“No,” Mendoza said. “That would be assault. I’d have to arrest you for that, too.”
Figures. “There isn’t much I can do, is there?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “She came into my life and stole my husband, but I can’t keep an eye on her. She can come to my husband’s funeral and to my house, but I can’t throw her out.”
“You can ask her to leave. You just can’t lay a hand on her. And it would be better if you got someone else to do the asking.”
“If she shows up here,” I asked, “can I file a restraining order? Or some other kind of report? Like, can I sue for emotional battery?”
His lips twitched. “Probably not.”
“That’s a damn shame.”
We stood in silence for a moment. “Can I offer you anything, Detective?”
“Nothing I’d be able to accept,” Mendoza said. And added, “I’m working.”
“Coffee? Tea? Bottled water?”
“I’m fine.”
Yes, he was. But I wasn’t about to say so. I shouldn’t even be noticing, since he had a five-year-old at home, and probably a wife to go with the kid.
“We can at least sit down. And you can tell me about Daniel.”
Mendoza arched inquiring brows at me, and I elaborated. “You said you’d look into him and get back to me.”
“Oh,” Mendoza said. “That.”
I pulled out a dining room chair and planted myself. After a moment, and a bit reluctantly, Mendoza did the same. And folded his hands on the table. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Not that that meant anything. Lots of men don’t wear them, and as a cop, maybe it was a safety measure. He probably upset some people, and the less they knew about his private life, the better. It didn’t mean it was OK for me to ogle.
“Well?” I prompted when he didn’t say anything.
He sighed. “I knocked on Kenneth Kelly’s door this morning. Daniel Kelly was there.”
“I knew it!”
“He admitted that when I spoke to him on the phone the other day, he was already in Nashville.”
“That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no,” Mendoza said.
“He lied to the police. That has to be suspicious.”
“He had a good reason,” Mendoza said.
It was my turn to arch my brows at him, and he added, “By the time I spoke to him, his brother was dead. He knew if he admitted to being in town, he’d become a suspect.”
“So why didn’t he leave again? Why is he still here?”
“For the funeral,” Mendoza said. “He wants to bury his brother.”
Great. Not only did I possibly have Jacquie to look forward to, I had Daniel, as well. And of course Krystal and Kenny and any number of David’s friends and associates who no doubt believed I’d killed him. Nothing but good times ahead.
“How long has he been here?” I asked.
“Since the weekend,” Mendoza said.
“Does he have an alibi for Tuesday night?”
“He was staying with your stepson. He said he was tired and spent the night in the apartment. It’s a long drive from Santa Monica to Nashville.”
No doubt. “But Kenny was at work. So Daniel could have gone out and Kenny wouldn’t have known about it.”
Mendoza nodded.
“So he’s a suspect, too.”
“Everyone’s a suspect,” Mendoza said, which was a relief. Even if that ‘everyone’ included me. At least I wasn’t alone under suspicion.
“Do you know anything about the guy Jacquie was having dinner with?”
“His name is Nick Costanza,” Mendoza said, a bit reluctantly. “She said they’re friends.”
“That’s not what the guy at the Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue said.”
Mendoza looked at me.
“Nick Costanza works at the Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue. The Rotier’s waitress told me.” He didn’t speak, so I added, driving the information home, “He’d know how to cut David’s brake lines.”
“Everyone in the world would know how to cut your husband’s brake lines,” Mendoza said.
“I wouldn’t.”
He just arched his brows at me, so I decided not to pursue the subject any further. And anyway, Mendoza added, “That’s somewhere you said you were today. The Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue.”
I nodded. “Nick saw me and ran. He left someone else to do my oil change. A guy named Bud. And Bud said Nick and Jacquie were involved.”
“Hearsay,” Mendoza told me.
“I told him I thought Jacquie was involved with someone else, and he said that ended when the old dude died.”
There was a beat. “That’s not proof that Costanza had anything to do with it,” Mendoza said.
“But it’s possible he might have, if Jacquie left him for David, and he wanted her back.”
Mendoza didn’t say anything to that. “Anything else?” he asked me.
I thought about it. David had been hiding assets, Nick had run away from me—there was no need to tell Mendoza that Bud thought I’d been chasing after him—and I’d talked to Rachel and Farley. “I don’t think so. I assume you know that David’s share of the business goes to Farley.”
Mendoza nodded. “But he’ll have to replace your husband with someone else, or he won’t be able to keep the business going. He needs a constant influx of clients with money to manage.”
“It’s like I told you. David was worth more to him alive than dead.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“So did you get your kid fed last night?” I asked, when it became clear that we had nothing more to say about David’s murder.
Mendoza nodded. “Without burning down the kitchen and before his mother came home.” He grinned. “I got brownie points for both.”
Good for him. He’d probably gotten sex after the kid was asleep, too. I tried not to think about that, or about how long it had been since I’d gotten any. It was before I knew about Jacquie, although I was pretty sure David had slept with us both for a while. He could hardly stop sleeping with me without arousing my suspicions that he was getting his needs met elsewhere, and I hadn’t suspected a thing.
