Groundwork for Murder

by Marilyn Baron

  “Thank you,” said Nick.

  “For what?”

  “For the night, for everything. For putting together the show. For not telling me. For your tribute to Samantha.”

  “I was glad to do it for you. And thank you for the nice things you said about my work. I don’t deserve them. What I did to you was unforgivable. I used you to get my own show.”

  Nick smiled. “That’s not the worst transgression, in the scheme of things. And your work, your new work, is outstanding. You deserve to have your own show. I was proud to have your work displayed along with mine.”

  She squeezed Nick’s hand in silent gratitude.

  “Elizabeth must have known I was Mark’s wife all along. She’s just been toying with me, taunting me,” Alex said. “She agreed to the show because she recognized herself in the sketches and she reveled in it. And, of course, promoting Dominick Anselmo boosted her prestige and her business. Well, she can have my husband. I never want to see Mark Newborn again.”

  “You know you don’t mean that,” Nick said gently.

  “What am I going to do?” Alex said, looking up at Nick.

  “You’re going to go on. Just like I did.”

  “It’s not the same. Your wife didn’t want to leave you. It would have been better if Mark were dead.”

  Nick flinched.

  “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”

  “Alex, don’t make me out to be a saint. Sam deserved much better than me. The truth is, I’m a fraud.”

  Nick dropped his voice and barely whispered, “I never really loved her, not at the beginning.”

  “But…”

  “I got a young girl pregnant, when it was you I really wanted, but I couldn’t have you. I knew I shouldn’t have you. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her after that. They kicked her out of school. She had nowhere to turn. What is the saying? ‘You make your own bed.’ I couldn’t just walk away from her. I had an obligation. She was carrying my child.”

  “You married her, took care of her when she was sick, even after you’d lost your child. Not many men would have done that. I doubt that Mark would have.”

  “I’m not proud of the way I behaved. I had a lot to make up for. So who am I to criticize your husband’s behavior? If it’s any consolation, it looked like he was coming after you at the end. He’d be a fool not to.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t even think he’s sorry for what he’s done. I’m sure he went home with his lover. And if he stays out tonight, I’m kicking him out for good. Hey, doesn’t Elizabeth live somewhere around here?”

  Nick grabbed her at the waist and steered her back in the direction of the car.

  “It’s here, isn’t it? She lives right here. This is the house in your sketches.”

  “We’re going back now,” Nick said. “The last thing you want is a confrontation—not in your condition. You want to be strong when you face them.”

  “I want to see them. I want to see if he’s with her. I need to see.” A furious gust of wind nearly knocked her off her feet. She wobbled and nearly fainted, coughing up the last remnants of food and drink in her stomach. Nick lifted her up and tossed her gently over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  “We’re going home, bella. You’re exhausted.”

  “P-put me down, please.” The world was spinning.

  “Let me get you home and wait there with you,” Nick said, setting her gently on the ground. “I could help you board up your house. This storm is moving in fast. I could wait outside to make sure Mark’s home and everything’s all right.”

  “What good would it do? Everything’s not all right, and it never will be again. And you know Mark isn’t coming home.”

  She wound her arms around Nick’s neck and pressed her body against his, trying not to slur her words. She had something important to say to this man.

  “What if I had convinced you to make love to me all those years ago, back in your classroom? Would we be together now, I wonder?”

  Nick stared deeply into her eyes.

  “I wanted you, Alexandra, with all my heart and with my body and soul. I wanted you. And only you. I knew it was wrong, but I almost gave in to you. It took everything in me to turn you away. And when you didn’t come back to my class, well, it was one of my biggest regrets. I loved you then, and I’m falling—”

  “I’m falling too.” Alex sighed and smiled, holding him tighter.

  She clung to Nick, unwilling to break the connection or let go of the warmth his body provided. First, she planted a soft kiss on Nick’s cheek, then his nose, then lightly on his lips. She brought her hands up to caress his face and deepened the kiss.

