"Please don't tell the police," he begged. "I was just so lonely, Roxann."
"And you're going to stay lonely if you don't stop manipulating people—what you did was a terrible thing." She stuck out her hand. "Give me back my key."
He removed it from his front shirt pocket and placed it in her palm. She poked her tongue into her cheek, not even wanting to think about how often he'd been over there when she wasn't.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just wanted a friend."
She sighed. "Mr. Nealy, you need a friend who's a little closer to your age."
"I don't know anyone."
She drew mightily on her patience. "Go down to Rigby's Diner and ask to sit in Helen's section. And be nice. If you're lucky, she might go out with you." She shook her finger. "But don't you ever do anything like this again."
"I won't," he said.
She slowly walked back to her duplex, marveling that the antics of one old man could have unleashed such pandemonium in her life. Proof, she realized, of the power her deep-seated guilt had had over her life.
Capistrano was leaning over the counter when she walked in. "You're not going to believe—" She stopped when she saw he was marking through something on a piece of yellow legal paper. "What are you doing?"
He grinned and held up the life list she'd once crumpled. It had been ironed flat. "I found this in the items the police returned and thought you should keep it."
He had discreetly crossed through number thirty-three with a black marker. She smiled. "Thank you." Then she stopped. "Hey, wait, someone crossed off number one—backpack across Europe."
"Sounds like a great honeymoon to me."
She vaulted into his arms and checked her watch. "Right now, it's seven p.m. in London."
"Wait a minute," he said with a frown. "You did agree to marry me, didn't you?"
She pulled away and rummaged in one of the boxes until she came up with her Magic 8 Ball. She closed her eyes and held the toy reverently. "Should I marry the great Detective Joe Capistrano and live as his sex slave for the next forty—"
"Fifty."
"—fifty years?" She opened her eyes and turned over the toy.
Yes, definitely.
The End
Book 4: Bump in the Night
a short mystery
by
Stephanie Bond
Nothing good happens after midnight...
Bump in the Night
DON’T ASK ME WHY I let my ex-boyfriend in at 2:00 a.m. I knew better. But he woke me from a dead sleep pounding on my apartment door, yelling like Marlon Brando. With a groan I realized he’d used my code to get into the building. I guess I should’ve been glad he hadn’t used the key I’d given him a long time ago and simply walked in.
Two of my neighbors—Mr. McFelty and Mrs. Bingham—had stuck their heads out in the hall bellowing for him to shut the bleep up. He had returned with a bleepity-bleep of his own. When the obscenities escalated to the point of insulting ancestry, I peeled my eye from the peephole that rendered Daniel Hale’s face bulbous (but still handsome, godbleepit) and unlocked the deadbolt.
“Daniel, it’s late and I have to be at the office early,” I said through a crack. “What are you doing here?”
My neighbors shouted parting expletives and slammed their doors.
Daniel, looking lethal in a rumpled tuxedo, gave me one of those heart-bending smiles that used to make my underwear fly off. “I was missing you, Renni.”
That’s me, Renni Greenfield, dressed in pajamas with penguins on them, my sexuality having been shelved for months. “Daniel, you need to go home.”
“I’m drunk,” he slurred. “You don’t want me to kill myself or someone else driving home, do you?”
“No.”
“Then let me spend the night. I’ll crash on the couch and be gone before you wake up. Please?”
I sighed, my resolve crumbling like the wall of a gingerbread house. I hated Daniel for cheating on me with Leora the legs-for-days paralegal in our office, but I truly didn’t want to see his Jag accordianed into a Peachtree Street telephone pole on the morning news while Atlanta commuters honked at the delay of extracting his body. And even though I wouldn’t have minded inheriting one or two of his big-money clients, I knew I couldn’t handle the extra workload I’d get if something happened to the cad.
