Death Will Pay Your Debts

by Elizabeth Zelvin

  "Maybe it wasn't somebody who was really in the program," she said. "They could pick up enough by listening to make it up."

  "The catch," Natali said, "is if the person was connected with Sophia, how did they know who Judith was? Didn't you say that you people don't like to tell anyone who your sponsor is?"

  Cindy winced. She wished Natali wouldn't keep saying "you people." If she could prove herself as a detective, maybe he'd stop.

  "Judith might have made contact," she said. "If she was going to blow the whistle on this person, she might have thought it was only fair to tell him first."

  "That's a classic dumb move," Natali said. "Even these mystery writers know better by now, most of them. Not that I read that crap."

  Cindy stifled a grin. Natali wouldn't have said that if he didn't read crime fiction. A guilty pleasure? Barbara would get a chuckle out of that. If she ever saw Barbara again. If she started seeing Bruce again.

  "I wish I could say that recovering people do the right thing, even when it's hard, because they have so much integrity," Cindy said. "But she was only a few days sober. She might not have been thinking straight. If it didn't occur to her that the lover might be the killer, she wouldn't have thought it was dangerous to meet him. Besides, if she met him in a public place, she would have thought that she was safe."

  "Even after Sophia's murder?" Natali said. "Like I said, dumb."

  "I told you she wasn't thinking straight," Cindy said.

  Now Larry Kane, who obviously wasn't the lover but could have been the killer, sat across from her in the interview room, dressed in a lawyer suit he might have worn to meet with a corporate client and trying, not entirely successfully, to hide his discomfort with sitting in the suspect's seat.

  "Detective, I'll be frank with you," he said.

  The jury was still out, in Cindy's opinion, on whether anyone could tell when someone was lying. It might be fact or myth that phrases like "I'll be frank," "to tell the truth," and "honestly" were tells for upcoming lies. And body language could mean a lot of different things. Wasn't that why homo sapiens developed words?

  "I didn't kill my wife," he said. "But she was having an affair."

  "Did you know that she was pregnant?" Cindy asked.

  "Honestly, I didn't," he said. "Not until you told me."

  "Are you sure about that, Mr. Kane?"

  Was he lying? If he had known, it could have been a motive to kill his wife.

  "Yes!" He leaned forward in his chair. "If I had known, I would have told you I couldn't wait to be a father, not that I didn't want children. I knew the baby wasn't mine."

  "How did you know that?"

  Was he about to tell her they hadn't been having sex? That they were talking about a divorce, maybe? He had to know that he was giving her additional motives. Not that motive constituted proof. At this point, it seemed likely that they would never trace the poison. The Internet was like a giant game of Whack-A-Mole, whether the moles were porn or contraband, identity theft or secrets.

  "I've had a vasectomy," he said.

  "How did your wife feel about that?" she asked.

  "She didn't know."

  "Did you discuss the matter of having children with your wife at any time?"

  "Yes," he said, "though not since the vasectomy. When we did discuss it, we agreed we didn't want kids. I told you that."

  "You've just admitted that if you'd known she was pregnant, you would have lied about it."

  "I've admitted nothing. I gave you a hypothetical case. I didn't know."

  "Why didn't you tell her about the vasectomy?" she asked.

  "I knew I wouldn't ever change my mind," he said. "She was more ambivalent."

  The vasectomy would have freed him to play around.

  "Did you have relations with women other than your wife?" she asked.

  "To tell the truth," he said, "I had a brief affair. One."

  As Bruce said, if all Cretans are liars . . .

  "With whom, please?"

  "It was a colleague's wife, actually. We knew them socially."

  "Their names, please? If they have nothing to do with your wife's murder, there will be no reason to release this information publicly."

  "Marcia Baldwin-Kerensky. She's Damian Kerensky's wife."

  "Would you describe Mr. Kerensky as simply a colleague or more of a friend?"

  Kane looked down at his well manicured hands.

  "A friend."

  "Why did you choose to sleep with your friend's wife, Mr. Kane?"

  "It wasn't like that. It just happened," he said.

