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When a local architect and notorious lothario gets himself impaled on a wrought iron fence it pretty much ruins Mitzy's Christmas.
With her client--the dead guy's most recent ex-wife--in crisis and the custom Tudor home now a murder house, Mitzy will need to work a lot of overtime to unload the unsellable property--and catch a killer.
Excerpt:
ONE
Mitzy crossed the living room in five
steps, again. “This house is really small.”
“Umm hmm.” Alonzo sat in his
leather recliner, watching football on his twenty-year-old projection
TV. The cords from his high-def conversion box, VCR, Internet
streaming box, Blu-ray, and equally ancient surround sound hung down
the sides of the giant box like a bad wig.
“No, like really small. My sectional
didn’t even fit.” She stood in front of the picture window and
stretched her arms out. “I can almost reach from one wall to the
other.”
“That’s because you are an Amazon.”
He turned the volume up.
Mitzy crossed the room, this time with
long, exaggerated steps.
“Now it’s only four steps.”
“Did you think it would grow?”
Mitzy flipped the light switch a couple
of times. The TV shut off. “We don’t have enough outlets in
here.”
“Hey now.” Alonzo grabbed up the
remote and clicked the TV on. It warmed back up slowly.
“You should add at least three more
for the entertainment center.”
“Touchdown!” Alonzo leapt to his
feet. “I think we’re going to win this one.” He sat down on the
edge of his seat and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
Mitzy flipped the switch again.
“Knock it off! We’re in overtime!”
Alonzo hit the power button on the remote again. He scowled at the
television as it flickered back into life.
“We can’t turn the light off
without turning the TV off. Isn’t that a problem for you?”
“Ooh,” Alonzo groaned and leaned
back in his chair. “They lost possession.”
“And there’s overhead lighting in
the living room. I just… I don’t know. It’s just wrong. Can’t
you fix that?”
“It’s all over now. They don’t
stand a chance to win.” Alonzo stood up and turned off the TV. “I
can’t believe we lost that. No Superbowl for the Hawks this year.”
“Who are the Hawks?”
“Seahawks. Our team.”
“Aren’t they Seattle’s team?”
Mitzy stood in front of the picture
window again and stretched her arms out. “I can touch both edges of
the window.”
Outside, a slushy rain fell, like
blobby white snowflakes that made cold puddles on the sidewalk.
Alonzo meandered into the kitchen. He
opened the fridge and scrounged around. “Where’s the lasagna?”
“I took it to work for lunch.”
“Humph.” Alonzo took out last
night’s roast. He put the whole thing in the microwave to reheat.
“We’re having dinner in, like, an
hour. Are you really having that now?”
“Don’t you have a house to sell?”
Alonzo watched the timer on the microwave.
“I took the day off. Let’s go out
to dinner.” Going out had been Mitzy’s plan all along, and his
picking out the leftovers were a direct offensive move against that
plan. The likely result of her accidentally shutting off his game.
The microwave beeped.
“That can’t be warm yet.” Mitzy
checked the big hunk of beef for any sign of steaminess.
Alonzo set the plate down and leaned
over it, guarding it with his arms. He ate a forkful of the lukewarm
meat without a comment.
Mitzy poured herself a cup of coffee
and sat down at the table with Alonzo.
Alonzo swallowed. “Okay. We can eat
out tonight, but, babe, don’t do that during a game again, okay?”
Mitzy nodded and took a drink of her
coffee. She looked out the window at their back yard. The backyard
neighbor still hadn’t put siding up. For as long as Mitzy had been
with Alonzo, that house had needed siding. Now, the pink vapor
barrier that was supposed to be underneath the nonexistent siding was
ratty and faded with long fibrous strands blowing in the wind.
“We could do some renovations,”
Alonzo said.
Mitzy turned back to Alonzo. He smiled
at her, his face creasing into crow’s feet and dimples.
“We could renovate.” Mitzy
turned her eyes back to the window.
“But?”
“But we’d still be in Felony
Flats.”
Alonzo shrugged.
“You don’t want your kids to go to
school here, do you?” Mitzy asked.
“You can live anywhere and go to
Central Catholic.”
