Karen, in a blue suit, looked surprised when she peered through the curtains to see who was on her porch. She came to the door and led me in to the warm room.
“Aaron!” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you back today.”
“I wasn’t expecting it, either, Karen, but a lot has happened since I saw you this afternoon.” I walked into the room, and was not the least bit surprised to see Rezenbach in the living room, holding a glass in his hand.
“Mr. Tucker,” he said, “I was just stopping by to check in on . . .
“It’s okay, Mr. Rezenbach,” I said. “I’d expect you to be with your daughter on Christmas Eve.”
Their reactions were a study in contrast. Rezenbach was stunned. His mouth opened just a bit, he stopped playing with the ice in his glass, and the wheels in his head were clearly trying to process the sentence he’d just heard. Karen, on the other hand, smiled a tiny smile and looked directly into my eyes without so much as losing a step on her way into the living room.
“Would you like a drink, Aaron?” she asked. “We have whatever you’d like.”
“No, thanks, Karen. But I am wondering why you didn’t mention before that your lawyer is also your father.”
She motioned to a chair, for me to sit, and I did. Dalma walked over from her bed, wagging her tail and opening her mouth to let out her long, long tongue. Dalma loved me.
“I could say it never came up, but I suppose there was more to it than that,” Karen said, sitting, with a glass of eggnog or something in her hand. I stroked Dalma’s head, and she stayed with me.
“The ‘more’ being that you didn’t want me to look too far into what had happened with Michael, but you didn’t want Justin Fowler to go to jail, either. You were torn.” I watched for more reaction, and got one. Karen looked at her father, and seemed worried—about him.
“Dad, would you mind? Aaron and I need to discuss this privately, if that’s all right.” Rezenbach stared at her, and his expression was exactly the same as Mary Fowler’s had been earlier.
He was shocked.
“Karen, what does this mean? Did you have something to do with . . . He couldn’t finish the sentence, the thought being too awful even to consider.
“It’ll just take a minute, Dad. Please.” Karen stood and took his hand. “I promise, I’ll explain it all when you come back. Okay?”
Rezenbach wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, but for Karen, he nodded his head almost imperceptibly. “All right,” he rasped, and took a moment to pour more scotch into his glass before he left the room. I couldn’t imagine where he’d go or what he’d do. I was feeling uncomfortable, and I was here with his daughter, not asked to sit this one out while the murder of his son-in-law was discussed openly.
“All right, Aaron,” Karen said with a tone that seemed more suited to two close friends discussing a pie recipe. “What do you know?”
“Not as much as I thought,” I told her honestly. “I thought your father was involved in Michael’s murder, but clearly, he didn’t know what was going on.”
“My father!” she said. “I can’t imagine! Aaron, what were you thinking?”
“Don’t try it, Karen,” I told her. “I can make a very good case for the idea that you hired Kevin Fowler to kill your husband. What I can’t figure out is why.”
“Me?”
Fine—she wanted the dog and pony show. I stood up. Dalma stood up. I patted her on the head.
“See that? That was what finally put it over the top. Dalma didn’t growl when we were here this afternoon.”
Karen tried to sell it as the wholesome girl explaining everything to the less-than-bright man in her midst. She rolled her eyes. “Aaron,” she said. “I told you about that. She doesn’t growl after she gets to know you a little, and she’d never growl at your adorable son.”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “But she didn’t growl at Kevin Fowler, either, and the only way that makes sense is if Dalma had met Kevin before, at least a few times. Like when you were hiring him to kill your husband.”
I thought Karen would continue her good-girl act, but she actually seemed to be fighting her emotions. She bit her lower lip and her head seemed to tremble a bit as she spoke.
“You think the fact that my dog didn’t growl at Mr. Fowler is enough to prove I asked him to murder . . . She sobbed unexpectedly, unable to say her husband’s name aloud.
“It ties together,” I said, unwilling to let the tears influence my attitude. “The dog knew Kevin. You probably made sure he’d drop by a number of times before the murder. So she wouldn’t attack him when she saw him that night. You got in touch with Kevin through his employer, your uncle, Hyman Shapiro.”
She looked up, and her eyes were truly tearing. She wasn’t trying to cry. “How did you know about my uncle?” she asked.
“A little Internet research.” No sense telling her it was Abby who discovered the link. “Your wedding announcement in the Star-Ledger’s files mentioned your mother’s maiden name. It didn’t take long after that to find articles alluding to a connection between her and Mr. Shapiro. He’s a famous man, for someone nobody ever sees. In fact, he seems to know more people in New Jersey than Bruce Springsteen.”
Karen nodded, acknowledging the point. “You’re a good reporter, Aaron. You should be working for the New York Times.”
“I’m not that good,” I said. “Some of this just fell into my lap. And the one thing I can’t begin to understand is why. Why kill Michael? By all accounts, he was a candidate for the Husbands Hall of Fame. He really loved you.”
“Yes, he did,” she managed to get out. “Yes. He did.”
“Then, why?”
“Because he loved me too much,” she said quietly.
I sat there and looked at her for a long moment. “He loved you too much?” I said.
Karen’s glance, tearful though it was, held some anger as well. “Don’t you think I know how that sounds? He loved me too much. He used to write me love letters and leave them on my pillow at night. He’d tell me how much he needed me six different ways every day. He made me the center of his universe, and nothing I ever did was anything less than perfect.”
“Sounds awful,” I said.