So…I let him in and diverted him from my bedroom, reminding him of the way to the couch. He pouted, but staggered toward my tiny living room, shedding clothes along the way. By the time I fetched linens from the bathroom, he was naked and sprawled on my sofa. Then he curled his hand around my wrist and before I knew it, I was naked, too.
I reasoned he owed me an orgasm or three.
Unlike most men, Daniel’s performance seemed to improve under the influence of alcohol, but afterward he was asleep instantly. It made for an awkward dismount, but I managed. He was too far gone to move, and curling up next to him in the five inches left on the couch was unappealing, so I simply went back to my bed and fell into an exhausted sleep, postponing regret until morning.
When my alarm went off at 6:30 a.m., I hit the snooze button twice. I hadn’t heard Daniel leave, but then I was a notoriously sound sleeper. I dragged myself out of bed and headed toward the kitchen in pursuit of coffee. When I rounded the corner and saw Daniel’s arm hanging over the edge of the couch, I frowned—so much for his being gone by the time I woke up.
Then I saw the bloody knife sticking out of his bare chest.
It wasn’t the kind of “gone” I’d expected.
***
FORGET LAW SCHOOL. I’d learned from TV trials that guilt or innocence was usually decided by the jury on the basis of the 911 call, which, of course, would be taped. So when I called, I spared no emotion—not a stretch because I was only a couple of short breaths away from full-blown hysteria. When the operator asked if the stabbed man on my couch was dead, I assured her he was. When she asked if I knew who’d stabbed him, I said no. When she asked whose residence it was, I said mine. When she asked if an intruder could still be there, I panicked.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.” And at the moment I was riveted to my penguin P.J.’s lying in the floor next to the couch, spattered with Daniel’s blood in an arterial pattern. I glanced toward the front door, which was closed, the deadbolt locked. While my mind raced for an explanation, my gaze bounced around the apartment to places where a murderer might be hiding. Under the desk, in the pantry, in the shower.
“I don’t see anyone,” I said into the phone.
“Is there somewhere safe you can go until the police arrive? Maybe to a neighbor’s?”
“I have to get dressed,” I murmured, then flinched when I realized I was saying every wrong thing.
The operator agreed I should get dressed, but warned me not to touch anything else and to stay on the line until the police arrived. I pulled on sweats with the cordless phone crooked between ear and shoulder, breathing like a sprinter. My normally well-ordered mind was operating like a Roomba vacuum cleaner, pinging off every barrier and heading in another direction.
The operator continued to ask questions—How did I know the deceased? What was his full name? Where was I when the stabbing occurred?—but I didn’t answer. I was already thinking like a criminal, reviewing my alibi (sleeping), and brainstorming how I could shore it up before the uniforms arrived. I unlocked the deadbolt and cracked open the window in my bedroom even though it was on the second floor and the only way anyone could have reached it was with a ladder. Ditto for the window in the living room.
“Ma’am, don’t touch anything,” the operator repeated, and I realized the sounds of all my movements had been caught on tape. I could picture a prosecutor recreating the noises for a jury. Here she’s unlocking the door, here she’s opening a window. I heard sirens, so I disconnected the call before I incriminated myself further.
The next two hours brought a flurry of bodies th
rough the door—police, EMT’s, a medical examiner. A slender black female detective sat with me in the bathroom—me on the lid of the commode and her on a chair draped with the white shirt I’d worn to work yesterday. Her name was Detective Salyers.
“Miss Greenfield, you had sex with the victim?”
“I told you, yes.” I was growing irritated with the repetitive questioning, primarily because I was paranoid of saying something wrong. The reason I’d opted for real estate law versus criminal law was my lousy public speaking skills. “Like I said, Daniel knocked on my door around two in the morning. He was drunk and asked if he could crash on the couch. He was disturbing my neighbors, so I decided it was easier to let him in than to try to get him to leave.”
“Had this happened before?”
I nodded. Daniel had been fond of late-night episodes where he’d banged on the door in prelude to banging me. “But not for months.” Not since he’d dumped me.
