mellow with the years, Silver.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“Rough night?” Aunt Peggilee’s gaze was on my black-and-blue wrist.
“Paul was seen leaving Della’s apartment yesterday morning. The police picked him up for questioning. I went down to the precinct. We had dinner.”
Aunt Peggilee shook her head, her beehive wobbling and threatening to give way. “Silver, Silver,” was all she said, but she looked at me like I was a calf being led to slaughter.
I took a swallow of coffee. “He drank to you.”
“The man would toast Beelzebub himself if it meant a good gulp.”
Must have been the fact I’d been foolish enough to marry him that made me feel compelled to defend him. “A lot of gals have done a lot worse.” It was a weak argument, but it was all I had.
“Silver, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the man myself. I just mind him with you.”
“He’s not with me. We had pasta together.”
Auntie raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, I had pasta. He had several bottles of red. He and Della had been running into each other—”
“Like Mack trucks, I imagine.” Auntie took a delicate sip of soy milk.
“And I wanted to talk to him about her.”
Auntie eyed me over her glass. “Did you learn anything?”
I shrugged. “Pretty much what I expected. She was really shook up by her brother’s death and in a bad way.”
Aunt Peggilee studied me. “It’s not your fault, Silver.”
“I know. I just don’t know why…” I shook my head, too much caffeine and too little sleep making me sappy. “I wish I’d called her. Or she’d gotten in touch with me.”
Auntie Peggilee put her hand on mine, squeezed. “She did, honey.”
I DRANK ANOTHER CUP of coffee while I dressed. I went to my underwear drawer, opened a small box next to a dried-out honeysuckle sachet and took out an elastic. A new day, a new rubber band. I closed the drawer, picked up Paul’s keys from my dresser top. I jangled them. Besides his car keys, there were others, house keys, office keys, a smaller one that probably opened a locker. I dropped the keys into my purse on the kitchen counter and grabbed two Tootsie Pops out of the cupboard. I locked up, Auntie having left for breakfast bingo and Adrienne knocking off a despised but required phys ed credit with an early-morning fencing class. I started the car, got the air conditioner blasting. I unwrapped one pop, stuck it in my mouth and headed out.
By the time I’d gotten to my second candy-coated chewy center, I’d called Paul on my cell phone twice to tell him I was on my way but there was no answer. If I couldn’t rouse him before Macro, I’d leave the keys, and he could call a cab.
Paul lived in a small but well-designed modern home on the edge of one of the tony neighborhoods. Tips on the greens had gotten good.
I went to the back door, didn’t even bother to knock, twisted the doorknob before pawing through my purse for the keys. The door clicked open. The house had a security system, but the alarm hadn’t been activated. Liquor might make the old pathetic but it gave the young a sense of invincibility. Paul, at thirty-five, was on the cusp.
I called out hello, not expecting an answer. “Paul?”
The back door opened into a kitchen with stainless steel appliances whose constant reflection would make a woman past forty take a sharp object to their surface, but was a perfect panorama for a premiddle-age country-club pro. The room was arranged for a House Beautiful spread, the uneven trio of chairs around the table instead of the expected four the only touch of whimsy. Paul was a fastidious housekeeper. I’d watched him cotton swab a heating grate once for twenty minutes and still didn’t understand. Funny the things that endear a person to you.
As I walked into a spacious, open living room with a vaulted ceiling, I saw the bleached white briefs first. Directly eye level, Fruit of the Loom, waist size thirty-two. Paul always wore Fruit of the Loom, waist size thirty-two. Mundane details such as these allowed me to step toward the body in the white briefs hanging from the ceiling rafters.
“Damn.” I fumbled for my phone in my purse as I ran into the kitchen. I grabbed a knife from the end of the built-in butcher-block cutting board, found my phone as I ran back into the living room, dialed 911. “Damn,” I told the woman’s voice as I righted the missing kitchen chair under Paul’s dangling body in the spotless white underwear. I climbed onto the chair.
“Ma’am, do you need…”
As I reached high for the rope, I saw the red garter necktie with the gold double D around Paul’s throat. I sawed at the rope with the knife.
“Ma’am…”
The body spun full circle. I looked down from the rope, directly into Paul’s dead eyes, sputtered the only other recent savior I’d met. “Serras.”
I sawed harder, my weight pushing against the body. The body swung back. I lost my balance. The chair tipped. The phone dropped from the tuck in my shoulder. I clutched Paul’s red-gartered neck with the gold double D charm, wrapping my legs around his hips in a position that we’d actually both been quite fond of in our past. We twirled Cirque du Soleil for several seconds, then our weight ripped us loose. We went down, me clinging to my dead ex-husband as if climaxing. My head struck something hard, sharp. Until death do us part. Hell, like I’d ever meant that literally. Down I went into darkness.
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