“Let’s not start that.”
“Hey, Mom offered. We’re not
turning down free school just because it is Catholic, are we?”
“We don’t even have kids yet. We’ve
not even been married a year.”
“You brought up kids.” Alonzo
prodded the meat on his plate. “I think you don’t want to
renovate this house because you got something else in mind.”
Mitzy attempted to suppress a smile,
but it quirked at the side of her mouth.
“Ah-ha. Let me guess. You want the
house Miramontes Developers are renovating, don’t you?”
“It’s such a great house.” Mitzy
grinned. “It’s perfect for us!”
“It’s not for sale.” Alonzo took
another bite of his pre-dinner pot roast.
“Yet.”
“When it is for sale,” he said
around a mouthful of food, “we can’t afford it.”
“Of course we can. Didn’t you marry
the only successful Realtor left in town?” Mitzy took her now-empty
coffee cup to the sink and rinsed it out. “And who says we have to
wait? Wouldn’t you rather buy it now and renovate it to your own
taste?”
“No, I’d rather keep renovating it
the way the owner wants me to and get paid for it. I’m doing the
job because we need the work. Not because I love renovating homes.”
“You’re doing the job because your
guys need the work, not because we need the money.” Mitzy sighed.
“It’s such a great house.” She loved the house for its
quirky ‘80s style and she loved the neighborhood—the 1987 Fantasy
Homes Street.
“I’d rather have the clients pay my
men to tear the place apart.” Alonzo stabbed the pot roast with his
fork. “Listen Mitz, I get to run my business, and you get to run
yours, okay? Don’t try and undo the work I’ve got going.”
“But—”
“Let it rest.”
Alonzo was blind if he could go there
to work every day and not realize it was the perfect home for them.
Mitzy chewed on her bottom lip while she plotted her campaign. If she
could sell a seven-hundred-square-foot hut in the middle of North
Portland to an aging hipster, then she could sell her own husband the
coolest house in Pleasant Valley. “You could fit three of this
little house into my condo we sold.”
“True.”
“Well?”
“Well? We didn’t need all that
space. I own this house. It made good sense to sell your place and
live here.”
“I owned the condo.”
“There were still association fees.
It’s better to own your house outright. Be the king of your own
castle.” Alonzo pulled the fork out of his meat. He covered it in
the plastic wrap that still clung to the edge of the plate.
“Is the neighborhood association the
reason you don’t like the fantasy house?” Mitzy wanted to
determine the biggest weakness of the property so she could properly
form her sales pitch.
“Yes. I also don’t like that it is
not for sale and that we already have a great house.”
“A great house?”
Alonzo shrugged.
Mitzy perched on his knee and draped
her arm over his shoulder. She stroked the back of his head with her
fingertips. “I love you, babe, but I’m a house girl. It’s my
thing. It’s what I’m into. Please don’t ask me to live in a
boring house.”
“When we’re done with the Pleasant
Valley house, you can hire my guys to do this one. Deal?”
Mitzy shook her head. “No deal. How
about as soon as I sell the house on Concord we buy the Pleasant
Valley house?”
“The million dollar property?”
“Only $700,000. But there was a
time…”
“Where you do plan to find big money
for a house like that?”
“If I can find big money for that
house, can we buy the Pleasant Valley house?”
Alonzo kissed the nape of Mitzy’s
neck. “No.”
“Two can play that game.” Mitzy
nibbled Alonzo’s ear and whispered, “Please?” She let her lips
linger for a brief moment.
“What would we do with this place?”
“Put a renter in it.”
“I don’t like the idea, babe.”
Alonzo placed his hands on Mitzy’s hips and pushed her up as he
stood. “But I guess we can consider it. Why don’t I think about
it while you sell that other house? Then we can talk again.” Alonzo
took his plate of lukewarm meat back to the microwave.
“Think and pray, then. This could be
one of those ‘love your wife as Christ loved the church’ kind of
times.”
“Or it could be a good ‘wives
submit yourself to your husbands’ kind of time.”
“You would know that verse, wouldn’t
you?”
“Absolutely.”