“So you let him in, and then you had sex?”
“Yes. Then he passed out and I went back to bed. When my alarm went off, I got up and found him, dead.”
“You didn’t hear anything after you went to bed?”
“No.”
“And nothing is missing.”
“That I know of. Of course, Daniel could’ve had something valuable on him.”
“His wallet, cash, and gold watch are intact.”
Damn—so much for robbery.
“So after you went to bed, someone entered your apartment and stabbed Mr. Hale to death for no apparent reason?”
“It appears so.”
“How did they get in?”
“Like I said, I left the door unlocked.” The lie was getting easier, sounding more plausible.
“Someone intent on doing harm entered your apartment through a door you happened to leave unlocked, walked right past you sleeping in your bedroom, killed Mr. Hale on the living room couch, and left?”
“They could’ve gotten in through a window,” I offered.
“Both windows raise only a few inches, for safety. An adult couldn’t have squeezed through.”
“Oh. Right.”
The detective blinked slowly. “Miss Greenfield, the knife in his chest matches the other knives in your kitchen.”
“So the murderer used one of my knives.”
“Are we going to find your fingerprints on the knife?”
“Possibly, if it came from my kitchen.” I pushed to my feet. “I’d really like to take a shower.”
Detective Salyers stood, too. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. You’re going to have to come to the station with me, Miss Greenfield.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “I need to make a call first.”
She extended her cell phone. “Use mine.”
***
“I CAME AS SOON as I could.”
I lifted my head from a sticky wood table scarred with key-carved initials to see Grant Bellamy standing in the doorway. I had maintained my composure to this point, but when I saw Grant was wearing the navy blue crested blazer I had bought him for one of our two wedding anniversaries, I melted into a big gobbet of goo. Gentle brown eyes, severely clipped hair, and triple-pleated chinos I had once found so wearisome suddenly embodied strength and security.
“There, there,” he said, rubbing my back as I clung to him. “We’ll get this all straightened out.”
And even though I’d heard—and seen—him say the same thing to serial killers he’d defended, I believed him.
“Let’s sit,” Grant said, guiding me back to the chair.
I was overcome with humiliation that the first time I’d talked to Grant in the three years since we’d divorced was to ask for his help to ward off an imminent charge for murdering my ex-lover. I felt compelled to make some kind of small talk.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “How have you been?”
He smiled. “The same—fine.”
That was Grant, a constant term in the nonlinear equation of life. “And your folks?” His father had had a cancer scare when Grant and I had been married. I felt petty for not having stayed in touch.
“They’re fine. Now, tell me what happened, Renni.”
With excruciating unease, I relayed the sordid details of Daniel’s arrival, our coupling, and his murder just as I’d recited them to the detective (including the lie about the unlocked door). But if I thought my post-divorce coital activities would upset Grant, I was wrong. His expression remained concerned, but untouched, as if I’d called to ask for his help with a flat tire. With jarring clarity I realized my law school sweetheart, the man who’d loved me more than I’d deserved, was over me. It was salt on my selfish open wound.
“What’s going to happen to me?” I murmured, clasping his hand. I knew, but I wanted to hear his comforting spin.
“You’ll probably be questioned again, then released. You don’t have a record, and you’re an officer of the court. No charges will be filed until the forensics are processed, which will take a day or two.”
Until the forensics are processed. Then it hit me—Grant actually thought I’d killed Daniel.
“That will give us time to get our ducks in a row,” he said, patting my hand, the one that had once worn his wedding ring. I was still too stunned to speak. If Grant thought I was capable of murder, I didn’t stand a chance convincing anyone else I was innocent.
“I’d recommend you go back to work tomorrow,” he continued. “It’s important you maintain some kind of routine.”
A knock on the door sounded. The detective was back, with two bottles of water, which she offered to me and to Grant. We both declined. My head was spinning.
“When can my…client go home?” Grant asked, and I had the strangest feeling he’d had to stop himself from saying “wife.”
