“Brooklyn,” Zak said. “I bought a brownstone.”
I chewed back a grin. Brooklyn. I’d called it. “What section?”
“Crown Heights.”
Dom said, “I’ve heard there’s a vibrant arts community in Crown Heights. Artists, writers, musicians...”
He was already nodding. “I’m a writer.”
“Zak,” I said, handing SB’s straw tote to Dom, “may I use your bathroom?”
“Of course.” If he wondered why I hadn’t used the john in the house I’d just left, he was too polite to ask. “There’s a powder room down that hall on your left.”
When I returned to the foyer, it was vacant. “We’re in here,” Dom called. I followed his voice to the big, comfortable kitchen, which smelled of fresh paint—a muted robin’s-egg blue—and brewing coffee.
My ex sat on a counter stool at the concrete work island while our host produced coffee mugs and milk. So much for Zak being too busy to talk. I sensed Dom and I had passed some test.
Meanwhile Sexy Beast and Dylan raced from room to room, enjoying the butt-sniffing, play-chasing, dominance-establishing stage of early canine friendship.
“—an urban near-future apocalyptic coming-of-age story,” Zak was saying, “that draws heavily on Bronze Age mythology. Hittite mainly, but with a dash of Rigvedic thrown in to shake things up.”
“Zak’s been telling me about the novel he wrote,” Dom said as I took the stool next to his. “It sounds fascinating.” The subtle wide-eyed look he gave me said Zak’s book did not, in fact, sound fascinating at all and please please please make him stop talking about it.
“I adore Rigvedic mythology,” I said. “I’d love to hear all about it, Zak. Don’t leave anything out.”
Dom reached under the counter and pinched my thigh, hard. “Oh, let’s not have any spoilers,” he said. “Just tell me where I can buy a copy.”
“I wish,” Zak said, as he set the coffee fixings and a basket containing a selection of herbal teas on the island. “I’m still workshopping the manuscript. It’s not quite ready to submit to publishers yet.”
“How long have you been working on it?” I asked.
“I started it junior year of college.”
So, close to two decades. Well, you can’t rush true art.
While Zak poured coffee for himself and me, Dom poked through the basket of teas, finally selecting Nasty Grass Clippings Low Energy Blend. Okay, maybe it was really called Lemon Verbena Sunrise, but I mean, please. Give me strong, black high-test any day. I’m talking about coffee with shoulders. I want a single cup to leave me too jittery to sign my name.
“Does your book have a happy ending?” I asked Zak, who failed to repress a look of disdain. Clearly I’d just revealed myself as a lowbrow mouth-breather, my love of Rigvedic mythology notwithstanding. (I’d have to look that up one of these days.)
“Important fiction isn’t about happy endings or satisfied expectations,” he said. “Its job is to challenge everything the reader knows about him or herself—”
“So what else do you do?” Dom asked.
Zak frowned. “What, you mean my day job?”
Dom nodded. “Obviously you don’t support yourself with your writing. Yet,” he hastened to add.
“I’m a copywriter.” Zak lifted the whistling kettle from the stove and poured boiling water over Dom’s tea bag. “Have you ever visited the KrunchWorks website?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Dom said, “but I’m friends with Norman Butterwick.” Dapper nonagenarian Norman, who’d attended my birthday party, owned the KrunchWorks snack-food company. It was the source of his fortune, along with the Easter Buddy brand of egg-dying kits, which his late wife, Maud, had inherited.
“Well,” Zak said, “I’m responsible for most of the content on the site, as well as some other advertising materials.”
I said, “Sounds like interesting work.”
“No, it doesn’t.” His tone brooked no argument. “I’m hoping this move to Brooklyn will jump-start a new phase in my life, one driven by creativity rather than the need to chase a paycheck.”
At the very least, I thought, maybe the move would help him finish that darn book. “Well, for the record,” I said, “I’m a huge KrunchWorks fan. I love everything they make.”
