Murder on the Menu

by Miranda Bliss

  Her head was thrown back against the rim of the tub. Her eyes were open and staring. Her skin looked waxy and as pale as the white ceramic tile floor. As if it was some macabre, slow-motion dance, her body bobbed in the maroon-tinted water that filled the tub nearly to its brim.

  The color struck me as odd. Until I saw the bloody knife on the floor next to the tub. And the hideous gashes that slit Sarah’s wrists from one side to the other.

  My own blood whooshed like a torrent inside my ears, but that didn’t stop me from hearing Foster say something about calling 911. Or from hearing Eve’s scream.

  It was all Doctor Masakazu needed to decide that something was up, and that whatever it was, he didn’t like being left out of it. He started yapping all over again.

  Four

  THE POLICE ASSURED FOSTER THEY’D BE RIGHT OVER, and because there wasn’t anything else we could do, we went to the living room to wait. Although Eve was reluctant to let him go, I thought it best if Doctor Masakazu went back in his carrier. I don’t know if the site of a suicide is officially classified as a crime scene, but I suspected the cops wouldn’t want anything to be touched, including the dog. Besides, Eve was hugging the little critter so tight, I was worried she would smother him. We already had enough on our plates.

  I don’t need to point out that Doctor Masakazu was not happy about my decision and for as long as I could stand it, I put up with the yapping. But let’s face it, my nerves were stretched pretty thin. Yes, I may have been tampering with evidence, but I was willing to risk it for a little peace and quiet. After a few minutes, I put the carrier—and the dog in it—in the guest room and shut the door.

  Distance and a closed door helped, but even the noise of the dog’s incessant yapping couldn’t drown out the sounds of Eve’s quiet sobs. Or of Foster’s breaths, quick and shallow. Staring straight ahead, he sat in a chair across from the couch where Eve and I sat side by side. His hands shook—I guessed he was a smoker. It was a nasty habit, one I never understood, but I sympathized. He needed a nicotine fix, and he needed it badly. Heck, I didn’t smoke—never had, never will—but if someone offered me a cigarette then and there, I would have fired right up.

  I was about to suggest that Foster step out on the balcony when two paramedics arrived along with a woman in a navy blue windbreaker who was carrying a camera. Foster had apparently told them enough for them to know what to expect; they weren’t in any hurry. I led them to the bathroom, closed the front door they’d left open because the neighbors who’d caught wind of the commotion and were milling in the hallway made me feel ghoulish, and went back to the couch. There wasn’t much we could tell the authorities and no question about what had happened to Sarah. Still, I knew they were going to want to talk to us.

  I’m not sure how long we sat there. My hands clutched in my lap, I listened to the muffled voices of the people in the bathroom, punctuated by the rise and fall of the dog’s mournful howls. I heard the swish and drip of water and wondered if they’d taken Sarah out of the tub. I hoped they remembered to clean up after themselves; she liked her apartment neat.

  Really neat.

  Something about the idea caught my attention and honestly, I was grateful. Studying the room was better than picturing the image burned in my brain: Sarah in the bathtub. Her wrists sliced. Her blood coloring the water.

  I have been known to be a tad obsessive when it comes to orderliness, but as I looked around the living room, I realized that compared to Sarah, I was an amateur. The magazines on the coffee table in front of me were lined up by title and issue date. The books—mostly biographies, mostly of politicians—on the shelves across from where we sat were arranged alphabetically, not by title or author, but by subject. Reagan with Roosevelt down near the floor. Carter and Castro right next to Clinton (both him and her) on one of the higher shelves.

  Talk about politics making strange bedfellows.

  From there, I let my gaze wander to a narrow table against the wall just inside the front door where three exquisite porcelain vases of varying sizes were set out precisely: small, medium, large.

  Admittedly, I was pretty shaken up, and in my state of mind, I didn’t think any of this was odd or eccentric or even admirable. I didn’t make any judgment at all. Apparently, like her spare and deft photographic style and her interest in politics, this was just another facet of Sarah’s personality. If I thought anything about it at all, it was that, fussy or not, I was sorry I would never have the chance to get to know Sarah better.

