by Leslie Caine
“Are you going home to Steve now?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, dear. Bye.”
She hung up the phone before I could reply. I felt immensely grateful, though, that Steve’s mom and I had truly seemed to get past a barrier in our relationship. I finally believed that she sincerely was happy to have me entering her family. At the same time, I felt a pang of shame that my peace of mind had come at Drew’s expense. He hadn’t boasted to Steve that he was going to confront Mark, yet he’d gone there to discern for himself if his former girlfriend was safe around her bullying husband. Mark could have poisoned Fitz and injected Drew with a lethal dose of cocaine. If so, Drew’s decision to run surveillance had cost Drew his life.
I didn’t have time to indulge in speculations about Drew’s death and my own culpability for not helping him. I needed to be with Steve. Audrey and I exchanged quick goodbyes. Fifteen minutes later, I arrived and let myself into Steve’s and my house. The house was quiet and dimly lit, even though it was only eight-thirty or so. The living room had its typical neat, elegant appearance. Steve’s taste was all about clean lines. With my influence, the space had gone from almost Oriental in its absence of clutter and black-and-white furnishings, to a sage and dark brown décor. His leather jacket, though, had been tossed on the sofa. I could picture him coming into the empty house, seeing the door to the guest room that Drew would never again enter. Steve shrugging off his coat too overwhelmed and enervated to hang it in the closet. Heading straight to the bedroom in despair.
I followed the path I knew he’d taken, shedding my own coat and dropping it on top of his. Steve was lying on his stomach on our bed. Although I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was awake. I knelt beside him and rubbed his back.
“I couldn’t stay away,” I told him quietly.
He rolled over and reached for me. Neither of us said another word all night, but we made the truest statements we could possibly make.
The next morning, Steve told me that he wanted to head off on a hiking trail by himself, but that he would still have cellphone access. Knowing he truly did want to be alone, I assured him that he could call me anytime, but that I had plenty of tasks to keep myself busy.
I created an excuse and went to Aunt Bea’s house. Although I was loathe to admit it, the admiration I’d felt for her after Fitz’s service was now tinged with deep suspicion. I didn’t buy her story that she was simply out hunting for a condolence card. That was far too little motivation for her to suddenly use Audrey’s car without her knowledge or permission.
We sat over steaming cups of chai tea in her living room, and once again, I was taken in by the curiously comforting sensations of being in India. Aunt Bea seemed to be sincerely shaken by the news of Drew’s death. Her hands were trembling as she sipped at her tea, and her eyes looked red and weary.
We spoke solemnly about his death, which she was certain that she could and should have foreseen. Just as I was about to ask the real reason she’d borrowed Audrey’s car, she asked me, “How did you get involved in interior design?”
“I went to Parsons School of Design in New York…of ‘Project Runway’ fame.”
“But what made you interested in pursuing that as a career?”
“Most of my childhood, it was just me and my mom, living in a modest apartment in Albany, New York. We didn’t have a lot of money, and she used to dream of a time when we could afford a nice house. We’d go to open houses on weekends as our form of entertainment. Even as a little girl, I loved to look at people’s beautiful homes. I was drooling over Architectural Digest and Better Homes & Gardens when my friends were drooling over the latest teenie-bopper stud muffins in Seventeen Magazine.”
“Ah. So you were searching for a home of your own in those magazines.”
“I suppose so. What drew you to becoming a vintner in India, of all places? Isn’t there a big sector of India’s population that doesn’t drink for religious reasons?”
“Yes, but India is a large, overpopulated county. There are many people who do imbibe. Weddings especially are their pull-all-the-stops indulgence, which means that alcoholic beverages can be a lucrative venture.”
“But…a considerable percentage of the Indian population lives in dire poverty. Doesn’t that reduce your market considerably?”
She shrugged. “I like breaking the mold. Europe, South America, California, and various parts of the US already have so many vineyards. It’s a relatively recent market in India. I like being able to leave my own footprints. Even if they’re merely left in the desert sand.”
