“What did you do?” Mitzy asked when they had reached the end of the sidewalk.
“I ran out of the kitchen. I ran back to my bedroom, and I called 911.”
Mitzy led Karina to the truck where Alonzo was waiting and opened the door to the front seat. She gave Karina her arm to help her in.
“Karina, this is Alonzo. I let him drive me because of the snow. He’s going to take us to that café at the bottom of the hill, okay?”
Karina nodded.
“What happened when the police arrived?” Mitzy asked.
“I stayed inside, and they talked to me. They asked me hundreds of questions about Arnold. About our marriage and the divorce.”
When they arrived at the coffee shop, Mitzy led Karina to a quiet table in the corner. The shop smelled safe and familiar, like hot brewed coffee and fresh coffee cake. Jazzy Christmas music played in the background. “Why did they ask you all of that?”
“Because I didn’t know why Arnold was there. I don’t know why he was here this morning. What could he have been doing here, Mitzy?”
Mitzy tried to think of a reason. Ex-husband, house for sale, early morning, impaled on a fence. She was at a loss. Why had Arnold been there?
Alonzo stood in line to buy their coffee, so she couldn’t ask his opinion.
“What did they do with, with Arnold?” Mitzy asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t look. I hope he is gone. I don’t want to go back until he is gone. I can stay away, can’t I?” Karina pulled the sleeve of her flannel pajama shirt out of the cuff of her coat. She wrapped it over her fingers and dabbed at her eyes.
“It’s okay. We won’t make you go back yet.”
Alonzo set the coffees down and then leaned over to whisper to Mitzy, “I’m going to wait in the truck.” He kissed her on the top of her head and slunk away.
“Did they tell you what they thought happened?”
Karina dabbed her eye again. “They saw a lot of footprints in the yard and on the balcony. They were all over. They think he fell off of the balcony.” Karina closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “But I was asleep. I was asleep in that room when it happened.”
“But didn’t you hear anything?” Mitzy’s heart was racing. She took a deep breath to calm down.
“They asked me that, but I didn’t. I take sleeping pills, and I just slept through it all.” Karina looked lost, her eyes still in shock, her face pale. She hadn’t touched her cup of coffee yet.
“What can I do for you?” Mitzy pushed the paper cup closer to Karina, hoping she would pick it up.
“Just stay with me for a little while. You were so good to come. I don’t know why I called you first, but thank you for coming.”
“Do they think he was alone, or that you were involved?”
“No, they can’t think I did it. I didn’t have any reason to. He may have left me, but I got the house. But, Mitzy, I don’t know why he was here.” Karina rested her forehead on her clenched fist and looked down at the glossy tabletop.
“Have you called the rest of the family yet?”
Karina nodded, eyes still down.
“Then just sit back and rest for a moment.”
Mitzy held her paper cup of coffee up and let the steam warm her cold lips. Karina was five feet, two inches, and a hundred pounds soaking wet. She was an aging socialite and do-gooder, not an athlete. Without her makeup on, Karina looked older than she had when they had last met. Her cheeks were hollow and deep lines radiated from her eyes and around her mouth.
She couldn’t have pushed a big man like Arnold off the balcony.
Nonetheless, someone had killed Arnold, and Karina was going to pay for it—not with jail time, Mitzy was sure—but with a lengthy and horrible delay to her plans to get on with her post-divorce life.
“I couldn’t reach Zachary. He’ll be devastated.”
“Who is Zachary?”
“Arnold’s oldest boy. I know he’s going to be crushed.”
“You didn’t leave a message?”
“No. How could I? What could I say about this in a message?”
Mitzy tilted her head sympathetically. “When was the last time you spoke with him?”
“It’s been… a while. I just don’t know what I’m going to say when I get hold of him.”
“You don’t have to call this minute. You can wait. Presumably he has caller ID and can see that you called him. Let it rest for a moment.” Mitzy sipped her coffee. She still wasn’t sure what she could do for Karina, but she’d do her best to figure it out. “Why were Zachary and Arnold not speaking?”
“Business or money. What is it ever? They haven’t been on good terms for years because Arnold wanted to sell the business and Zachary wanted to inherit it.” Karina picked up her own cup for the first time, but she did nothing more than wrap her fingers around it.
“Did Arnold eventually sell it?”
“Yes.” Karina moved the cup to her lips.
“And was that when Zachary cut his father out of his life?”
“Yes. Zachary didn’t understand. Arnold sold it because it was too big—it was going to fail. I can’t explain it. He couldn’t afford to grow his staff more, I think he said, but he couldn’t keep up with the workload any longer. I don’t really know what it all entailed. He was at a crossroads: invest more in the business to hire people and do the work better or take fewer contracts so that they could do the jobs they had at a better quality. He wanted to sell and start over. Let a big business absorb his small one and start something new. He wanted to start something that wouldn’t fail, something for both of the boys, but Zachary just wanted this business. Nothing else.”
“This was English Architecture, right?”
“Yes. And when Arnold sold it, he opened English Cottages, the small house company. Todd understood what his dad was doing.” Karina’s face blanched.
“But Todd didn’t live to see it succeed, did he?”