  I switched my gaze back to the bookshelf, reading each title over to myself. It was better than thinking about what had happened there in the apartment before we arrived and what darkness drove people to take their own lives. I was halfway through the Ks (Kennedy, Khrushchev, King) when I realized the front door had opened, and someone new had come into the apartment.

  This didn’t concern me. Not as much as holding on to my tenuous composure. I moved on.

  McCain, McCarthy, McGovern.

  There were, apparently, no politicians whose names began with L who interested Sarah. Not even Lincoln. Quickly I scanned the shelves, wondering if Honest Abe had been misplaced. There was no sign of him or of any other L politico I could think of. Not Huey Long or Louis XIV or—

  “Is there a reason I’m not surprised to find the two of you here?”

  The question snapped me out of my thoughts. So did the fact that it came from a man who was standing in the doorway between the front entryway and the living room, his fists back just far enough on his hips to push his unbuttoned raincoat open and show off his shoulder holster and the gun in it.

  I knew the exact moment Eve noticed him. I felt the couch shift as she sat up straight and tall. She hiccupped, pressed her lips together, and automatically combed her fingers through her hair. I forgave her the conceit. Tyler Cooper was like a poison. He was in her blood, and even if she wanted to, there was no way she could ignore him. The antidote had yet to be discovered.

  I stood. I don’t know why, except that sitting made me feel as if I had to make excuses, and the way I saw things, there was no reason for that. “Sarah Whittaker was a friend,” I told Tyler. “She invited us over tonight.”

  “And then once you got here and she let you in, she just happened to kill herself?”

  He was trying to get a rise out of us, so I knew better than to answer his question. Foster, however, did not.

  “It ain’t like that, Officer,” the maintenance man said. As if he was cold, he rubbed his hands together. “She was already dead. When we walked in. I swear on my mother’s grave. I let these ladies in and—”

  With one withering look, Tyler stopped him right there. “You’ll tell me all the details when I’m done with the deceased. And—” He cringed. “What the hell is that awful noise?”

  “It’s not an awful noise.” Eve was on her feet in an instant. I don’t think she’d planned the move. She was too upset for that. But she couldn’t have designed it any better. Tyler was a smidgen under six feet tall. In her heels, Eve had to look down her nose to see him. “It’s Doctor Masakazu you hear,” she told him. “He’s mourning the loss of his master, the poor little darling. And if you had one ounce of kindness in your stone-cold soul—”

  Tyler turned around and headed down the hallway for the bathroom.

  “Guess I told him,” Eve grumbled.

  I didn’t point out that even if she had, he didn’t stick around long enough to hear it.

  Instead, I sat back down. Once she’d paced back and forth to get rid of some of her nervous energy and put on a fresh coat of lipstick, Eve joined me. That’s where we were when another team of paramedics came through the front door with a stretcher. It’s where we sat and watched, helpless, silent, and holding each other’s hands, as Sarah’s body was taken out of the apartment.

  “So…” Tyler came back into the living room. The commotion he’d heard outside the guest room door made the dog bark even louder, and Tyler had to raise his voice. �
�Somebody want to tell me what happened here?”

  The answer was pretty obvious. Which didn’t explain why Tyler looked from Eve to me and back again. I knew that an Eve versus Tyler smackdown wasn’t going to get us anywhere, so I answered his question before she could.

  “I already told you,” I said, and Tyler’s neon blue gaze swiveled my way. “Sarah invited us over tonight.” I pointed toward the Bellywasher’s bag. “We brought dessert.”

  “And she let you into the apartment?”

  “Of course not.” He knew this, but I felt obligated to point it out, anyway. “She was already dead.”

  “Then when she invited you over, she gave you a key?”

  I fought to keep my voice even. “No. She didn’t do that, either. We called when we got here. From the phone in the lobby. When she didn’t buzz us up, we knew something was wrong because she knew we were coming. That’s when Foster came along and let us in.”