Anyway, it had been a while. And I definitely didn’t need to be thinking about that now.
I came back to myself in time for Mendoza to say, “You and your husband didn’t want any children?”
“David didn’t. He was in his mid-thirties when we got married, and he already had Krystal and Kenny with Sandra. I guess maybe he didn’t want them to feel like he was replacing them, too. Bad enough that he was replacing their mother.”
Although that was crediting David with a level of sensitivity I wasn’t sure he had possessed. It was more likely he’d simply realized that he didn’t like children very much, and he didn’t want any in addition to the two he had.
“How did you feel about that?”
“I went along with it,” I said. After a pause, I added, “If I’d been older when we got married—you know, a little more sure of myself and who I was—I might have said something, but I didn’t. It’s my own fault.”
Mendoza tilted his head to look at me. “How old were you when you married Mr. Kelly? He was in his mid-thirties and you were...?”
“Twenty-two,” I said.
Mendoza muttered something. It was my turn to arch my brows, and he said, “That’s a big age difference.”
“Not as big as David and Jacquie.”
Since there was nothing Mendoza could say to that, he didn’t try. “I should be going,” he said instead.
He probably should. Since he had a wife and kid at home, and all. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed sitting here looking at... I mean, talking to him.
“The funeral’s at eleven tomorrow,” I told him as he headed for the front door. “At Boling & Howard funeral home in Woodbine.”
He nodded.
“Visitation’s at ten. The graveside ceremony at one. And the festivities start at thr
ee. Here.”
“I’ll try to stop by,” Mendoza said.
“Do you think the murderer will show up at the funeral?”
He grinned, and damn near blinded me. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Your husband was killed by someone he knew. Anyone who isn’t there, will move to the top of the suspect list.”
“I’ll make sure nothing stops me,” I said.
“I can’t imagine much would,” Mendoza said, and walked out, leaving me to stare after him, not quite sure whether he’d just complimented or insulted me.
Chapter 10
NOBODY DIDN’T SHOW up. At the funeral, I mean. Everyone who was anyone was there.
I walked in at ten o’clock sharp, and found Sandra already present, brooding over the casket.
I hadn’t seen David’s first wife all that many times in the eighteen years he and I had been married. At first, naturally, she’d been upset with me for stealing her husband. Never mind the fact that he’d told me their marriage was over but for the formalities.
Later on, of course I realized he’d been lying, but at the time, I bought into the assertion that his wife didn’t understand him and was too busy with the kids to want to have sex.
And yes, I’m sure he’d told Jacquie the same thing. Minus the kids. But as far as explaining why his and my relationship was no longer working, he’d probably told her I’d lost my libido when I turned forty, and that I wasn’t interested in sex anymore.
Whatever it took, to get whichever woman he had his eye on into the sack.
Anyway, there was Sandra, standing by the casket. When I walked in and saw her, I thought she might be having a moment, so I stopped. But it was too late; she’d heard me, and turned. For a few long seconds, we stared at one another. Then she opened her mouth, and I braced myself.
“Nice hair.”
Oh. My hand flew to it, automatically. “Thank you.”
“It isn’t a red dress, but it’s the next best thing.”
Yes, it was. Although it was a little disconcerting how everyone I knew thought my new color was an attempt to stick it to David, when all I’d done was go back to the hair I was born with.
And for the record, I was appropriately dressed, in the same gray and black ensemble I’d worn to court on Wednesday morning. Sandra was likewise appropriately dressed, in a black skirt and white blouse with a jacket, and her hair pulled back from her face into an elegant chignon. Unlike me, she’s a natural blonde, who gave her coloring to her children.
Anyway, as I mentioned, I hadn’t had much to do with her during the time David and I had been married. They’d had the children in common, so they had to talk once in a while, but I stayed out of it as much as I could. They weren’t my children, and they didn’t like me—Sandra didn’t like me either, and wouldn’t welcome my interference—so I left those problems to David to handle. And as Krystal and Kenny grew up and needed less parental intervention, the contact between Sandra and David (and me) had become less, too. She’d stopped by David’s mother’s funeral to pay her respects last year, but other than that, it must have been three or four years since I’d last seen her.
You can imagine my surprise when she told me, “I slept with him, you know.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know. Krystal and Kenny are a dead giveaway.”
“Six months ago,” Sandra said.
My mouth opened. I closed it again.
Six months ago I hadn’t even turned forty yet.
And although I had realized that if David had slept with Jacquie, he might have slept with someone else too, I had never considered that he might have slept with Sandra.
Hell, she was older than me by a good ten years!
While I stood there gaping like a goldfish, Sandra continued, “He said your relationship was on the skids. He told me I still looked as good as when he married me.”
I closed my mouth again, on the words I wanted to say. It wouldn’t be constructive to tell her that he’d been lying through his teeth; that while she looked good for fifty-plus, she didn’t look twenty-two anymore, and that’s what she’d been when they got married.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I managed eventually. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”
If she’d been sleeping with him as recently as six months ago, she must be taking this harder than I was. Not that I hadn’t been sleeping with him six months ago... but it was different.