Mitzy pulled her shawl-collar cardigan
around her and shivered. “This house has baseboard electric heat,
Alonzo. I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.”
“Then I guess you’d better get that
Concord house sold.”
TWO
The following morning was also cold,
and the house was still small. But rather than worry over it, Mitzy
sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Alonzo’s recliner,
enjoying his warm legs against her back as she worked. Her laptop was
open, and she was plotting how to sell an expensive older house fast.
The house on Concord had listed two days ago, but no one had called
for a showing yet.
Almost one year after their wedding,
two years after the housing bubble burst, there really hadn’t been
an uptick in the market. While the house she was trying to sell would
have fetched a couple million dollars in about a week in 2006, now in
2011, finding a buyer at less than half that would be a serious
challenge.
The house needed tweaking—little
improvements here and there—but the owner had lived in it since it
was built as a custom home. Staging the house would be a hard sell.
Mitzy clicked through the pictures. Cluttered office. Tile in the
kitchen instead of granite. Carpet in the main living areas. Without
the top-of-the-line finishes like hardwoods and natural stone, the
house would have to be staged to perfection.
Mitzy stopped at the picture of the
master bedroom. A full five-hundred-square-feet of living space,
antique French bedroom furniture, a tray ceiling, a chandelier, two
walk-in closets: it was every newlywed’s dream room. But it
couldn’t make a marriage work.
Mitzy leaned back against Alonzo’s
knees. Their bed was shoved into the corner of the smallest room she
had ever seen, and she had to use the third bedroom as a closet.
Her client, Karina English, seemed glad
to have ended her twenty-year marriage, and now she wanted to unload
the house her cheating husband had built for her. If Mitzy had been
offered the choice between that life and her own, she would have kept
her tiny dwelling and faithful husband, but frankly, she didn’t see
why she couldn’t have a great house and a great husband.
She clicked to the outdoor shots. Not a
single yard in Portland looked good on December 1st.
Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket.
She dragged her mind away from the house and checked the number. It
was Karina.
“This is Mitzy. What can I do for
you, Karina?”
On the other end of the line, Karina
was crying.
Mitzy lowered the tone of her voice.
“Karina, I’m here. What is it?” She looked up at Alonzo.
He cocked his head, furrowed his brows,
and mouthed, “What happened?”
Karina sobbed and make word-like sounds
that Mitzy couldn’t understand.
Mitzy stood up and raised her
shoulders. “I don’t know.”
She closeted herself in the bedroom
they used as an office/closet. “Whenever you are ready, Karina, or
do you want me to come to you? Are you at your house?”
Karina’s crying slowed down. “Yes,
please come here. Arnold is dead.” She broke down again as soon as
the words were out.
“I’ll be right there, Karina. I can
be there in twenty minutes.” Mitzy kept the line live for a few
moments longer while she put on her snow boots. When Karina
eventually managed a sobbing “thank you,” they both ended the
call. Mitzy stuffed her phone into the pocket of her ski jacket.
“Alonzo, will you come up to Concord
with me? Arnold English is dead.”
***
The English house was a
forty-five-hundred-square-foot 1970s faux Tudor home on Concord
Street at the top of the Happy Valley side of Mt. Scott. It was
located 1300 feet higher than the small house Mitzy and Alonzo called
home. Instead of the slush that mucked up Mitzy’s street, Concord
Street was blanketed in several inches of soft, white snow.
The driveway was cordoned off with
yellow police tape, and police cars lined the road.
Alonzo parked his truck several houses
away. “I don’t know, Mitzy, this looks like something we
shouldn’t get mixed up with.”
“Karina is hurting, Al. She needs a
friend right now.”
“You’re her Realtor.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t be her
friend.”
“We’ve gone a whole year without
getting involved with the police. I would love to turn this car
around and take you back home.” Alonzo scowled at the line of
police cars.
Mitzy squinted to see if she recognized
any of the officers working the crime scene. “I know, but I said
I’d come up, so I have to. That doesn’t mean I have to get
involved in the investigation or anything. I just have to listen.”
“I’m going to wait in the car. Why
don’t you get her to come away from the crime scene?”
Mitzy sighed. She really wanted to
connect with the detective in charge and find out what had happened.