Karina shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
Mitzy remembered the death of Todd English well. Leukemia had taken him just a month after he graduated university, about four years ago. The family had set up the Todd English Fund for design scholarships. It had been in the news. “And after that, the divorce?”
“Arnold and the boy’s mother became very close after we lost Todd. It really shook Arnold up, and he saw that he didn’t need me anymore.”
“But he didn’t leave you for her, did he?”
“No, he didn’t leave for her in the end, but she was the first one he cheated with. At least, the first one I knew of.”
“Have the police spoken with her yet?”
“I don’t think so, but she couldn’t have killed him. She’s older than I am, and not in great health. She had a fling with Arnold, I know. But she’s been remarried almost as long as Arnold and I had been, and I don’t think she intended to leave her current husband for her ex-husband.”
Mitzy’s head was swimming with the number of husbands and wives in the conversation. How did they all keep track of each other?
“Do you have anyone else now? Someone I can call to stay with you?”
“No. I really am alone now.”
Karina was only fifty. She had spent the last twenty years trying to be important in the lives of two boys who had visited her every other weekend. She wasn’t their mother. She wasn’t their friend. And now, the father of the family was dead, she wasn’t even the step-mother anymore.
“You were counting on the sale of this house, weren’t you?” Mitzy looked out the window at her own husband sitting in his truck. The window was foggy, so she could just make out his silhouette.
“I couldn’t move on and keep the house. There wasn’t enough money for that after the divorce. And I couldn’t stay here.”
“You needed to start over.”
Karina nodded. “I needed to get away from Arnold’s lover.”
Mitzy lifted her eyebrow. “You what?” That little fact hadn’t co
me up when they listed the house.
“Livia, across the street. She doesn’t know I know, but she’s been sleeping with Arnold since before he moved out. As soon as he had finished with his first wife, he moved on to her.”
“Is that who he left you for?”
“No, he finally left to be with his assistant, a twenty-five-year-old Swedish girl he met on an airplane.”
“That dog.” Mitzy scratched an X into the corrugated sleeve on her mug with her fingernail.
“But now, even she can’t have him.” Karina pressed her hand to her forehead.
“Have you called this assistant? Or Livia?”
Karina jerked her head up. “Are you kidding? Let the police call them. I don’t have anything to say to those women.”
Mitzy sipped her coffee and considered the situation. Karina knew Mitzy’s sister-in- law, Aerin, via their fundraising connections. Karina had picked up the Neuhaus New Homes contact information at the ill-fated museum gala a couple of years back.
When Karina decided to sell her house, she called Mitzy.
Mitzy knew the English family because she kept an eye on well-designed homes. Arnold English always had a house on the Fantasy Homes Tour, and the English Cottages small house business had made some waves in the Portland design community. The scholarship he had established had received its share of media attention as well. When Arnold’s youngest son died, the family, business, and scholarship were all over the news.
But she didn’t know much about Karina. Who was she before she became Arnold’s first trophy wife? Had she been the other woman once? Did she have a bigger grudge against her ex-husband than she admitted?
And what about this Zachary? How badly did he hate his father?
“Take me back home.” Karina straightened up. She set her full cup of coffee back on the table. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I don’t really know what to do next, but I need to get home.”
“It’s not a problem. Do you want me to stay with you at the house for a while?”
“No. I need to get dressed and figure out what the police need me to do—where I need to go. Thank you anyway.” Each word seemed an effort for Karina.
“Have you called your lawyer yet?”
Karina frowned. “No, I’ve been so confused. I spoke with the police for so long, and then they suggested I call someone. I just picked up my phone, and your number caught my eye. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“It’s not a bother, Karina, but please, call your lawyer now.”
Karina lay her hands on the table, palms up.
Mitzy tried to smile. “Use my phone. It’s all right.” She passed Karina her purple smart phone. “You can even look up the number if you need to. I don’t mind.”
Karina chewed her bottom lip and started tapping the screen.
Mitzy watched the slushy rain fall outside while she waited. Down here, at the bottom of Karina’s hill, the snow still fell in wet, slick, sleet, hitting the ground only to create dirty puddles that would freeze in the night. Nothing like the pure white fluff falling a thousand feet or so above them.
Mitzy tried to zone out while Karina spoke on the phone, but it was obvious that she had reached the secretary.
Karina hung up.
“My lawyer is… he is not going to represent me. His assistant said he was Arnold’s lawyer after the divorce and so he…” Her voice trailed off. She put one hand over her eyes and took a deep breath.
“So he won’t help you with Arnold’s murder?”
Karina didn’t speak.
The phone was on the table between them. Mitzy picked it up and tapped the back of it with her acrylic nails, the clicking in rhythm with the music playing in the background.
“Don’t say anything else to the police until you get a lawyer, okay?” Mitzy’s heart was beating against her ribcage. She’d have to help. Someone on the police force, Officer McConnell, or maybe one of the other guys she’d worked with before, could give her advice. She’d call her brother Brett to find Karina the best lawyer in town. She stopped her clicking and looked at Karina again.
Gray roots were beginning to show in Karina’s once-perfect golden hair. How was Karina doing financially? Could she afford the best lawyer?