There was that flash of contempt again—for KrunchWorks’ offerings, I hoped, and not my less-than-refined palate. You might have already noticed I’m no stranger to junk food.
Dom said, “I take it you’re not in love with your company’s products.”
Zak spread his arms. “Do you see any bags of Ched’r Wheelz With X-treme Cheeze! around here? I have no use for the greasy, salty, sugary factory foods those giant companies have deliberately gotten the public addicted to.”
Which might explain why we hadn’t been offered a cookie to go with our organic, fair-trade (and far too weak) coffee, I mentally harrumphed. And was the turbinado sugar he’d put out really any better for you than regular sugar? Harrumph harrumph.
Dom was nodding like a bobblehead at Zak’s grumpy pronouncements. “I’m with you on that, man. That stuff is poison.”
“Well, it hasn’t done me in yet.” I turned to Dom. “And you’ve been known to sneak a few Picante Gigante Tac-O’s at my place.” Another popular KrunchWorks snack.
Dom chose that moment to change the subject. “So, Zak, are you on vacation this week?” It was a Tuesday, after all.
“No,” he said, “I work from home, and my boss doesn’t really care which particular hours of the day or night I get the work done as long as it gets done.”
“How long have you lived here?” Dom asked.
“My whole life, if you don’t count college and a few years after. This was my parents’ house, and my mom’s parents before them.”
I said, “Doesn’t it bother you, the thought of this wonderful place not being in the family anymore?”
Zak took a moment to answer, a moment during which I realized I had yet to see this man smile. “I guess it does bother me if I let myself think about it, so I try not to think about it. Anyway, I have no one to leave it to, so what’s the use in beating myself up over it?”
Since he kinda sorta went there, I said, “Audrey mentioned that you lost your wife. I’m so sorry.”
Dom murmured something appropriate, and Zak nodded his thanks.
“Under the circumstances,” I said, “a fresh start in a new place might be just the thing.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “It wasn’t recent, if that’s what you’re thinking. My wife’s death, I mean.”
My face heated. “Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed...” Way to put your foot in it, Ms. Assumptions Can Be Dangerous.
“Stacey died eleven years ago,” he said. Our surprise must have shown, because he added, “I was twenty-seven. We were married for four years.”
An awkward silence ensued, which Dom broke by asking, “Did you inherit this house?”
“No, Mom and Dad retired to Florida the year before Stacey died. They sold us the house for a bargain price—which was very generous of them, and the only way we could’ve afforded it. Before that, we had an apartment in the city.”
So Zak and Stacey lived here for a year, more or less, before he became a widower. I was too polite and well brought up (I’ll wait till you stop giggling) to ask how Zak’s presumably young wife met her maker. The Death Diva had no such qualms. She was dying, pun intended, to come right out and ask point-blank. Fortunately, Polite Jane prevailed and kept our big yap firmly zipped.
Likewise, I refrained from commenting on Zak’s statement that he had no one to leave the house to. At thirty-eight years of age, he still had plenty of time to remarry and fill this charming old place with kids. Of course, it was entirely possible he wanted to flee the sad memories the house must hold. But if that was the case, why wait eleven years to make the big move?
Sexy Beast and Dylan, having finally tired themselves out, trotted into the kitc
hen, shared the water bowl, and collapsed in a heap on the big, cushy dog bed tucked into one corner of the room.
I turned to Zak. “So you and Peaches grew up across the street from each other.”
“Well, yeah,” he said, “but she was seven years older than me, so we didn’t go to school together or anything. We never really socialized.”
Dom spoke up. “Even after you moved back here? Carter and the kids were living here with her then. You didn’t, I don’t know, have each other over for cookouts or anything?”
“What can I tell you?” he said. “We didn’t run in the same circles.”
“You’re both writers, though,” I said, “so there’s kind of a connection there, right?”
Zak looked at me sharply. “Her advice column and my novel have nothing in common.”
Dom kicked me under the counter. I got the message. I was well on my way to antagonizing Zak when I should be trying to wheedle information out of him.
