her.
Our first stop was the living room. Things looked eerily normal. If there had been broken picture frames on the floor, they were gone now, with the exception of a few neglected slivers of glass. Anatoly sighed and looked around the room.
“I’m sure they confiscated everything that could possibly qualify as evidence. I doubt we’ll find much.”
“You mean they took my wedding pictures?”
We turned to see Leah standing behind us.
“Can they really do that without asking me?” she asked.
“As long as they have a warrant,” I said. I walked over to the middle of the room and tapped my foot against the bloodstained floor. If I didn’t know better I would have assumed it was spilled burgundy.
Anatoly was now walking slowly around the room, taking it all in. “Show me where the gun was kept.”
Leah led him to the safe, which was tucked into the cabinet below her showcase of Waterford collectibles. It was such a stupid place to put a safe. Like a burglar wasn’t going to search the furniture piece holding thousands of dollars’ worth of crystal. Leah twisted the combination lock a few times until it released. Inside were some insurance papers, a will, a rather extravagant-looking diamond necklace and a few bond certificates that added up to an amount that was considerably less impressive than the value of the necklace. No gun.
Anatoly examined the insurance records. “No life insurance?”
“Bob thought accidental death and disability insurance was enough. After all, both of us were in perfectly good health.”
“So Bob decided to wait until his health failed before approaching the insurance companies for life insurance?” I asked. “Or is it possible he just couldn’t be bothered spending money on a policy that he would never be able to benefit from personally?”
Leah winced and I immediately felt guilty. I was going to have to work on holding back my reflexive insulting observations about her husband now that his previously vacant head contained a bullet.
Anatoly coughed a few times in an obvious attempt to suppress a laugh. “Let’s be grateful he didn’t have an insurance policy—one less reason for the police to suspect you.” He stuffed the papers back in the safe. “Did you have a lot in savings?”
“Just over a hundred thousand,” Leah said softly. “It’s not enough. Our house payments alone are ten thousand dollars a month.”
Anatoly did a quick double take.
“Well, we put down a small down payment!” Leah said defensively. “It’s important to have a nice house to bring business associates to. Besides, Bob was making over four hundred thousand dollars a year and he was getting a promotion, so we knew we’d be fine…or at least we thought we would.” Leah’s eyes misted over. “Oh God, I’m going to have to go back to work, aren’t I.”
“There are worse fates,” I said. “So, other than the savings account, your house and your cars, are there any other assets worth mentioning?”
Leah’s face brightened. “There are the Chalet stocks! Of course, I can’t cash them out yet, since they just went public and the shares are in lockdown….”
“Lockup,” Anatoly corrected. “When a company goes public the employees’ shares go into lockup for the first six months or so.”
Leah dismissed Anatoly’s comment with an impatient wave of her hand. “Lockdown, lockup, who cares what it’s called? The important thing is that Jack and I aren’t going to lose our house and I won’t have to work!”
I creased my forehead. “How much are Bob’s shares worth?”
“I don’t know the exact figure, but it’s well over a million.”
I bit my lip and Anatoly let out a heavy sigh. “So much for eliminating money as a motive.”
Leah took a step back from Anatoly and glared at him. “You aren’t seriously suggesting that I would kill my husband for monetary gain?”
“You wouldn’t be the first woman to do so,” Anatoly said.
“Excuse me, but just because I’m unfamiliar with the terminology of the stock market doesn’t mean I’m completely clueless about money. This is a community property state so if I had wanted to get my hands on Bob’s money, any divorce attorney worth his salt could have done that for me.”
“I know you wouldn’t kill for money or any other reason.” I inched closer to Leah and rested my hand on her shoulder. “But the police might think that you weren’t really up for the whole half-sies thing.”
“This is perfect,” Leah said. “If Bob had been bankrupt, Jack and I would be homeless and hungry, but since he wasn’t, I’m a murder suspect. No matter what the situation is I lose.”
“Just because you’re a suspect doesn’t mean you’re going to be charged with anything,” Anatoly pointed out. “Let’s figure out who else could have done this. Did anyone other than you and Bob know the combination to the safe?”
“No one. Just Bob and I. It was our anniversary.”
“Your anniversary,” Anatoly repeated. “The same combination you used for your personal Internet access, your ATM and your online retail accounts.”
“You can see why neither chose careers that required a lot of creative thinking.” Oh damn it, I’d done it again. I was really going to have to make more of an effort on this delicacy thing.
Anatoly did some more coughing before pulling out the necklace. He held up the pendant so that the light caught the yellow stone and the white diamonds that surrounded it. “Is this one of those yellow diamonds?”
Leah took the necklace from his hands. “Don’t be ridiculous. Colored diamonds are trendy and ugly. Diamonds should be clear like these little ones. The stone in the middle is a yellow sapphire.”
“I see. How much is that yellow sapphire worth?”
“I had the necklace insured for fifty-four thousand dollars.”
“Are you kidding?” I squeaked. “My God, what happened to the days when a man could clear his guilty conscience for under a grand?”
“Clearly Bob had more guilt than the average philandering husband,” Leah said, and shook her head in disgust. “I should have known right away. Bob was never excessively affectionate. We’re both too sophisticated to be taken in by all the hearts and flowers nonsense.”
I sank my teeth into my tongue to refrain from blurting out that she had been renting Sleepless in Seattle on a biweekly basis for the past decade and a half.
“…but it wasn’t until last year that he really became distant. He’d stay out late, make excuses for missing dinner, but he’d always make it up to me by buying me something. As the excuses became more frequent, the gifts became more elaborate.” She held up the necklace to eye level. “I don’t want it. I would never be able to wear it without remembering that he gave it to me just months before declaring that he was planning on trading