“I have a kind of delicate question… I know you needed to sell the house so you could move on with your life. But do you have enough money right now? I mean, for a lawyer?”
Karina lifted her head and smoothed back her hair with her thin, pale hand. “I should be all right now,” she said. “I’ll have the insurance money to see me through.”
“Life insurance?”
“Yes. I had a two-million-dollar policy on Arnold.”
Mitzy sucked a little breath through her teeth. She was sure this tiny woman hadn’t shoved her stocky ex-husband off of the Juliet balcony… but two million dollars was a pretty good motive. She could feel a frown forming on her face, so she pulled it back to a look of concern as quickly as she could.
Karina noted the look on Mitzy’s face and looked down at her cup. “But Arnold had one on me as well, for just as much. We bought them before the divorce. No one would expect anything less of us, surely. It’s perfectly normal.” She looked up at Mitzy again, her eyes wide and full of fear.
Mitzy had no answer for that. It may well have been perfectly normal in Karina’s set, but she didn’t want to be the one to try and convince a jury of that. She decided to turn the conversation. “Please call me and tell me where you are staying tonight. I want to know that you will be okay.”
A smile wavered on Karina’s face. “Thank you.”
Mitzy walked back to the truck with Karina. The snow had stopped falling, and the wan sun had begun to melt it. “I’ll help anyway I can.” The oily-machine-man smell of Alonzo’s truck was a comfort—something solid in a cold, confusing world.
Alonzo drove them back up the hill to the crime scene and dropped Karina off.
“Is she going to be okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t see how she can get through this alone.”
Alonzo draped his arm over Mitzy’s shoulder. “She doesn’t have to. You won’t let her go through this alone.”
Mitzy took a deep breath. “I won’t. But I don’t know how much help I can be. That family is very messed up.”
They drove the rest of the way home in silence.
When they pulled onto their street, Mitzy surveyed the homes. All single story ranch style. What kind of renovation could you do on a street like that?
Alonzo opened the car door for her and offered his arm. Compared to infidelity and murder, what was a house, really? It wasn’t the same thing as family, and she had the family thing nailed.
By five that evening, dark had already fallen, and Mitzy was tucked into her Snuggie with her laptop open to RealtorblogUSA. Her phone rang, jarring her out of her reading.
“This is Mitzy.” She stretched one arm over her head. Maybe she’d get a new house to list.
“It’s me.” Karina’s voice shook with fear, but Mitzy recognized her.
“How are you holding up?”
“They’ve arrested me. What am I going to do?”
3
“This is horrible!” Mitzy sat up with a bolt. “But why did you call me? Don’t you need to call a lawyer?”
“Hold on.” The sound from the phone muffled. Mitzy looked around for Alonzo. He sat at the table with a blueprint spread out in front of him. “Karina’s been arrested,” she whispered.
Alonzo looked up. “What?”
Karina came back on the line. Mitzy held a finger up to pause the conversation with Alonzo. “They aren’t charging me with anything, but they’ve taken me to the station, and I’m in a little room, and I really don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t say anything, okay? Not a thing. The only thing you should say is that you want a lawyer.”
“Okay, but who do I get?”
Mitzy rattled off her brother’s number.
“Call Brett Neuhaus. Tell him you are my friend. He will help you find the right lawyer. But keep quiet until you get someone there to protect your rights, okay?”
“Will your brother be my lawyer?”
“He isn’t a defense attorney, but call him, and he will help you find the right person, I promise. Call him now, okay?”
Karina choked back a sob as she said goodbye.
Mitzy hung up and stared at the screen. Brett would find Karina a lawyer, of course, but if the police had Karina down at the station, would they ever find the real killer?
She wanted to tell Karina to tell the truth. Everyone knows the truth will set you free, but with that two-million-dollar insurance policy nagging at the back of her mind, Mitzy was afraid the truth would cause more trouble this time.
“Alonzo, what do you think the best way to help Karina would be?” Mitzy turned to her husband. She leaned over the arm of the sofa, perching her chin on her fist.
“Pray.” Alonzo didn’t look up.
“Obviously, but what else?”
“You just gave her Brett’s number. Why don’t you wait until she calls you again. She seems to need someone who can listen.” Alonzo laid a small notepad on top of his blueprints and began to scratch in it with a stubby pencil.
“Maybe I could talk to her neighbors, find out what they saw.”
“Or you could just wait for her to call.”
“Do you think any of them have security cameras?” Mitzy stood up and moved to the picture window. All was dark outside. If someone were lying dead on her front lawn, she wouldn’t have been able to see it.
“Do you hear me talking to you?” Alonzo raised his voice on the last word.
“I should go talk to that lady across the street, Arnold’s girlfriend. I bet she knows something.” Mitzy pulled the curtains shut.
“Did you mean to say my name a few seconds go? Because I think you were just talking to yourself.”
Mitzy turned back to Alonzo. “I’m not talking to myself. I’m brainstorming. If you have an idea, I will respond to you.”
Traci Tyne Hilton - Mitzi Neuhaus 04 - Frozen Assets Page 2
