“When was the last time you saw her?”
“A week ago Tuesday. My husband and I had drinks with her and her husband, Roger.” Polite drinks. Ignore the elephant drinks. We’re-boinking-like-bunnies-and-you-don’t-have-the-courage-to-do-anything-about-it drinks.
“I thought you didn’t like her.”
“Sometimes sharing a history is more important than liking someone.”
He nodded as if he understood. “You told Officer Roberts that you’re an artist.”
“I did. I am.”
“What kind?” Detective Jones sounded disapproving again. Like I’d broken another unwritten rule. You shall not swim alone. You shall not be an artist unless you struggle with poverty and personal hygiene.
“I paint.”
“So you notice details.”
“I suppose.” My gaze traced the celadon threads in his pants. Where they intersected with navy, the threads looked almost green. When they met cream, they looked gray.
“What did you see in the parking lot this morning?”
I closed my eyes and pictured my car’s headlights cutting through the lot. Ansil Merriwether’s navy Cadillac with the dented fender was parked across two spots. He’d probably been clutching a scotch when he arrived for drinks with his cronies. A jaunty red Mercedes braved the morning dew with its top down. “Madeline’s car is in the lot. It’s the convertible.”
“Any idea why she’d be here in the middle of the night?”
“Middle of the night?” I’d leapt to the assumption that she’d closed the bar, wandered down to the pool after drinks and dinner and more drinks and fallen in.
He nodded. “The club security guard thought he heard something around one. He turned on the lights in the pool. It was empty.”
After nearly forty years, you come to know a person. Their likes, their dislikes, their foibles. So I knew. Madeline hadn’t stopped by the club for a swim in her favorite Halston dress in the middle of the night.
In the unlikely event that the most self-centered woman on the planet decided to kill herself, it wouldn’t be by drowning. Madeline wouldn’t want the water to bloat her features. Not an accident. Not a suicide. She’d been murdered.
The shake of my shoulders had nothing to do with the cool morning breeze. The wronged wife who found her was going to be the prime suspect.
A murder suspect. Me. Ellison Walford Russell. Mother was going to kill me.
I toyed with the idea of asking Detective Jones to put me in protective custody.
Of course, I wasn’t a suspect. Yet. I would be as soon as the detective with the nice brown eyes learned that the woman who found Madeline had a good reason to kill her. He’d find out. No doubt about it. Madeline and Henry hadn’t been discreet. Not remotely.
Getting caught in the coatroom at the club Christmas party was the rough equivalent of renting a billboard. Apparently rubbing Roger’s and my noses in their affair was part of the fun.
I gave it an hour before some helpful, civic-minded woman who spent her days playing tennis or golf or sunning called Detective Jones and told him all about it. I took a deep breath of air scented with damp grass and chlorine. “Madeline was sleeping with my husband.”
His gaze sharpened. It shifted between me and the body on the concrete. “Why are you telling me?”
“Because Madeline would never kill herself. Not like this.”
Detective Jones drummed his fingers on his knee. Long, almost elegant fingers. He waited for me to say something else, using his silence against me. My father used to do the same thing when I came home late for curfew and he wanted to know where I’d been. It was a good technique. I used it with my daughter. It wouldn’t work on me.
The silence stretched. I put down my empty coffee cup and crossed my arms over my chest.
Detective Jones smiled. It was the indulgent smile mothers give to toddlers. A smile that said I’ll let you win this battle, but I’ll win the war. It chilled my blood. “How long have you known?” he asked.
“Eight months.”
He nodded as if I’d answered more than just his question.
His fingers stilled. “Did you kill her?”
The birds warbling, the voices of the men by the pool, and the sound of the water as it lapped into the gutter all faded into silence. “No.” My voice was too loud. “I’m not a killer.” Nope, I was a woman who sounded about as convincing as Dick Nixon when he said I’m not a crook.
Those nice eyes didn’t look nice anymore. They narrowed.
“Any idea who else might want her dead?”
Who else? Besides Roger and me? I might as well hand him the club directory. I shivered in the sunshine. Someone had killed Madeline. Probably someone I knew. “She wasn’t well liked.”
He raised a brow. Detective Jones was going to try silence again.
I shifted and focused on a robin perched on the edge of a deck chair farther down the row. It watched the activity near the pool with unabashed interest. Someone in a uniform was zipping Madeline into a black bag.
“What did she do?” Detective Jones sounded annoyed.
“When she wasn’t playing tennis or golf or bridge, she worked part-time for an art gallery.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I forced myself to look into Detective Jones’ narrowed eyes. “She slept with other women’s husbands, she spread malicious gossip, and she wasn’t above a spot of blackmail.”
“Blackmail?”
“To get invitations to the right parties. That sort of thing.”
He tilted his head slightly to the side. “I’m going to need a list.”
He wasn’t asking for a list, he was asking me to commit social suicide. I had about as much chance of surviving as a kamikaze pilot. If the ladies who lunch didn’t kill me, Mother would. “I can’t help you.”
Again with the narrowed eyes. I liked Detective Jones much better when he was being solicitous and pouring me coffee.
I lifted my shoulders and let them fall. My path was clear. I couldn’t help him. A glowering police detective was nowhere near as intimidating as Mother when she was on the warpath. If I sold out any of her friends or their daughters...Well, Custer’s Last Stand would look like a day in the park. She’d massacre me.
Detective Jones nodded. Slowly. “I’ll have to ask you to come down to the station to make a statement.”
Which is how the worst morning ever got worse.
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The Country Club Murders
by Julie Mulhern
Novels
THE DEEP END (#1)
GUARANTEED TO BLEED (#2)
CLOUDS IN MY COFFEE (#3)
SEND IN THE CLOWNS (#4)
WATCHING THE DETECTIVES (#5)
COLD AS ICE (#6)
SHADOW DANCING (#7)
Short Stories
DIAMOND GIRL
A Country Club Murder Short
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