“Soon,” Detective Salyers said. “Miss Greenfield’s apartment has been processed, but I’d like to ask her a few more questions.”
“Go ahead,” Grant said. “Renni has nothing to hide.”
Salyers looked doubtful, then turned to me. “Mr. Hale was wearing a tux when he arrived at your place. Did he say where he’d been?”
“He didn’t say, but there was a charity dinner at the Ritz last night the partners of the firm attended.”
Salyers looked puzzled. “You weren’t invited?”
“I’m not a partner.”
“I meant as a date. I assume guests were allowed.”
“No, I wasn’t invited.”
“Who did Mr. Hale take as his date?”
I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask someone who attended the event.”
“We did. Mr. Hale took a paralegal in your office.” The detective looked at her notes. “Leora Painter. The same woman he began dating when the two of you broke up, I’m told.”
So they’d already interviewed her coworkers. “Actually, Daniel was dating Leora before he and I broke up,” I supplied.
“Your cheating ex-boyfriend shows up on your doorstep fresh from a date with the woman he cheated on you with, wanting to spend the night with you. Must’ve stung.”
I wasn’t sure what would make me look worse—saying I’d been angry over the late night booty call or saying I’d been pleased Daniel had chosen to spend the night with me versus Leora. I said nothing.
“Your theory cuts both ways,” Grant pointed out. To me he sounded amiable, as if he were offering Salyers a piece of apple pie. “Maybe the Painter woman followed Hale to Renni’s and stabbed him out of jealousy.”
I perked up.
Salyers acknowledged his remark with a nod. “We’ve already questioned Miss Painter, but we didn’t see a reason to hold her.”
I deflated.
“Miss Greenfield, can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt Mr. Hale?”
“No. But Daniel and I haven’t been seeing each other for a while, so I wouldn’t know everything going on in his life.”
“To your knowledge, was he involved in anything illegal—drugs
or gambling?”
I wracked my brain for a bone to toss her way, but as far as I knew, Daniel’s only vice was blondes. And redheads. And brunettes. “No.”
Salyers studied me for a long time, then pushed away from the table. “We’re done here, but don’t leave town. How can I reach you?”
Grant extended a card to the detective. “She’ll be staying with me.”
***
EVEN THOUGH IT WAS out of character for Grant to speak for me, I didn’t argue with him because I’d been at the police station all afternoon and still hadn’t had a shower. I could smell Daniel’s cologne on my skin and the cloying stench of it had driven me to gnawing my nails down to the quick, a habit I’d kicked in grade school. I was grateful—giddy, even—for Grant’s offer of hospitality. I couldn’t bear the thought of staying in my apartment tonight, and a hotel seemed too sterile.
Grant took me back to my place to pack a bag and grab my briefcase. Someone had turned off the air conditioner, leaving it stifling and pungent with odors of garbage that needed to be emptied and other, more foreign smells. While I gathered my things, Grant studied the crime scene. I couldn’t bring myself to walk into the living room—the bloodstains alone were burned into my brain. I wondered if I’d be able to live here again…assuming I didn’t get sent to prison.
One of my fears was allayed rather quickly—I met both Mrs. Bingham and Mr. McFelty, the neighbors who’d exchanged expletives with Daniel, as we were leaving. Mr. McFelty looked bleary-eyed, but kindly asked how I was handling things. I felt a pang of regret because the man worked three jobs and last night wasn’t the first time Daniel had awakened my neighbors. On top of everything else, I felt as if I’d unwittingly exposed them to a criminal element. Mrs. Bingham, the resident cook, patted my arm with an oven-mitted hand and managed to pass the card of her cousin in Marietta who specialized in crime scene cleanup.
“Vivian did a terrific job when Roy in the apartment upstairs shot himself last year. The new renter says she can’t even tell where the drywall was repaired and painted.”
Love Can Be Murder (boxed set of humorous mysteries) Page 83