That was an interesting analogy, though I doubted there were many deserts in India. My thoughts were squarely focused on Drew dying at Mark and Michelle’s house. Without any segue, I said, “You gave Mark a head start in the beverage distribution industry, because he married Michelle.”
She grimaced. “Yes. And now I intend to get him out of the industry for mistreating her.”
“Are you one-hundred percent certain he hit her?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I’m certain enough. Ninety-eight percent, we’ll say.”
“Did you go talk to him after the memorial service? Is that why you borrowed Audrey’s car?”
She arched an eyebrow. “I drove to Michelle’s to make sure that I hadn’t started any trouble by blabbing to Eleanor and George about her black eye. But when I started to drive up, I saw that Eleanor and George were talking with Mark in the doorway, and everyone seemed to be all smiles. So I just kept going.” She snorted. “Apparently, Drew was already keeping watch on the house. I thought it was a strange coincidence that there was a red convertible on the next block, but I didn’t think it could be Drew’s. He’d been adamant about Steve not going over there. Maybe I underestimated him. I just didn’t think he really cared about Michelle. Or anybody, other than himself.”
“You never talked to Mark or Michelle?”
She shook her head. “I was too embarrassed to let myself get caught trying to help out the Sullivans, one more time. They appreciate it when I actually do help, but resent it otherwise. Then they call me a busybody and the ‘family loon.’”
I hoped I’d managed to keep myself from wincing. I hadn’t realized she was aware of Steve’s term for her.
“As you know,” she continued, “Drew always struck me as arrogant and self-centered. But he was also a true friend to Steve, and he truly cared for Michelle. I wanted him out of my adoptive family’s lives, but I would never have wished anything bad on him. I’d have been thrilled if he’d married an Indian princess and moved to Delhi.”
My phone rang. It was Steve. I answered immediately. “Hi, darling,” he said, but his voice was sad. “I just got a call from a Denver police detective. He wants us both to come down to the stationhouse and let them interview us separately about Drew. I may as well get this over with right away. Want to drive down together?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, rising from my seat. “It’ll make it a little better to be together for the drive, anyway. Even though they’ll separate us during the interrogations. Interviews. Whatever.” I’d been through too many of these not to dread the whole thing.
Aunt Bea and I exchanged our goodbyes. I believed her, more or less. Her story left her with a good fifteen to twenty minutes unaccounted for, which might have given her the time to spot Drew skulking around Michelle’s house and to wait for Steve’s parents to leave with Zoey, but I couldn’t really imagine her confronting Drew and injecting him with a lethal dosage of drugs or poison. Why would she?
Although my expectations were extremely low, I’d vastly underestimated just how unpleasant my police interview would be. A uniformed officer took Steve into one room. A middle-aged detective with black hair and a mustache that hadn’t been in fashion since the nineties brought me into a separate room. Already familiar with how these things were done, I knew that my best chance of getting any information from him was right at the beginning, when his method was likeliest to be establishing a
sense of camaraderie with me. I asked if they were considering Drew’s death to be a homicide or an accidental overdose. His reply had been: “Why do you ask?”
Things went downhill from there.
After I’d calmly repeated every aspect of my experiences at the funeral three times and answered every question, I was beginning to get impatient, and told him that I wanted to call an end to the session.
That was the wrong thing to say. The officer glared at me and shut his notebook. “You’ve been involved in a few murder cases in Crestview the last three years.”
“Yes.”
“Quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say? All of these murders? All of the victims knowing you?”
“Yes. And very unfortunate for my sake.”
“No kidding.”
“I had nothing to do with Fitz Parker’s poisoning. And my fiancé and I were together, driving home to Crestview at the time of Drew’s death.”
“Even so, don’t leave town anytime soon.”
“We’re going to Europe on our honeymoon next week.”
“I don’t advise that. You don’t want to force me to get an injunction to stop you from leaving the country.”