She turned away from the scene and looked at Alonzo. He was a sickly
shade of white.
“Okay. I’ll see if she’ll come
out with us. Coffee maybe?”
Alonzo nodded.
Though fresh snow had been falling all
morning, the snow on the road was rutted as though cars had been
coming and going all day. Mitzy paused at the police tape. An officer
in uniform met her there.
“Karina English just called. Can I go
in and see her?”
“We’ll get her to come out. We are
still looking at the scene.” The officer assessed Mitzy over his
wire-rim glasses.
“What happened?” Mitzy asked.
The officer looked towards a knot of
men in the grass. “We aren’t sure yet.”
The Tudor-style home was three stories
tall with a Juliet balcony at the window in the top gable. Most of
the police were working the yard, so the snow there was well-churned.
Mitzy crunched her way down the
snow-covered sidewalk, keeping to her side of the police tape. She
stopped at the middle of the yard and watched a cluster of officers
at one of the windows.
Mitzy held her fingers to her mouth and
blew on them. From all of the police activity, it appeared Arnold had
been murdered at the house. It was so hard to sell a house after a
recent murder.
The officer led Karina out of the
house. She wore snow boots and a ski jacket over her flannel pajamas.
Her cheeks were blotchy red, and her eyes were swollen.
“Oh, dear Jesus,” Mitzy whispered.
“Forgive me for thinking about selling the house, and help me
listen to her with compassion.”
When Karina was closer, Mitzy held her
hands out to her.
Karina took Mitzy’s hands and
squeezed them tight.
“Ms. English is free to leave the
house, but she has to leave her phone on and cannot leave the state,”
the officer said.
“Of course,” Mitzy said. “We’ll
just stop at the bottom of the hill for some coffee.”
Karina dropped Mitzy’s hands. She and
Mitzy walked to the place where the sidewalk met the driveway with
the police tape still between them.
“Thank you for coming for me.”
Karina’s voice was low, and she watched the ground as she walked.
“What happened?” Mitzy could have
kicked herself. Of course she wanted to know what had happened, but
now was probably not the best time to ask. She tried to think of
something encouraging to say. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m not. I’m not holding up at
all. I was standing at my window in the kitchen making breakfast when
a weird shadow caught my eye. I turned and, and…” She choked back
a sob.
“You saw Arnold?”
Karina’s eyes were wide as though she
was seeing it again. “The top of his head… I saw the top of his
head first. Then the spikes of the fence.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Mitzy stopped
and looked back at the officers in front of the window. They were
clustered around the flowerbed.
“He was stuck there, on the fence
around the flowers.” Karina pointed to the short, decorative,
wrought iron fence that surrounded the flowerbed in front of her
home. “Those points, those black arrows poking out of his back.”
Karina dipped her head and pressed the heel of her hand into her eye.
“I’ll never forget those black points.”
Another corpse flashed into Mitzy’s
mind, one with a smashed-in skull. She understood, at least a little,
what Karina must be feeling. Mitzy began to walk again, leading
Karina away from the house.
“What did you do?” Mitzy asked when
they had reached the end of the sidewalk.
“I ran out of the kitchen. I ran back
to my bedroom, and I called 911.”
Mitzy led Karina to the truck where
Alonzo was waiting and opened the door to the front seat. She gave
Karina her arm to help her in.
“Karina, this is Alonzo. I let him
drive me because of the snow. He’s going to take us to that café
at the bottom of the hill, okay?”
Karina nodded.
“What happened when the police
arrived?” Mitzy asked.
“I stayed inside, and they talked to
me. They asked me hundreds of questions about Arnold. About our
marriage and the divorce.”
When they arrived at the coffee shop,
Mitzy led Karina to a quiet table in the corner. The shop smelled
safe and familiar, like hot brewed coffee and fresh coffee cake.
Jazzy Christmas music played in the background. “Why did they ask
you all of that?”
“Because I didn’t know why Arnold
was there. I don’t know why he was here this morning. What could he
have been doing here, Mitzy?”
Mitzy tried to think of a reason.
Ex-husband, house for sale, early morning, impaled on a fence. She
was at a loss. Why had Arnold been there?