  Tyler pulled a small notepad from his pocket, clicked open a pen, and scratched a note. “You supposed to do that, Foster?” he asked the maintenance man.

  Foster blanched. “I…um…I—”

  “It’s lucky he did,” I said. Call me a sucker, but I hated to see Tyler bully anyone. “Who knows when Sarah would have been found if Foster wasn’t around. He didn’t do anything wrong. He was just trying to help Doctor Masa…the dog.”

  “The dog.” Tyler made another note. “How long has he been carrying on like this?”

  Foster shook his head. “Been getting calls all day. I knew I had to do something, and when these ladies said they’d help—”

  “I’ll just bet they did.” Tyler did a quick turn around the room. He looked at the bookshelves, the magazines, the photos on the wall. He finally stopped with his back to the floor-to-ceiling French doors that led onto the balcony. Am I that small-minded? Or is it just that I know Tyler well? I was certain he’d chosen the spot because the glow of city lights accented his sandy hair, outlined his broad shoulders, and made him look more formidable than ever.

  “If you came up here to shut the dog up, you did a hell of a bad job of it,” Tyler said.

  Eve’s jaw clenched, but I had to give her credit. Tyler was behind her, and she didn’t bother to turn around. “Doctor Masakazu was fine. Until we found Sarah.” Her voice broke over a sob.

  “The dog obviously hasn’t been out for a while.” I filled in the blanks for Tyler. “And I’ll bet he hasn’t eaten, either. Maybe not all day.”

  “Maybe not since yesterday.” He walked around the couch and over to the bookshelves. “Crime scene techs say she’s probably been dead that long, though it’s hard to tell without an autopsy. The water’s cold, and that kept the body cold, too.” He glanced Eve’s way. “Please don’t tell me you called to confirm you’d be here today and that you talked to her when you did. That would mess up our whole timeline.”

  Eve’s eyes flashed. “Are you more interested in your timeline or in finding out what happened to that poor girl?”

  “What happened to that poor girl…” Tyler’s words were edged with impatience. He reined it in and lowered his voice as much as he was able to and still be heard above the yapping. “What happened to that poor girl is that she poured a nice, hot bath, sat down in it, and cut her wrists. Any questions?”

  It was one of those rhetorical questions, and I should have left well enough alone. Fact is, though, I have never been known to accept things at face value. “Then why are you here?” I asked Tyler. “You’re with homicide. If you knew this was a suicide—”

  Tyler’s sigh was monumental. “Yeah, I’m with homicide, and I just happened to be unlucky enough to be the closest one to the call. We check out all unexpected deaths. We’ll close the books on this one in no time flat.”

  “You don’t think it’s suspicious?”

  He shot me one of those cop looks, like the ones I remembered getting time and time again from the boys in blue the summer before when we were investigating Drago’s murder. It walked the fine line between the politeness a public servant had to show the civilian population in general and the mind-your-own-business lecture I knew Tyler was tempted to give me.

  “The only thing suspicious here,” Tyler said, “is how you two keep showing up where there are dead bodies. You want to explain?”

  I didn’t, but I didn’t feel as if I had a choice. “We told you. Sarah invited us. And Eve called yesterday to confirm.”

  “Time?” Tyler’s pen was poised over his notepad.

  Eve shrugged. “I don’t know. Three, maybe. It doesn’t really matter, because she didn’t answer. I left a message.”

  Tyler looked around for a phone. I had seen one on the counter in the kitchen, and I had noticed the red message light on it was blinking. I didn’t bother to point this out to him. Tyler Cooper might have been a coldhearted son of a gun, but he was also a good cop. He would check and find this out for himself.

  “And the last time you saw Ms. Whittaker was…?” This time, Tyler’s icy gaze took in all of us.

  Foster shrugged. “I dunno. Don’t know if I ever met the lady. I been up here. You know, before she moved in. That couldn’t have been more than two or three weeks ago. We vacuumed the hallways, did a last check on the heat and the lighting. You know, before the tenants started moving in. But before tonight…” His voice faded, and his eyes went blank. I knew he was reliving that first sight of Sarah’s cold, pale body.