“Mostly,” Sandra told me, “I’m just sorry I didn’t kill him first.”
Oh. Um...
There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that, so I didn’t try. “I didn’t kill him either,” I told her instead.
She looked at me for a moment. “I’m sure you didn’t.”
Somehow, it didn’t sound like a compliment.
Other people started coming in at that point, so I went and sat down. Mostly my job here was just to be present, to look like a loving wife and to field any condolences—of which there were few. Most people had probably figured out that since we were in the middle of a messy divorce, and since David had left me for Jacquie, condolences weren’t in order.
Or perhaps they just didn’t feel they could condole me on the loss of a husband I was widely rumored to have murdered.
They showed up, though. All of David’s clients and their wives. Farley and Martha. Krystal and a long-haired young man in jeans and a black blazer whom I supposed was the boyfriend—and probably some sort of client. Kenny and Daniel. Rachel. Anton Hess.
Jacquie Demetros and Nick Costanza.
He cleaned up well, in a dark suit and tie. If he had engine grease under his nails, it didn’t show.
Jacquie, meanwhile, looked like a caricature of a Hollywood widow. She was dressed all in black: a shiny satin dress that hugged every curve and showed off a totally unsuitable amount of cleavage. The shoes were the same pair she’d worn to dinner two nights ago: sky-high and sexy, with ankle straps. On her head was a big, black hat with a veil, and she clutched Nick’s arm with one hand while the other pressed a handkerchief—black-rimmed—to her nose.
Nobody moved. We just watched her mince over to the coffin on those crazy heels. It was sort of like a train wreck: I couldn’t look away.
Sandra turned to me. “Is that the bitch?”
The room was fairly silent, and she didn’t bother to moderate her voice. I’m sure quite a few people heard her, in addition to me. I don’t know about Jacquie. If she did, it didn’t slow her undulating progress toward the daisy-draped casket.
I nodded. “That’s her.”
Sandra’s mouth twisted. “He got what he deserved.”
I wouldn’t have gone quite that far—I’m not sure anyone ever deserves being murdered, even a cheating husband—but I could understand her feelings. Looking at Jacquie—young and beautiful and fresh, and did I mention young and beautiful?—it was hard to feel any sympathy, for her or for David.
“That takes a lot of nerve,” Sandra added, “showing up here.”
Indeed. “She might really be grieving for him.”
“For the money,” Sandra said. “That girl’s got gold-digger written all over her. In big letters.”
Well, yes. “Nobody forced him to get involved with her.”
She glanced at me. “He was a prick. They deserved each other.”
No argument here.
While we’d been talking, Jacquie and Nick had reached the casket. We all watched, surreptitiously and not so surreptitiously, while she reached out a small, gloved hand and put it on the shiny wood.
Yes, gloved. She was actually wearing fingerless gloves in black lace; the better to let her tasteful black cherry nail polish show, I assume. And I’m sure every man in the room was shifting uncomfortably in his seat as that gloved hand slowly stroked the wood.
Sandra muttered something unprintable. “Are you going to let her do that?”
“I can’t stop her,” I said. “She’s sworn out a restraining order against me. If I approach her, I’ll be arrested. But you can
go tell her to stop if you want.”
Sandra cursed and stalked off. But not, I noticed, up to Jacquie. Instead, she homed in on Krystal and started haranguing her daughter to do something about the situation instead.
Movement at the door drew my attention in time to see Detective Mendoza slip through and into the room. He was wearing the same suit as yesterday—and filling it out just as nicely—this time in combination with a crisp white shirt and a subdued gray-blue tie. And just as all the men had stiffened noticeably watching Jacquie caress the casket, now a fair few of their wives sat up a little straighter as they watched Mendoza make his way inside.
Good to know I wasn’t the only one who reacted to the man’s overabundance of testosterone.
He watched Jacquie for a moment. I saw his lips tighten, but I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to hide a grin or something else. After a second, he began scanning the rest of the room.
I headed for the door. I might not be able to do anything about Jacquie, but I could greet Mendoza. It was pretty much all I was good for anyway.
“Detective.”
It might have been my imagination, but I felt like everyone in the room was watching me. And I wondered how many of those people knew he was the cop in charge of David’s case, and how many assumed—or wondered whether—he was some sort of romantic entanglement of mine instead.
Just in case, I made sure to stay at a very professional distance. Not that I’d be rubbing up against him if we were alone. Wife and kid, remember? Not to mention that he was practically a baby.
He nodded politely, but with a hint of amusement. As if he knew what I was thinking. “Mrs. Kelly.”
“Everyone’s here. All the suspects.”
He glanced around. “Looks that way.”
“I don’t suppose you’re here to make an arrest?”
Part of me was hoping he’d say yes. I was ready to get out from under the suspicion hanging over me like a cloud.
Of course, the other part was terrified he’d arrest me. I knew I hadn’t killed my husband, but I also knew what it looked like.
Mendoza shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“Any news?”
“Nothing I want to talk about here,” Mendoza said, perusing the room.
Ditching David Page 10