Alonzo stood in line to buy their
coffee, so she couldn’t ask his opinion.
“What did they do with, with Arnold?”
Mitzy asked.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t look. I
hope he is gone. I don’t want to go back until he is gone. I can
stay away, can’t I?” Karina pulled the sleeve of her flannel
pajama shirt out of the cuff of her coat. She wrapped it over her
fingers and dabbed at her eyes.
“It’s okay. We won’t make you go
back yet.”
Alonzo set the coffees down and then
leaned over to whisper to Mitzy, “I’m going to wait in the
truck.” He kissed her on the top of her head and slunk away.
“Did they tell you what they thought
happened?”
Karina dabbed her eye again. “They
saw a lot of footprints in the yard and on the balcony. They were all
over. They think he fell off of the balcony.” Karina closed her
eyes and took a deep breath. “But I was asleep. I was asleep in
that room when it happened.”
“But didn’t you hear anything?”
Mitzy’s heart was racing. She took a deep breath to calm down.
“They asked me that, but I didn’t.
I take sleeping pills, and I just slept through it all.” Karina
looked lost, her eyes still in shock, her face pale. She hadn’t
touched her cup of coffee yet.
“What can I do for you?” Mitzy
pushed the paper cup closer to Karina, hoping she would pick it up.
“Just stay with me for a little
while. You were so good to come. I don’t know why I called you
first, but thank you for coming.”
“Do they think he was alone, or that
you were involved?”
“No, they can’t think I did it. I
didn’t have any reason to. He may have left me, but I got the
house. But, Mitzy, I don’t know why he was here.” Karina rested
her forehead on her clenched fist and looked down at the glossy
tabletop.
“Have you called the rest of the
family yet?”
Karina nodded, eyes still down.
“Then just sit back and rest for a
moment.”
Mitzy held her paper cup of coffee up
and let the steam warm her cold lips. Karina was five feet, two
inches, and a hundred pounds soaking wet. She was an aging socialite
and do-gooder, not an athlete. Without her makeup on, Karina looked
older than she had when they had last met. Her cheeks were hollow and
deep lines radiated from her eyes and around her mouth.
She couldn’t have pushed a big man
like Arnold off the balcony.
Nonetheless, someone had killed Arnold,
and Karina was going to pay for it—not with jail time, Mitzy was
sure—but with a lengthy and horrible delay to her plans to get on
with her post-divorce life.
“I couldn’t reach Zachary. He’ll
be devastated.”
“Who is Zachary?”
“Arnold’s oldest boy. I know he’s
going to be crushed.”
“You didn’t leave a message?”
“No. How could I? What could I say
about this in a message?”
Mitzy tilted her head sympathetically.
“When was the last time you spoke with him?”
“It’s been… a while. I just don’t
know what I’m going to say when I get hold of him.”
“You don’t have to call this
minute. You can wait. Presumably he has caller ID and can see that
you called him. Let it rest for a moment.” Mitzy sipped her coffee.
She still wasn’t sure what she could do for Karina, but she’d do
her best to figure it out. “Why were Zachary and Arnold not
speaking?”
“Business or money. What is it ever?
They haven’t been on good terms for years because Arnold wanted to
sell the business and Zachary wanted to inherit it.” Karina picked
up her own cup for the first time, but she did nothing more than wrap
her fingers around it.
“Did Arnold eventually sell it?”
“Yes.” Karina moved the cup to her
lips.
“And was that when Zachary cut his
father out of his life?”
“Yes. Zachary didn’t understand.
Arnold sold it because it was too big—it was going to fail. I can’t
explain it. He couldn’t afford to grow his staff more, I think he
said, but he couldn’t keep up with the workload any longer. I don’t
really know what it all entailed. He was at a crossroads: invest more
in the business to hire people and do the work better or take fewer
contracts so that they could do the jobs they had at a better
quality. He wanted to sell and start over. Let a big business absorb
his small one and start something new. He wanted to start something
that wouldn’t fail, something for both of the boys, but Zachary
just wanted this business. Nothing else.”
“This was English Architecture,
right?”