  Cindy bit down on the corner of her lip to curb a derisive smile at the spectacle of a lawyer trying to look hapless.

  "Honestly, it didn't mean a thing to either Marcia or me."

  "Then why did you do it, Mr. Kane?"

  "If you must know," he said angrily, "because I thought he was sleeping with my wife. And I'm not sure he didn't kill her."

  She had better add "if you must know" to her list of lie markers, though she mustn't forget that he might be telling the truth.

  "What makes you think that, Mr. Kane?"

  "Which? The affair or the murder?"

  "Let's take them one at a time," she said. "Do you have proof that they were having an affair?"

  "No," he said. "And before you ask, I didn't ask either of them outright. I was hoping it would blow over. But you've visited our office. Sophia's was right down the hall, and he spent a lot of time there."

  "She was working on his election campaign."

  "That didn't account for all the visits, especially in the late afternoon, and all the dinner meetings that lasted till late at night. I was married to Sophia for ten years. I know how she worked. She could have done most of it by email and phone the way she did with her other clients."

  "What makes you think the affair could have led to his killing her?"

  "That's your job, isn't it?" he said. "I can think of a few reasons. Maybe he wanted to end the affair and she didn't. Maybe she wanted to have the baby and leave me for him. He's running for public office, and his wife's money is funding the campaign. Maybe she said she'd get an abortion and he didn't want to go on record as supporting that. Maybe he even disapproved. She could have threatened to tell Marcia. She didn't know I'd know for sure that the baby couldn't be mine. But she didn't know how I'd react if she told me she was having our baby and wanted me to be happy about it."

  "No, she didn't," Cindy said.

  She left it there. Silence was as much a cop skill as a therapist skill. Sure enough, he couldn't let it be.

  "I didn't kill her!" he shouted. "Look at this!"

  He reached into his pocket. Cindy tensed, ready to spring into action if necessary. He threw something sparkling onto the table between them. Refracted light cast rainbows around the dull little interview room. The dazzle resolved into a double circle of diamonds: a tennis bracelet.

  "This was Sophia's," Kane said. "I thought she'd bought it for herself. She didn't like me to buy her jewelry, at least not as a surprise. She didn't like my taste. Half the time, she would take it back. Her business was doing well. The first time I saw it on her wrist, she laughed and said why shouldn't she buy herself a present. But I've looked through all her credit card records, and I couldn't find such a purchase no matter how far back I went. Take it. Go on. Check Damian's credit card bills. Find the man who bought her this bracelet, and you'll find her killer."

  Chapter Thirty: Bruce

  Barbara started to look more pregnant. She stopped complaining of nausea and started complaining that her back hurt and that soon she wouldn't be able to fit through a door. She said what if she was in the subway and the doors were closing? I said how about waiting for the next train? Barbara said she hadn't thought of that. New Yorkers! I said if being pregnant for nine months didn't teach her patience, nothing would. She said thank you for sharing, which is the polite program way of giving someone the finger.

  Jimmy started his new
job at the gaming company. He and Barbara went to birthing classes together and shopped for cribs and carriages. I was drafted to help Jimmy clear decades' worth of accumulated junk out of the small second bedroom in their apartment. That included every computer he'd ever owned, which he could never bear to discard, back to the days when computers were big and slow as elephants and had less memory than an elephant rather than a whole lot more. We painted the room a cheerful gender-neutral yellow.

  It was understood that Jimmy wouldn't start working from home until the baby was born. To his surprise, he enjoyed going to work.

  "I've always had techie friends online," he told me, "but I've never collaborated with anyone on the creative side. I assumed it would hold me back, but it doesn't. Some of these folks are brilliant."

  "How do you feel about the regular paycheck?" I asked.

  "Better than I thought I would," he said. "It feels like a reward, not a payoff for sacrificing my freedom."

  I winced, wishing I could say the same.

  "That's because you enjoy the work."

  "It sure takes off a load of stress," he said, "to know it will keep coming in every two weeks. I'm starting to understand what getting solvent has to do with pressure relief."