  Nick shivered in response to her touch.

  “Alexandra,” he whispered, as if his heart would break, and the next instant, he broke the connection, gently prying her away.

  “You’re doing it again,” Alex accused.

  “You don’t even know what you’re saying,” Nick protested. “This is all about Mark and your anger at your husband. And you won’t even remember a word I’ve said tomorrow or a thing you’ve done. Now, listen to me. I’m going to walk you back to your car. Then I’m going to drive you home.”

  “Will you stay with me?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “W-what will you do? Do you have a place to sleep tonight?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said Nick. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Then so can I,” Alex said indignantly. Mark didn’t want her, and Nick, despite everything he said, was rejecting her, again.

  “I don’t need your help. I can drive home by myself.”

  Alex grabbed her shoes from Nick and stomped off in her bare feet in the direction of her car. Any Champagne she’d had was surely out of her system by now, hurled onto the beach, washed away by the waves. She left Nick alone, with no place to stay in the middle of a full-blown storm, and she was filled with regret.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Collision Course

  Nick woke from a fitful sleep, sprawled in the dunes outside Elizabeth Diamond’s beach house, battling a splitting headache and choking on a mouthful of seaweed and sand. In his dream he had been kissing Alex. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but all that wine on an empty stomach had numbed his senses until he’d passed out.

  He was familiar with Elizabeth’s house. He’d slept in her garage many times, although she’d had no idea he’d been there. He’d used his sketch pad, the one Alex had given him, as a pillow to cushion himself from the chill of the concrete floor, and left his pad and art supplies at Elizabeth’s when he was working at Reed’s. Ever since he’d reconnected with Alex he carried the pad because, for the first time in a long time, he was compelled to draw and paint.

  He was stone cold from head to toe and shaking, even though he wore Alex’s husband’s wool suit. The damp suit didn’t offer much protection. He’d wanted to return Mark’s suit, but Alex had insisted he keep it, and now it was ruined.

  “He won’t be needing it,” she’d told him, describing her plan to toss all the clothes in Mark’s closet out on the lawn in the rain.

  He vaguely recalled Alex had left him to go home. She’d been drunk and more than upset, ranting and raving about killing her husband. That was before she’d kissed him.

  He still felt her kiss down to the marrow of his bones, and the thought of that kiss warmed him. For a minute he thought his heart had stopped. He’d wanted to kiss her back, to do more than that, to love her and take her right there on the beach in the middle of a raging storm. He needed her with an urgency her kiss had ignited. But she wasn’t kissing him so much as she was retaliating against Mark.

  He’d wanted to show her his true feelings for months, but the situation was hopeless. She was a married woman, even though her marriage appeared to be in shreds. And he had nothing to offer her.

  She’d offered him a ride to the shelter downtown, and he’d declined. He
hadn’t wanted her to drive more than the short distance to her home in this storm. And not in her condition. He would borrow one of the Reed’s vans and check on her in the morning, see how she’d fared during the hurricane. See if her rat of a husband had the nerve to show his cheating face at home. Find out if she followed through with her threat to show him the door if he did.

  At this late hour, the city shelter would be closed anyway, and public transportation no longer ran between the beach and the city. This was a dangerous storm, a Category Three, maybe a Four, Nick estimated. The shelter staff had warned everyone to check in early, but Nick had needed some time alone with Alex, to make sure she was okay.

  He hated that he had been the cause of Alex’s pain. If he hadn’t sketched Elizabeth and Mark, Alex might never have found out about their affair. Maybe she was better off not knowing. But he’d had only the best intentions. It was his way of telling her before she found out by accident, possibly walking in on them in her own bed.

  The lovers had been cruelly blatant and reckless. They were bound to get caught sooner or later. They’d been seen all over town, but, as usual, the wife was always the last to know.

  Someone moved in the darkness. Mark Newborn was walking up to his mistress’s house.

