given the chance he would have come to his senses and stayed,” I lied.
Anatoly stepped back from the safe and scanned the room. “Where do you keep the computer?”
“In the study upstairs,” Leah said absently, still admiring the necklace she supposedly didn’t want.
I tugged at Anatoly’s sleeve. “I’ll show you.” We left Leah downstairs and I took him to the room that stood between Jack’s and the master suite. I stepped in and did a quick visual inventory. “Wait, I know they keep it in here. Where is it?”
Anatoly walked past me and tapped a spot on the empty desk. “My guess is it was right here.”
I stepped forward and examined the dust-free square on the desk where the computer used to be. “The police?”
“Looks that way.” Anatoly shook his head. “Hopefully there aren’t any messages on it from the mistress. It would be better if Leah could volunteer the information about that affair herself.”
“You want Leah to tell the police about Bob’s bimbo?”
“Assuming she didn’t do it, yes, I want her to tell them about Bob’s bimbo. They’re going to find out anyway, and while I recognize that in her case lying is a family trait, lying to homicide detectives will not serve her well.”
I shrugged. “There was a period of time in recent history when I was lying to the police all the time. I never got arrested.”
“No, I did. Let’s not repeat the pattern, all right?”
Leah entered the room and stared at the empty spot where the computer had been. “Hold on a minute. Last night the police escorted me through the house so that I could confirm that nothing was missing and I distinctly remember the computer being right there.” She looked at me and Anatoly accusingly.
“Okay, you caught us. We used Anatoly’s super-micro-blastic shrinking machine and hid it in the drawer.”
“The police took the computer.” Anatoly was now looking through the papers on Bob’s desk with noticeable lack of interest.
“I can’t believe those people. First my wedding pictures and now this? It’s just so rude! You have no idea what it was like to see the photos of Bob and me on the happiest day of our lives covered in broken glass. And now, not only am I unable to reframe them, I can’t even complain about it to my online stay-at-home-moms’ support group! Honestly, is it really necessary to rob me of all my comforts?”
“Not all your comforts,” I offered. “I’m sure they left the ice cream.”
“This is so typical of you, Sophie! My life gets turned upside down and you’re making jokes.”
Anatoly looked up from the papers. “Funny, I thought it was Bob’s life that got screwed up.”
“Shut up!” The words came from both me and Leah in unison.
She smiled at me and I exhaled a sigh of relief. At least we still recognized that we were not each other’s enemy. The real enemy was the heterosexual male.
Leah checked her watch. “Damn it, I was supposed to pick up Jack five minutes ago.”
“Are you bringing him to Mama’s after that?” She had already told me that she was but I just wanted to be reassured one more time that she wasn’t bringing him to my house.
“Mmm-hmm. She’s taking him for the afternoon.”
“How about the night? Can she take him for the night, too?” Anatoly gave me a sidelong glance, which I ignored.
Leah pushed her purse strap farther up her shoulder. “Jack and I will be staying with you tonight.”
“I really think you should ask Mama to take him. You have enough on your plate as it is.”
“I’m the only parent he has now, and he needs me.”
“You’re right,” I said slowly. “Jack needs stability. Maybe the two of you should stay here tonight. That way he’ll be able to sleep in his own room.”
Leah shot me a “you can’t possibly expect me to stay here” look and then turned around to leave before I had a chance to send her a nonverbal message of my own.
Anatoly smirked. “I’m getting the sense that you have some strong feelings concerning your nephew.”
“You don’t know what this child is like. Rosemary’s baby would be easier to deal with.”
He chuckled and opened the top drawer of the desk. “I’m going to take an hour or so going through this place—there’s always the off chance the police left something behind.”
I pulled off my leather jacket. “I’ll help. I think I’ll start in the kitchen.”
Anatoly nodded, although I don’t think he was listening. I went downstairs and left him to his exploring.
Forty-five minutes later, I had discovered a frozen Wolfgang Puck pizza, two Trader Joe’s salads, an open bottle of Kenwood, Pinot Noir, and an entire box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. I flipped on the small television discreetly mounted on the wall in the corner of the dining room and turned the volume on low before getting to work on the pizza preparation. Ten minutes later the scent of freshly baked mozzarella brought Anatoly downstairs.
I gestured for him to sit at the dining table as I poured the wine. “Do you think the police found anything interesting last night?”
Anatoly glanced at the figure of Montel Williams scurrying around the TV screen, and pulled out a chair for himself. “It’s impossible to know.”
“So what’s our next move?”
“My next move will be to talk to the woman Bob was sleeping with.”
“Why would we want to do that?” I set the pizza out along with the two salads, then sat opposite him. “She has no motive—she won. Not that Bob was any great prize. Maybe that’s it! Maybe she started thinking about what life would be like with Bob and freaked out.”
“We don’t know the details of the affair.” He looked at the glass of wine offered him, then glanced at the wall clock, which read 11:55.
“My brother-in-law died yesterday,” I said. “I think it would be justifiable if we started drinking early. So what were you saying about the affair?”
Anatoly sighed and reached for the prepackaged shrimp Caesar. “I was saying that it’s unlikely Bob told Leah the whole story. Maybe his mistress had reason to want him dead, or maybe someone connected with her did.”
“A husband! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re not a PI.” He tore off a piece of pizza. “You’re a writer…of sorts.”
“One would think that with everything we’ve been through together you would know better than to piss me off.”
“Good point.”