“Yes. And when Arnold sold it, he
opened English Cottages, the small house company. Todd understood
what his dad was doing.” Karina’s face blanched.
“But Todd didn’t live to see it
succeed, did he?”
Karina shook her head. “No,” she
whispered.
Mitzy remembered the death of Todd
English well. Leukemia had taken him just a month after he graduated
university, about four years ago. The family had set up the Todd
English Fund for design scholarships. It had been in the news. “And
after that, the divorce?”
“Arnold and the boy’s mother became
very close after we lost Todd. It really shook Arnold up, and he saw
that he didn’t need me anymore.”
“But he didn’t leave you for her,
did he?”
“No, he didn’t leave for her in the
end, but she was the first one he cheated with. At least, the first
one I knew of.”
“Have the police spoken with her
yet?”
“I don’t think so, but she couldn’t
have killed him. She’s older than I am, and not in great health.
She had a fling with Arnold, I know. But she’s been remarried
almost as long as Arnold and I had been, and I don’t think she
intended to leave her current husband for her ex-husband.”
Mitzy’s head was swimming with the
number of husbands and wives in the conversation. How did they all
keep track of each other?
“Do you have anyone else now? Someone
I can call to stay with you?”
“No. I really am alone now.”
Karina was only fifty. She had spent
the last twenty years trying to be important in the lives of two boys
who had visited her every other weekend. She wasn’t their mother.
She wasn’t their friend. And now, the father of the family was
dead, she wasn’t even the step-mother anymore.
“You were counting on the sale of
this house, weren’t you?” Mitzy looked out the window at her own
husband sitting in his truck. The window was foggy, so she could just
make out his silhouette.
“I couldn’t move on and keep the
house. There wasn’t enough money for that after the divorce. And I
couldn’t stay here.”
“You needed to start over.”
Karina nodded. “I needed to get away
from Arnold’s lover.”
Mitzy lifted her eyebrow. “You what?”
That little fact hadn’t come up when they listed the house.
“Livia, across the street. She
doesn’t know I know, but she’s been sleeping with Arnold since
before he moved out. As soon as he had finished with his first wife,
he moved on to her.”
“Is that who he left you for?”
“No, he finally left to be with his
assistant, a twenty-five-year-old Swedish girl he met on an
airplane.”
“That dog.” Mitzy scratched an X
into the corrugated sleeve on her mug with her fingernail.
“But now, even she can’t have him.”
Karina pressed her hand to her forehead.
“Have you called this assistant? Or
Livia?”
Karina jerked her head up. “Are you
kidding? Let the police call them. I don’t have anything to say to
those women.”
Mitzy sipped her coffee and considered
the situation. Karina knew Mitzy’s sister-in- law, Aerin, via their
fundraising connections. Karina had picked up the Neuhaus New Homes
contact information at the ill-fated museum gala a couple of years
back.
When Karina decided to sell her house,
she called Mitzy.
Mitzy knew the English family because
she kept an eye on well-designed homes. Arnold English always had a
house on the Fantasy Homes Tour, and the English Cottages small house
business had made some waves in the Portland design community. The
scholarship he had established had received its share of media
attention as well. When Arnold’s youngest son died, the family,
business, and scholarship were all over the news.
But she didn’t know much about
Karina. Who was she before she became Arnold’s first trophy wife?
Had she been the other woman once? Did she have a bigger grudge
against her ex-husband than she admitted?
And what about this Zachary? How badly
did he hate his father?
“Take me back home.” Karina
straightened up. She set her full cup of coffee back on the table.
“I’m sorry I bothered you. I don’t really know what to do next,
but I need to get home.”
“It’s not a problem. Do you want me
to stay with you at the house for a while?”
“No. I need to get dressed and figure
out what the police need me to do—where I need to go. Thank you
anyway.” Each word seemed an effort for Karina.
“Have you called your lawyer yet?”
Karina frowned. “No, I’ve been so
confused. I spoke with the police for so long, and then they
suggested I call someone. I just picked up my phone, and your number
caught my eye. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“It’s not a bother, Karina, but
please, call your lawyer now.”
Karina lay her hands on the table,
palms up.