“I didn’t kill Drew Benson!”
“For your sake, you’d better be telling the truth. You might have pulled the wool over Detective O’Reilly’s eyes, but mine are wide open. And they’re looking right at you.”
I would have thrown a toddler-esque tantrum on the spot, if I’d thought for a half second that it would help my predicament. This was monumentally unfair. It wasn’t bad enough that two key figures in my wedding were murdered within ten days of the wedding? I had to be investigated as a suspect myself?
“I wish you’d focus them on the facts of the investigation instead, and get the killer behind bars.” I rose. “We’re done here. If you want to speak with me again, I’ll be accompanied by my lawyer.”
“Just out of curiosity, Ms. Gilbert, what makes you so sure Mr. Benson’s death was a homicide?”
“The fact that you’re asking about previous already-solved murders, for one thing.”
He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “The memorial service you attended in Denver yesterday was for someone who was poisoned at your house,” he countered.
“Yes, but that’s within the Crestview police jurisdiction, not Denver’s. That’s why I’m assuming you’ve determined that Drew’s death was a murder.”
“By the sounds of it you’ve turned yourself into quite the little amateur sleuth.” He smirked at me. “Do you have any evidence to suspect anyone of killing Mr. Benson?”
“No. I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“I’m curious about your speculations. Any suggestions for where we should look to uncover evidence?”
“I assume you dusted the syringe for prints.”
“We did, but we only found one print. Of Mr. Benson’s thumb.”
That was interesting. The syringe had to have been handled. It should have been rife with fingerprints, unless Drew had been wearing gloves without thumbs. “So someone had made the effort to wipe off all of prints from the syringe, yet wanted you to find a Drew’s thumbprint.”
The officer held my gaze, but made no remark.
Steve was waiting for me near the front entrance. He put his arm around me as we left. “How did it go?” he asked.
“Miserably, for the most part. All this time I’ve complained about Detective O’Reilly. But whenever I talk to another detective outside of Crestview, I realize how great he’s been.”
“I know what you mean,” Steve said. “The officer who spoke with me seemed to be pulling at straws. I hope they work with the Crestview police. I don’t see this department solving Drew’s murder on their own.”
“At least they figured out it was murder, thanks to the fingerprints on the syringe. Or, rather, the lack of them.”
“Not counting the thumb print,” Sullivan added. He’d been given the same information I had. It hit me that the story could have been agreed upon purely for the purposes of interviewing Steve and me. Maybe they suspected we were a Bonnie and Clyde and wanted to see how we’d react.
“I know this is self-absorbed of me, but I’m relieved,” Steve said. “I don’t know how long it would have taken me to forgive myself if he’d OD’ed. But like Fitz, he was murdered, by someone who targeted him. I wasn’t personally responsible.”
“Right. You weren’t.” I was glad I hadn’t voiced my doubts about the veracity of the story about a lone thumb print on the syringe.
“So, unless the DPD gets hit by a lightning bolt sent by Thor with the killer’s name on it, it looks like the honeymoon’s off,” Steve said. “Or, rather, delayed.”
That sounded promising; going on a honeymoon paled in comparison to the wedding. “Do you want to simply delay the wedding and try to reschedule the trip to Europe?”
“No, Erin. I don’t want to delay. Will you marry me next Saturday?”
“Yes.” I was both so relieved about the wedding and upset about the murder that I started laughing and crying at the same time.
Steve held me tightly and rocked me a little so that we swayed. “Then, after the ceremony, we’ll go on our exotic honeymoon. To Sing Sing.”
I laughed heartily, mostly out of exhaustion, I think. “Perfect. That’s precisely where the CPD and the DPD want to send me anyway. Free transportation.”
“Don’t worry, darling. I’ll slip you a hacksaw in a piece of wedding cake. And I promise we’ll break you out of jail before our first anniversary.”
“Such a thoughtful husband I’ll have.”