  How could a man who knew his wife had discovered his affair continue on this collision course? Surely he should be heading home by now, crawling on his hands and knees to beg Alex for forgiveness. Nick knew if he had a woman as special as Alexandra, he would move heaven and earth to keep her. Nick moved closer to Elizabeth’s house to investigate.

  Mark Newborn’s car was parked in the driveway, which confirmed his suspicions the man would continue to hurt Alex. Nick hid in the bushes at the side of the house and waited for Mark to ring the doorbell.

  Chapter Twenty

  Shopping Therapy

  Dejected, Mark waited in the rain for Bitsy to come home from the gallery opening. He could have waited in the car, but being wet and miserable fit his mood. He deserved to be punished. Bitsy was late, so he had plenty of time to replay in his head the things that had gone wrong in his life.

  His bad luck had started with the layoff five months ago. He couldn’t believe Outer Island Realty had let him go after twelve hardworking, prosperous years. Didn’t loyalty count for anything? He had made the company a lot of money. He really thought his own good fortune would go on forever. He should have known things weren’t going well when the usually symbiotic sales team seemed to get younger and younger and started scrapping over the highest priced properties, like a desperate pack of hungry wolves. He had been aged out, his head stuck firmly in the beach sand. That was a harsh reality to accept.

  How would he pay the bills, feed his family, keep his girls in college? How was he going to keep Alex stocked in art supplies and pay off her charge cards? Why did his wife have to have such an expensive hobby anyway, or such expensive tastes? More to the point, did he even have a wife anymore? How was he going to explain his affair with Bitsy? At this point, he had more questions than answers.

  When he found out about the layoff, he didn’t go straight home to his wife. That had been his first mistake. How could he think she wouldn’t understand? Alex was, or had been, a very understanding woman. But how would she react to such devastating news? He knew that, the moment he told her, he’d be a failure in her eyes, and he couldn’t let that happen.

  No, the first thing he had done was go to the local watering hole and drown himself in a vodka and soda with a dash of aromatic bitters.

  He’d signaled the bartender. “Make it a double, mister.”

  Vodka and soda had always been his standard, happy, best-friend drink. Now, the dash of bitters became more than a dash and the bitters turned into red hot anger. He was resentful, all right. He was let go in such a matter-of-fact, geez-we’re-sorry-ol’-buddy sort of way. They sure loved him when he was the top producer and bringing in the big bucks for the firm. The day he was fired was still seared in his memory. He’d never shaken that feeling of dread. The shame of being unemployed. It was happening to everyone he knew, but that didn’t make him feel any better. He’d pleaded with his boss, promised he would do better, all the while knowing there was nothing he could do, nothing any of them could do. He’d gotten angry, and his boss had called security to escort him out of the building. He’d never been so embarrassed in his life, until now.

  The day after they’d let him go, Mark got up and followed his usual routine as if nothing had happened. He did two miles on the treadmill while reading the paper. He showered, dressed, grabbed his coffee and a breakfast bar, and kissed Alex goodbye. Off he went with such purpose—and at the same time with no purpose at all.

  He thought he should look around for an office, some storefront space to keep up his own front. He just needed a phone, a part-time secretary, or even just an answering service. He’d tell his wife he had changed his phone number to a dedicated personal line so he could keep his clients away from the other sales people. He had to make sure Alex understood she should never call him on his old line. He was determined to keep this whole matter a secret from his wife and kids. And his deceit had just started.

  Alex always said that shopping made her feel better. Shopping therapy was a widely accepted practice known to all women. He thought maybe he would give it a try, now that he was out of work and had a lot of time on his hands. Alex’s birthday was right around the corner. He could start looking in advance for something special for her fortieth birthday.

  He was a last-minute kind of guy who usually bought his wife something the day of her birthday, without much thought at all. This time he would search for the perfect gift. An expensive one, at that. That way she would never suspect he was unemployed.