Focus!
“Well,” I said, “it’s terribly sad that Peaches’s own son was arrested for her murder.”
I left that hanging there, hoping for a response from our host. He simply nodded in agreement. Yes, sad indeed.
So much for the subtle approach. “We understand you witnessed an argument between Sean and Peaches,” I said. “Shortly after Thanksgiving.”
“That’s true, unfortunately,” he said.
“Where did it take place?”
Zak’s frown got even frownier. “Why do you want to know?”
I opted for honesty. Hey, it’s been known to happen. “Sean’s girlfriend, Cheyenne, is convinced he’s innocent. She asked me to do a little investigating and see if I could maybe turn up something the police might’ve overlooked.”
He said, “Something exculpatory, you mean, to try and get him off the hook. Good luck with that.”
“Well, obviously that’s what she’s hoping for,” I said, “but she’ll have to be satisfied with whatever legitimate facts I turn up.”
“You told me you’re friends with Evie,” Zak said. “Was that just to get through the doorway?”
“Yes.” This honesty thing was wearing me down. Before he could kick us out, I added, “I do know Evie, though. No lie. And if I’d told you I was here on behalf of Cheyenne, would you have let me in?”
Zak’s look of annoyance was tempered with grudging respect. “So you’re, what, a private investigator?”
“No, I have a freelance business assisting clients who’ve lost loved ones,” I said. “I’m sort of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to the deceased.” There really is no logical way to describe what I do. Every time I make the attempt, I’m met with varying degrees of incomprehension on the part of my listener. Zak, however, got it on the first try.
His hazel eyes widened. “You’re the Death Diva. I’ve heard about you.”
I spread my arms. “In the flesh.”
“You did this weird thing for a friend of mine recently,” he said.
“‘Weird thing’ doesn’t really narrow it down,” I said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“She wanted you to make some jewelry from her dead sister’s hair,” Zak said. “Well, not you personally, but apparently you arranged for a jewelry artist to do the work.”
“Oh yes, that was for Ruth Neely,” I said, and Zak nodded. “She got a bracelet, a ring, and a locket out of it. Believe it or not, that’s nowhere near the strangest assignment I’ve done. Don’t ask,” I added, not because I didn’t want to discuss my most bizarre jobs—well, there were a few I really didn’t want to discuss—but because I had no wish to get Zak sidetracked.
“So this argument,” I said, “between Sean and his mom. Do you remember what day that was?”
“Like I told the detectives,” he said, “it was the afternoon of Friday, November twenty-ninth. Around two p.m.”
“You have a good memory.” What a delight after Sean’s slimy evasiveness. “Where did this argument take place?”
“Her front yard,” he said. “Well, it started inside the house and spilled over onto the porch. Sean was trying to get away from his mom, and she basically pursued him down the steps and into the yard.”
“And you just happened to be outside at that moment and saw what was going on?” I asked.
“I was on a ladder out front, putting up Christmas lights.”
Zak didn’t strike me as the kind of guy to decorate his house for the holidays. “One of those high-tech displays?” I guessed. “Like where the lights blink in time to music and change colors and all that?”
One side of his mouth quirked. It wasn’t a full-on smile, but it was the closest I’d seen. “We’re talking full-on retro. Those fat, multicolored lights from the fifties and sixties, the kind my parents had when they were kids. They kept up the tradition when I was little—the house always got blinged out the day after Thanksgiving, like clockwork—and, well, I guess it just doesn’t seem like Christmas without them.”
“I know what you mean.” I offered a half smile. “Childhood traditions are hard to let go of.”
“I did Peaches’s house every year, too,” he said.
“Really? I thought you two didn’t know each other that well.”
“We didn’t, not really,” he said, “but the first time she saw me putting up lights—”
“The day after Turkey Day, right?” I grinned, and miracle of miracles, so did he. It turned out Zak Pryce was quite the looker when he smiled.