“Forever and always.”
Chapter 20
As we left the station house in Denver, I decided that it was time to face the ticking time bomb; I convinced Steve to drop in on his parents. I was awash in a sea of conflicting emotions as we pulled into the driveway. I didn’t know how he would handle hearing that his mother had had an affair with a man thirty years her junior. Not to mention that she’d gotten us to hire him in order to keep him quiet about it.
Both she and George were home. George answered the door, and he and Steve shook hands, which seemed quaint and charming to me. “Gilbert and Sullivan are here,” George called over his shoulder. Eleanor quickly appeared, drying her hands on a dishtowel. She gave me an intense look, which struck me as tinged with fear. She then surprised Steve by giving him a lengthy hug.
“Mom? Are you okay?” he asked.
“Not really. No.” Keeping a grip on his arm, she said, “We need to talk. In private.”
I saw George wince but doubted that Steve noticed. George touched my arm. “Let me show you the vegetable garden,” he said. “You can give me your opinion on the onions.”
“The onions?”
“That’s okay, George,” Eleanor said. “You can stay inside if you’d like. I want Steve to walk with me for a while. Erin, you don’t mind, do you?”
“No, no,” I replied with false levity. “Take your time. I’ll busy myself opining on onions. Giving my op-onion, as it were.” I was blathering out of nervousness. I felt complicit and worried, still a little afraid that no matter what Steve said or did to show that my fears were baseless, he’d find out that I was unworthy of him. Now here I was, dropping him off unknowing into an emotional minefield. Was that wrong? Should I have defied his mother’s wishes and told him? Where was my Dear Abby app to guide my behavior during a love relationship? I very much doubted I was the only human being who’d ever felt this clueless before getting married.
There was a palpable silence when Steve and Eleanor left George and me standing in the foyer. “Do you have any actual interest in onions, Erin?” George asked.
“Well, I’m not sure how to quantify my interest in onions. The subject is a little outside of my typical arena of expertise, but that makes it a topic I could stand to learn about.”
George gave me a big smile. I could see so much of Steve in him that I’
d felt a kinship the first time we met. That hadn’t changed, despite my knowledge that he’d cheated on his wife. “Well, then, let’s go take a look.”
He put on a well-used-looking fisherman’s hat and led me out the front door. “The garden’s ‘round back, but we might as well take the long way.”
“Why onions, in particular?” I asked. “They aren’t the only vegetable you’re growing, are they?”
“No, but that was the first thing I ever planted. It’s silly, really. My growing onions came about from a kid’s song, about a lonely petunia in an onion patch. Eleanor had an entire section of a flower bed dedicated to petunias.”
“So you planted an onion among them?” I guessed.
“Yes, indeed. A few years later, I took to planting different types of onion plants. Now I have twenty varieties of onions.”
We chatted about his plants as we entered the back yard. Someone slid the door open and called, “Hi, Erin.” It was Amelia, closely followed by Michelle.
“Hi,” I greeted them.
“When did you get here?” George asked Michelle.
“Oh, twenty, thirty minutes ago. I’ve been talking to Amelia. You were in the shower.”
“I was?”
“Mom said you were.” Michelle shifted her gaze to me. “Erin, do you have some time to talk about the wedding and whatnot?”
“Um, sure. But first your father is showing me his onion garden.”
We continued on, with Amelia and Michelle taking seats on the back porch to wait for me. George, I’m sure, gave me the Cliff Notes version of his onion tour. Admittedly, I’ve seen more interesting gardens, but I sincerely enjoy someone showing me their hobbies or passions, regardless of the subject matter. It’s delightful to see someone’s face light up as they’re talking about a special interest, or how precise and efficient a person’s movements can be when they’ve practiced a particular craft.
“Sorry, Dad,” Amelia said when he’d shown me the last plant. “I’m going to steal Erin away from you. You don’t mind, though, right,” she said with no hint of her statement being a question.