  "I've got to hand it to you, dude," I said. "I wish I could get my act together. I can't say I love word processing and looking up stuff I'm not interested in on LexisNexis."

  We had met for part of a lunchtime meeting and a quick sandwich because I was temping at a law firm not far from Jimmy's office that week.

  "You'll figure it out," Jimmy said. "Just don't drink and go to meetings. The rest will come. Don't forget I've been in recovery for twenty years. It took me that long to get a job, and I'm still freaked out about being a father. I'd hate to turn out anything like my dad."

  "No way, man," I said. "Our dads thought parenting meant having a kid to bring you the next beer from the fridge and smacking him upside the head if he gave you any lip. You're sober and the sweetest tempered guy I ever met. This kid is gonna be crazy about you. He'll want to be just like you."

  "It's a big responsibility," he said.

  "I know," I said, "and you're gonna ace it."

  "What if he grows up to be a drunk?"

  "Then you'll take him to a meeting," I said. "He'll have had you as a great example of recovery his whole life."

  "That didn't work with you for fifteen years," he said.

  "You're not my father," I said.

  "But what if he won't listen?"

  "Then you'll smack him upside the head and drag him to a meeting," I said. "Jeez, man, that is so not today's problem."

  "I know, I know," he said. "Tell me what's happening with Cindy."

  "She's agreed to go out for dinner," I said. "The rules are that I don't ask her about the case, and we each go back to our own place afterward."

  "It's a start," he said.

  "Yeah," I said, "one date at a time."

  It occurred to me that while Cindy had said I couldn't ask her about the case, she hadn't said I couldn't tell her anything about the case. Maybe it was working with lawyers that gave me the idea. If I could manage to fetch her some kind of juicy bone, maybe she would pat me on the head and let me play with her again. I didn't tell Jimmy, who would have called this reasoning the sophistry it was. I called Barbara, who entered into the spirit of the thing without a moment's hesitation.

  "What do we know that the cops don't?" she asked. "You want to give her something important to take to her boss? Let's make a list of people we know Sophia knew. Some of them probably aren't even on the police radar. "

  "Half a dozen program people to start with," I said.

  "Dan and Eleanor are Jimmy's pressure relief group," she said. "I'd much rather you left them out of it."

  "Jeez, Barbara, I know you want Jimmy to get solvent so you can live happily ever after, but we're trying to find a murderer here."

  "You're right," she said. "I'm so discombobulated I'm not thinking straight."

  "It's understandable in the circumstances," I said, rejecting the tempting topic of whether Barbara's thinking was ever straight, even when nothing exciting or confusing was going on. "How about Brent and Grace? Are we okay suspecting them?"

  "And Dennis and Pamela," she said. "Does Cindy know that Sophia told them she was meeting someone?"

  "I'd ask her," I said, "except I'm not allowed to ask."

  "But you did tell her that Judith was Sophia's sponsor, so the murders might be connected?"

  "Yeah, but that was more telling than asking, and I caught her off guard."

  "So you don't know if they've followed up on it."

  "She said it wasn't her case," I said. "If that's changed, I don't know about it."

  "Can't you catch her off guard again?"

  I could and I would. An image of Cindy naked and laughing in my bed came to me unbidden, so visceral that I had to choke back a gasp. I was relieved that Barbara didn't notice. I wasn't going to blow my second chance with Cindy by tromping on her professional toes when she was at her most vulnerable. Especially not then.

  "How about Tracy," I said, "the college roommate?"

  "We could talk to her again, I guess," Barbara said. "She's not a likely suspect, but there's the guy she told us about."

  "The same time next year guy," I said.

  "Rod Prentice," she said. "He came to the funeral."

  "He lives in Texas," I said.

  "I know," Barbara said. "So Sophia must have meant a lot to him. Tracy said he told her there was someone else."

  "But she didn't want to break up with him," I said.

  "That's not quite true," Barbara said. "He only said she didn't."

  "We don't even know that for sure," I pointed out. "She said he said she said she didn't."