“That’s right,” he said. “It was twelve years ago, the first Christmas after Stacy and I moved in. Peaches hurried over and within two minutes managed to wheedle me into putting up her lights too—and then taking them down after New Year’s. I’ve done it every year since.”
Dom looked surprised. “What about Carter?”
One eyebrow quirked. “Could you see Carter Moretti up on a ladder, working with electricity?”
“We haven’t met him,” Dom said. “Kind of hopeless with honey-do tasks, is he?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Zak said. “Honestly, I didn’t mind doing it every year. Not if it kept Carter from shorting out the Northeast power grid.”
I wouldn’t have expected that kind of neighborly spirit, not to mention holiday sentiment, from someone like slick, artsy Zak. I must admit, I found myself charmed.
Dom was staring at me. Reading my mind, as usual. “So.” His tone was brisk. “You were out there on the ladder when you noticed the commotion across the street.”
“It would’ve been impossible not to notice,” he said.
“They were that loud?” I asked.
“Yelling at the top of their lungs. I would’ve gone back inside the house to get away from them, but I was stuck up there on that ladder, with an armful of lights I was trying to untangle.”
Dom said, “Peaches and Sean must have seen you.”
“Oh, I’m sure they did,” Zak said, “but they were too worked up to care.”
“Were there any other neighbors around?” I asked.
“None near enough to hear.”
“Sean’s mom had kicked him out of the house about a month before that,” I said. “Carter, too.”
“Which was good news as far as I was concerned,” Zak said. “I’m referring to Sean, not his dad. I have nothing against Carter. Kind of a nebbish, which isn’t the worst sort of neighbor to have.”
The message being: better a harmless nebbish living across the street than a lazy, drugged-out part-time burglar.
“What were they arguing about?” I asked.
“By the time she chased him outside,” he said, “it was basically a lot of name-calling and general invective. They were both dropping f-bombs and worse.”
“Did it get physical at any point?”
“Not that I saw. And neither of them was bleeding.” He shrugged. “But if words could kill...”
Yeah, about that. “You told the police you heard Sean threaten his mother,” I said.<
br />
“His exact words?” Zak poured me a second cup of weak coffee. “Quote, ‘You better watch your ass, you miserable old slut. I know guys who’d be thrilled to do a Jimmy Hoffa on you, just for the fun of it. All I’d have to do is snap my fingers. They’d never find your body.’ End quote.”
I wondered how high someone would have to be to forget making a threat like that. “Did you report this conversation to the cops?” I asked. “I mean, you know, at the time it happened.”
He shook his head. “Peaches didn’t seem to take it seriously, so I saw no reason I should. For all I knew, that could have been the ten millionth time he’d said something like that to her.”
Dom said, “Did Peaches threaten Sean in any way?”
“Not that I heard.”
Well, she’d already followed through on her threat to kick him out of the house and stop supporting him, and Sean hadn’t claimed she’d threatened him with physical violence, at least during his conversation with me.
“When’s the last time you saw Peaches?” I said, knowing the cops had no doubt asked the same thing.
“That was the last time,” he said. “That fight out on the lawn.”
“Did they say anything else that stuck in your mind?”
“Not really, nothing as memorable as that Jimmy Hoffa stuff.” Zak drained his coffee mug and placed it in the sink.
“I get the feeling you think the cops arrested the right guy,” I said.
“Well, the kid already has a record.” He shrugged, as if it wasn’t that big a leap from burglary to first-degree murder. “On the other hand, don’t they say that nine times out of ten, it’s the spouse?”
“Carter?” I mused, leaving aside that he wasn’t Peaches’s legal spouse. After near a quarter century together, he might as well have been. “The two of them were estranged. But didn’t I just hear you say he was an okay neighbor? Just a little nebbishy?”
“You know what they say about the quiet ones,” Zak said. “But I’m just thinking out loud. I have no reason to think Carter wanted to do Peaches harm.”
“While we’re on the subject of suspects,” I said, “do you know the name Burke Fletcher? Evie mentioned him to me.”
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