Mitzy tried to smile. “Use my phone.
It’s all right.” She passed Karina her purple smart phone. “You
can even look up the number if you need to. I don’t mind.”
Karina chewed her bottom lip and
started tapping the screen.
Mitzy watched the slushy rain fall
outside while she waited. Down here, at the bottom of Karina’s
hill, the snow still fell in wet, slick, sleet, hitting the ground
only to create dirty puddles that would freeze in the night. Nothing
like the pure white fluff falling a thousand feet or so above them.
Mitzy tried to zone out while Karina
spoke on the phone, but it was obvious that she had reached the
secretary.
Karina hung up.
“My lawyer is… he is not going to
represent me. His assistant said he was Arnold’s lawyer after the
divorce and so he…” Her voice trailed off. She put one hand over
her eyes and took a deep breath.
“So he won’t help you with Arnold’s
murder?”
Karina didn’t speak.
The phone was on the table between
them. Mitzy picked it up and tapped the back of it with her acrylic
nails, the clicking in rhythm with the music playing in the
background.
“Don’t say anything else to the
police until you get a lawyer, okay?” Mitzy’s heart was beating
against her ribcage. She’d have to help. Someone on the police
force, Officer McConnell, or maybe one of the other guys she’d
worked with before, could give her advice. She’d call her brother
Brett to find Karina the best lawyer in town. She stopped her
clicking and looked at Karina again.
Gray roots were beginning to show in
Karina’s once-perfect golden hair. How was Karina doing
financially? Could she afford the best lawyer?
“I have a kind of delicate question…
I know you needed to sell the house so you could move on with your
life. But do you have enough money right now? I mean, for a lawyer?”
Karina lifted her head and smoothed
back her hair with her thin, pale hand. “I should be all right
now,” she said. “I’ll have the insurance money to see me
through.”
“Life insurance?”
“Yes. I had a two-million-dollar
policy on Arnold.”
Mitzy sucked a little breath through
her teeth. She was sure this tiny woman hadn’t shoved her stocky
ex-husband off of the Juliet balcony… but two million dollars was a
pretty good motive. She could feel a frown forming on her face, so
she pulled it back to a look of concern as quickly as she could.
Karina noted the look on Mitzy’s face
and looked down at her cup. “But Arnold had one on me as well, for
just as much. We bought them before the divorce. No one would expect
anything less of us, surely. It’s perfectly normal.” She looked
up at Mitzy again, her eyes wide and full of fear.
Mitzy had no answer for that. It may
well have been perfectly normal in Karina’s set, but she didn’t
want to be the one to try and convince a jury of that. She decided to
turn the conversation. “Please call me and tell me where you are
staying tonight. I want to know that you will be okay.”
A smile wavered on Karina’s face.
“Thank you.”
Mitzy walked back to the truck with
Karina. The snow had stopped falling, and the wan sun had begun to
melt it. “I’ll help anyway I can.” The oily-machine-man smell
of Alonzo’s truck was a comfort—something solid in a cold,
confusing world.
Alonzo drove them back up the hill to
the crime scene and dropped Karina off.
“Is she going to be okay?” he
asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t see how
she can get through this alone.”
Alonzo draped his arm over Mitzy’s
shoulder. “She doesn’t have to. You won’t let her go through
this alone.”
Mitzy took a deep breath. “I won’t.
But I don’t know how much help I can be. That family is very messed
up.”
They drove the rest of the way home in
silence.
When they pulled onto their street,
Mitzy surveyed the homes. All single story ranch style. What kind of
renovation could you do on a street like that?
Alonzo opened the car door for her and
offered his arm. Compared to infidelity and murder, what was a house,
really? It wasn’t the same thing as family, and she had the family
thing nailed.
By five that evening, dark had already
fallen, and Mitzy was tucked into her Snuggie with her laptop open to
RealtorblogUSA. Her phone rang, jarring her out of her reading.
“This is Mitzy.” She stretched one
arm over her head. Maybe she’d get a new house to list.
“It’s me.” Karina’s voice shook
with fear, but Mitzy recognized her.
“How are you holding up?”
“They’ve arrested me. What am I
going to do?”
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