
Sasha watched him leave and then told Greg, “Clarissa had retained Ellen’s divorce attorney.”
“That cretin Pulaski?”
“One and the same.”
Greg shook his head. “That guy. I truly believe Ellen and I could have worked things out if he hadn’t been whispering in her ear. He was so vicious.”
The description squared with what Greg’s attorney had said.
“How so?”
“He just had this scorched earth approach. For instance, Erika suggested the four of us meet, informally and off the record, to at least discuss the possibility of a collaborative divorce. Ellen and Pulaski agreed to the meeting, but then they walked into the conference room, and he literally threw a set of the pictures of me at the casino at Erika. He tossed them right in her face and started screaming, red-faced. He was ranting about how, when he was through with me, I’d be a shell of a man.”
“What did Ellen do while this was going on?” she asked.
Greg’s entire face drooped and he said, “She just stood behind him and looked at me with this satisfied little smile.”
“Do you know how Ellen found him? Erika said he typically didn’t represent women.”
Sasha didn’t expect him to know; but she hoped the question would distract him from the memory.
“I don’t know,” he said in vague voice, “I assume one of the bloodsuckers at the firm referred her to him.” He turned his attention back to his pasta.
Sasha listened to confirm that the water was running upstairs and then tackled the next delicate subject.
“There’s something else we need to talk about,” she said to Greg’s back.
“What is it?” he asked without looking at her.
There was no point in sugarcoating it.
“Nick’s going to be arrested for Clarissa’s murder.”
“I know,” he said.
“You’re his alibi, to the extent he has one,” she told him.
Greg turned away from his dinner preparations.
“I know that, too,” he said, a hint of irritation in his voice.
“Do you also know that having your name dragged into yet another murder investigation isn’t exactly going to help your own case?” Sasha said.
Greg exhaled, blowing his hair off his forehead. Then he said, “Yes, I do.”
“I’m in a delicate spot here,” Sasha said. “As your attorney, I must advise you not to get involved.”
“And as Nick’s attorney?”
“As Nick’s attorney, I’m inclined to think he needs all the help he can get. And being alibied by another accused wife killer is perhaps marginally better than having no alibi at all.” Sasha kept her tone neutral and added, “But that has to be your decision.”
Greg was silent for a long moment.
Finally he said, “Can’t the guys at Nick’s club alibi him?”
Sasha shook her head. “That won’t work. What can they say? A stranger came into the club, served Nick with divorce papers, and Nick proceeded to get hammered. They don’t know where he went after he left the club. And then it gets worse. I’m sure the police will beat the bushes, if they haven’t already, until they find some neighbor who either saw Nick go to the house last night or heard him shouting for Clarissa to let him in.”
Greg rubbed his temples. “I could say he called me and told me she locked him out and I invited him to come here. And he was here all night and all morning.”
“Yes, you could. But if you do that, the police will view it as an invitation to look at your life even more closely than they already have. They’ll be all over you,” Sasha said.
“So will the press,” Greg added, “don’t forget those vultures.”
“That’s true.”
She couldn’t lead him to a decision. She was maintaining a precarious balance as it was.
He stirred the ziti with a wooden spoon. He tapped the spoon against the side of the pot and watched the water drip off it, then looked back at Sasha and said, “I want to do it. I know I didn’t kill Ellen. And I know Nick didn’t kill Clarissa. I want to help him prove it if I can.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said, setting his mouth in a firm, grim slash.
Upstairs, the water shut off. Greg went back to the pasta.
CHAPTER 31
Caroline stood at the kitchen window and stared out in to the backyard; she was looking toward her garden, although she couldn’t see it in the darkness. She knew the wild roses were making their last display of the year and the earliest mums were just budding.
But she wasn’t thinking about her flowers. She was thinking about the files she’d shoved under the passenger seat of her car. When she’d pulled into the driveway after work and lifted her bag from the seat next to her, she’d balked at bringing those gruesome pictures into her home. She knew she was being silly, but she had arranged the house according to feng shui principles, and the thought of bringing such negative energy into her sanctuary bothered her. So, under the seat the files went.
She fetched a teacup from the cabinet beside the stove and packed the teaball with chamomile leaves and dried lavender from her garden. While she waited for the kettle to whistle, she moved back to the window and peered out at the car. She’d parked in the driveway, because the detached garage was filled with her gardening equipment and Ken’s fishing gear.
She stared out the window, lost in thought, until the tea kettle chirped its shrill, steamy whistle.
Caroline turned away from the window again and fixed her cup of herbal tea. She focused on the ritual of making the tea and letting it steep. Then she took her teacup into the sunroom and sat in the quiet darkness, sipping it slowly, while she considered the files she’d taken.
She returned to the kitchen and retrieved her purse from the window bench. She rifled through it and unearthed the pocket-sized directory of home phone numbers for the various members of firm administration and management.
She punched Samantha Davis’s number into her phone.
As the phone rang, Caroline tried to form the words she wanted to say to the chief security officer. I stole some photographs that Mr. Prescott wanted me to shred. I think Ellen and Clarissa’s murderer sent them.
“Hello. Davis residence,” Samantha’s silvery voice said on the other end of the line.
Caroline stared at the receiver in her hand.
“Hello?” Samantha said, more sharply this time.
Caroline clicked off and slammed the cordless phone down hard on the base.
She picked up her teacup, and her trembling hands sent the hot liquid splashing over the side. With tears of frustration pricking at her eyes, she ran to the sink and dumped the tea down the drain.
CHAPTER 32
Rich pounded the ground with a gloved fist. His legs were cramping, his stomach was rumbling, and his entire body was chilled through. He’d been crouching in the bushes outside the Landrys’ house for over an hour, squinting into the brightly lit den.
And what did he have to show for it?
A fat lot of nothing, that’s what, he thought.
The two older kids, whom he judged to be in their early teens, had been busy working on one of those g
iant jigsaw puzzles—from his vantage point it looked like a picture of a mountain range. The youngest, who looked to be about nine or ten, was sprawled on his stomach on the floor creating a complicated Legos structure.
Honey, the family’s idiotic golden retriever, who lacked the sense to even sniff out Rich’s presence, was curled into a blob of fur in front of the couch. Every so often, it would whimper and its legs would twitch, like it was dreaming of chasing a rabbit.
Martine had curled herself into a similar whimpering ball, with a soft-looking little brown blanket over her shoulders, snuggled into Tanner’s side. She was crying softly, and Tanner was stroking her hair and murmuring into her ear words that Rich couldn’t hear but assumed were comforting.
Rich did derive some satisfaction from the thought that she was sobbing over her dead friends, but it didn’t outweigh his frustration.
He been tailing Tanner for weeks now and hadn’t gotten so much of a glimpse of a vice. The worst Rich could say about the man was that he was sometimes absent-minded. But for the most part, Tanner seemed like a decent man, a good father, and a loving husband.
He hadn’t expected it to be this hard. The other two had been a breeze.
Rich had been keeping tabs on the three chick lawyers for a while—just casually, not with any real purpose. But when Ellen and Greg had jetted off on their European vacation, their empty mansion had proved irresistible. He’d broken in easily, just slipped a credit card through the side door leading from the garden. Poking around, he noted with interest Greg’s straight razor and the assorted Gamblers Anonymous pamphlets in his sock drawer.
Once the idea had taken root in his mind, figuring out a way to get at Costopolous hadn’t been difficult either. Rich had known, just from watching Nick’s comings and goings and the way he stopped to check himself out at every reflective surface, that he was a ladies’ man. His second stepfather had had the same weakness for women and his own reflection.
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