  Unemployed. He had never associated that word with himself. That was a word uttered by other people…hopeless, homeless people. The ones begging for change on the street corner, holding Will Work for Food signs. How humiliating. That was not him. He would never stoop so low.

  “Get a job, buddy,” was his usual refrain when he spotted a hobo outside the window of his sports car. Now he was that guy on the highway looking for a job, holding the hand-scrawled cardboard placard. He was on the outside looking in. Alex would be horrified when she learned about his predicament.

  Mark pulled up to Harbor Island Jewelers, the most exclusive jewelry store this side of the intercoastal waterway. He was determined to buy something other than a kitchen appliance for Alex. She would be so happy, he thought, that she would thank him in more than words.

  Sex with his wife was not bad, just less frequent and less passionate these last few years. She was exhausted at the end of her busy day, and he had stopped being attentive. Neither one of them was trying that hard to reignite the spark they once had. They’d become more like roommates, or at least that’s what he’d told himself.

  It wasn’t that Alex wasn’t pretty or nice or a wonderful mother. She had just shifted her priorities away from him. They were coexisting for the sake of the children. It wasn’t a bad marriage; it just could have been so much more. Now he needed it to be more. He needed something exciting to look forward to in his life.

  “Sir, can I help you find something?” the salesman asked.

  “I’m looking for a gift for my wife,” answered Mark.

  “What did you have in mind? A necklace, a bracelet, a ring?”

  Mark let his eyes wander over the glass cases in front of him, and then to a more expensive collection, until they settled on a rather dazzling piece of jewelry.

  “Maybe—that diamond necklace over there.”

  “Oh, you’re talking about that small one (the salesman’s voice was flashing the word cheap like a neon sign). Simple, practical, understated.”

  “Yes,” Mark said, thinking the man had described his wife as if he had known her personally. “How much is it?”

  “It’s only twelve hundred dollars, quite a bargain for a half-carat diamond,” the salesman said, r
ather condescendingly.

  Mark thought that was a ridiculously high amount. Where was Alex going to wear that anyway? To the gym? While she painted? To her art classes? She never went anywhere that involved the need to dress up.

  As he contemplated the steep price, the door to the jewelry store opened, the bell tinkled, and like a summer breeze, in sashayed a beautiful blonde. Mark was as mesmerized as Alex had been when she’d gone on about that damn chandelier in that furniture store. This gem of a woman definitely sparkled.

  “Good morning, Miss Diamond. I take it you had a good day at the gallery?” asked the salesman.

  “Oh, Andre, you know me too well,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll just look around for my special treat while you help this handsome gentleman here.”

  Mark couldn’t believe it. She was on a first-name basis with the jeweler? What was it with women and shopping? This woman could give Alex a run for her money in the spending department.

  “He can’t seem to decide on a gift for his wife. Maybe you can make a suggestion. You have such good taste in jewelry.”

  “Well, let’s see, if I were his wife, I would really love that diamond bracelet I’ve had my eye on for so long. You know the one, Andre. That gift would assure him of weeks of endless lovemaking.”

  When the woman smiled at him, Mark’s knees almost buckled.

  “And it’s a special price of forty-nine ninety-nine, this week only,” said Andre.

  Mark figured the man didn’t mean $49.99. Not many items in this store were under a thousand dollars. This place was way out of his league and his price range. Especially now. But it didn’t cost anything to play the game.

  “Thanks for the suggestion, Miss Diamond. I didn’t catch your first name,” Mark said smoothly.

  “I didn’t give it. But it’s Elizabeth. Elizabeth Diamond. Easy to remember. My friends call me Bitsy.”

  She turned to the man who had been waiting on him.

  “Andre, be a dear and ring up those pearl earrings for me. And please, have Lauren wrap them up for me the way I like it. You know how I enjoy giving myself gifts and how much I love stripping off those silky ribbons one by one until I lay the gift bare.”