  "Very funny," Barbara said. "Seriously, Bruce. Suppose that's not what Sophia actually said? What if at the last reunion, she told Rod Prentice no more annual fling? Say she was already thinking about leaving Larry and going off with this other guy."

  I was starting to say that Rod Prentice might have lied when I heard Jimmy's voice in the background.

  "What?" she said. "Say that again. Wait a moment, Bruce. Jimmy's here. I'm putting you on speaker."

  "Sophia was pregnant," Jimmy said.

  "How do you know?" I asked.

  "Sophia told me herself," he said. "Every time we met for coffee, she would excuse herself to go to the can and come back looking like she'd thrown up. Barbara's made me so aware of eating disorders that I thought she might be bulimic. I didn't want to enable her, so I asked her if she needed help. That's when she told me."

  "Why didn't you tell us?" Barbara asked.

  "She swore me to secrecy," he said.

  "But now she's dead!" Barbara said. "We've been going around in circles, and you had this key piece of information all the time."

  "We've disagreed about anonymity before, petunia," he said. "The cops must know, because they'd have the autopsy results. I thought Bruce would hear it from Cindy."

  "I didn't," I said. "But I bet that Judith knew."

  "Not necessarily," Barbara said, "since Judith was out there drinking and then not sponsoring Sophia any more. But if they got back in touch as soon as Judith got sober—they were friends too. If I were Sophia, I'd have wanted to reach out right away. I wish you'd told me, Jimmy."

  "It was kind of never the right moment," Jimmy said. "I'm sorry, pumpkin. The truth is I thought it would upset you."

  "Oh, all right, all right," Barbara said. "We all know now, and it's another big piece of the puzzle, so let's move on." She touched her belly and let her hand rest there for a few moments. "Poor Sophia!"

  "You were talking about Rod Prentice, Barb," I prompted.

  "Getting dumped is humiliating," she said. "He might have lied about it."

  "That's a long way from killing her," Jimmy said.

  "Hypothetically," Barbara said, "let's say that Sophia's new lover doesn't wan
t to get a divorce. Then she finds out she's pregnant. She's afraid Larry will throw her out when he hears the news, because he knows the baby couldn't be his. Hey, you could tell Cindy about Larry's vasectomy."

  "Larry might have told them," I said.

  "Why would he do that?" Jimmy asked.

  "To cast suspicion on some other guy," Barbara said, "though you could also argue that it gives Larry himself a motive."

  "I don't want to tell her stuff she already knows," I said.

  "So hold the vasectomy in reserve," Barbara said. "How about this? She learns she's pregnant, and the lover in New York turns her down. Rod Prentice could be the father, so she turns to him."

  "Whoa, whoa," I said. "We just had Rod so unwilling to be dumped that he kills her. Or if he didn't, he minds enough to lie about being dumped. Now Sophia wants to be with him. Why would he kill her?"

  "Oh, come on, Bruce," she said, "it's obvious. He has a wife and kids. Sophia is his same time next year girl, and in between he doesn't have to give her a thought. If you had a perfect situation like that, and suddenly she said one weekend a year wasn't enough any more, she wants you to play fifty-two pick up with your life and have a real relationship, what would you do?"

  "I wouldn't kill her," I said. "But yeah, I would run like hell. She'd never hear from me again."

  "So add to that," she said, "she tells him she's having his baby, whether or not it's really his. She's talking love, and he's thinking emotional blackmail. You think that's not a motive?"

  "I get it, I get it," I said. "Rod had plenty to lose."

  Chapter Thirty-One: Cindy

  Larry Kane has no alibi," Natali said, "for the time between when Judith Orson's workmates at the Met saw her last and the earliest the ME says she could have died. So far, they haven't found a bar or coffee shop in the neighborhood where someone can identify her from the picture they're showing around. She told her friends she was going out for a while but planned to come back and work."

  "I'm not surprised," Cindy said. "If she'd been on a bender for weeks, she was lucky not to lose her job."

  "They haven't traced the Rohypnol yet either," he said. "Our best hypothesis is that he got it on the Internet, same way he got the cyanide."