  Because I didn’t want to go there with Foster, I gave Tyler our side of the story. “Sarah stopped into Bellywasher’s last week. It’s a restaurant. In Alexandria.”

  Tyler made a note of this.

  “And when she did, how did she seem? Was she upset about anything?”

  Eve shook her head, but before she could answer, I remembered something Sarah had said. “She broke up with her boyfriend,” I told Tyler. “Dylan. That’s his name.”

  “A romance gone bad.” Tyler wrote down the words and underlined them with a flourish. He flipped his notebook closed.

  “But—”

  I was not so easily put off. Not even by the look he flashed my way.

  “But she didn’t seem especially upset about it,” I told Tyler. “Remember, Eve? She mentioned Doctor Masakazu. And you asked—”

  “If she had a new man in her life.” Eve scooted to the edge of the couch. “That’s right. She said Dylan was history. But she didn’t seem broken up about it.”

  “Oh, come on!” Tyler rolled his eyes. “You’re telling me a woman gets dumped by her boyfriend one week, then slits her wrists the next, and one thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other? What fairy-tale world are you two living in?”

  “You think she killed herself because her boyfriend broke up with her?” Eve’s voice dripped with contempt. “Oh, come on, Tyler, honey! There isn’t a man in the world worth dying over.”

  His gaze met Eve’s and never wavered. “Maybe you just never met the right man.”

  “Well, that’s a fact.” She rose to her feet. “So that’s that? That’s all you need to know?”

  He didn’t say yes or no, just pursed his lips. “Seems pretty straightforward,” he said. “My work here is done.”

  “But what about—” I was thinking out loud and I didn’t even realize it until the words were out of my mouth. Once I started, I figured I might as well keep going. “But why would she invite us over? Why ask us to stop by today if she was planning on killing herself yesterday?”

  Tyler gave a noncommital shrug. “Who knows how people think when they get desperate. Maybe she forgot you were coming. Maybe she just didn’t care anymore. Hell, maybe you were mean to her in seventh grade, and she wanted to get back at you, and she figured this would teach you a lesson. Maybe she wanted to make sure somebody found her. Suicide and clear thinking, they don’t always go together.”

  “But if it wasn’t—”

  “Wasn’t suicide?” This time, Tyler didn’t even try to disguise the fact that he though
t I was being woodenheaded. “You think just because you trip over one murder victim—”

  “Two,” Eve corrected him.

  He ignored it. “You think because you got too close to a crime once—or twice,” he added with a look at Eve because he knew she was going to interrupt again. “You think you know all there is to know about murder?”

  “Of course not!” I didn’t mind admitting it. “But it just doesn’t make sense.” I remembered something else I’d seen when I looked around the apartment. “You know, there are wineglasses in the kitchen.”

  Tyler shrugged. “So the lady liked a glass of wine now and then.”

  “Two wineglasses,” I pointed out. “Washed and left on the sink to dry. She wouldn’t have done that. She wouldn’t have left them there.”

  His eyebrows did a slow slide up his forehead. “And you know this because…what, you knew this woman so well, you know about her dishwashing habits?”

  “No, I hardly knew her at all, but—”

  Tyler had heard enough. He turned to leave.

  I tried a last-ditch effort to make him see that I wasn’t buying his theory. “But it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  The whole public-servant thing must have kicked in, because he stopped and turned back to me, even though it was clear that it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “It doesn’t make any sense for Sarah to have us come over. Not if she was planning to kill herself. You think if she was, she would have—”

  “Left a suicide note?” Tyler pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket. It contained a single piece of paper, written on with blue ink. The handwriting was flowing and feminine. He waved the plastic bag back and forth in front of us. “What do you think, ladies? This was on the dresser in the bedroom. Is it enough to convince you that you’re seeing bogeymen where there aren’t any? How about what Ms. Whittaker says in the note?”

  He flattened the bag and read from the paper. “‘Not going to take it.’ That’s exactly what it says. ‘Not satisfied, and I’m not going to take it.’”