Her face cooled considerably, and her voice dropped half an octave. “You can’t possibly imagine what kind of responsibility that is, Mr. Tucker,” Karen said. “To know that you mean so much to another person that they don’t think they could live without you? You hear that in lyrics to stupid pop songs, but you don’t have to actually deal with it. Michael sincerely believed that if I weren’t with him, he wouldn’t have the strength to go on. Do you know what that does to a person, to bear that load every minute of every day?”
“No,” I said. “But I know what it is to feel that for another person.”
Karen composed herself, but her mouth was still tight, her eyes narrow. “No, you don’t,” she said. “You think you do, but this was not a normal range of emotion. When I met Michael, I’d been through a series of emotionally abusive relationships, so I figured that a man that devoted was what I needed. But through the years, he wore me down. I couldn’t ever love him as much as he loved me—I couldn’t ever give him what he needed. I kept coming up short in his eyes, I could tell, but he wouldn’t admit it. He would assume everything was his fault, since I was perfect. I became his whole world. We never had children because Michael didn’t think he could concentrate emotionally on anyone else, and I think he was afraid I’d love the baby more than I loved him. It took forever before he’d let me get a dog, and sometimes—I swear—I think he was jealous of her, too.”
I looked at Dalma, who stared up at me, grinning, begging for affection. Maybe I had a small idea of what Karen meant.
“So you decided to murder him? You couldn’t just go to couples counseling like everybody else?”
Karen shook her head. “That would have been admitting there was a problem, and Michael didn’t want to consider our marriage as anyth
ing but perfect. If I ever suggested he was a little . . . suffocating, he’d go into a deep depression for days. He wouldn’t eat. He’d barely sleep. He kept saying that I didn’t understand, that he needed me, like oxygen, and that he’d never do anything to make me unhappy.”
“But you were unhappy.”
She looked down. “God help me, yes. I was terribly unhappy. And I couldn’t see any other path than to end it for both of us as swiftly as possible. When I got in touch with Uncle Hyman, he said he wouldn’t help me. Said he was a ‘businessman,’ and he didn’t kill people randomly—the hypocrite. But Kevin was in the room, standing guard, when I met with my uncle. They’re not supposed to listen, but he did. And he offered me a way out.”
“How much did you pay him?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “It was Michael’s money. He had accounts everywhere, and he gave me access to everything, to show what an open and trusting relationship we had. He was making a lot of money, and he encouraged me to use it if I had to. Michael never knew the money was missing. The statement came a week after he died.”
My chest was getting itchy, and I realized I was sweating, the first time I’d truly felt warm in weeks. “So the story about the threatening phone calls . . .
“A lie. I made that up entirely. Just like I made up the story about Dalma biting the man who shot Michael.” Dalma, at the sound of her name, walked to her mistress and sat down for a scratch behind the ears. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, girl?” Karen said, only half thinking about what she was saying.
“Why make up stories?” I asked. “Why not just let Justin Fowler railroad himself into jail? He confessed, after all.”
“I couldn’t,” Karen said, focusing her attention on me again. “I didn’t know Kevin would go out of his way to implicate his brother, and I certainly didn’t know Justin would confess to the crime, knowing he didn’t do it. But once he did, I had to try to find a way to keep him out of jail without giving myself and Kevin away. As it turned out, I couldn’t do that.”
“Did you have second thoughts the night Michael was shot?”
Karen thought about that, as if for the first time. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t want Michael to suffer, but he had to be gone. Still, sending him out to walk Dalma that night, knowing he wasn’t coming back . . . She sniffed and was silent for a moment. “I really did love him, but I couldn’t ever love him enough.”
“There were ways short of murder. Why couldn’t you just ask for a divorce?”
Without a hint of irony in her voice, she said, “I sincerely believe that would have killed him.” And her face became blank again, perhaps as she listened to her own words for the first time.
I stood up. “I can’t say I understand it, Karen, but I can see the pain you’re in. I’m sorry. But it’s time to go to the police now.”
“There’s no need for that, Mr. Tucker.” Rezenbach, standing in the doorway, his face wet with tears, was still very much a lawyer. “You’ve got no admissible evidence.”
“I have a confession,” I told him.
“You have hearsay. Once we’re out of this room, it’s your word against mine and Karen’s, and there’s no way we’ll ever corroborate your story. If necessary, I’ll make sure Karen was with me the night of the crime, and I’ll deny she ever went to see my . . . brother-in-law.”
Karen walked to her father. “Dad,” she said, but that’s as far as she got.
I reached under my coat, my sweatshirt, my shirt, and the t-shirt underneath, and showed Rezenbach what he didn’t want to see: the wire running up to a small microphone taped to my chest.
“I think that’s enough, Lieutenant,” I said, and within seconds, Rodriguez was in the door as Karen and Rezenbach stood expressionless.
“You got what we need, Tucker,” Rodriguez said. “Thanks for that. But like I told you in the van when we were wiring you up, it was hard enough hearing through the seventeen shirts. You didn’t need to keep scratching.”
“I wasn’t scratching. I was petting the dog.”
Dalma growled at Rodriguez and the other cops who followed him in, handcuffed Karen, and took her and her father outside. But she didn’t make a move to attack any of them, and I stroked her head.
“Who’s going to take care of the dog?” I asked Rodriguez.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Take her to a shelter, I guess.”
“Shame,” I told him. “Why don’t you take her? She’s a nice dog.”
Dalma bared her teeth and kept up the low rumble in her throat. “I don’t know,” said Rodriguez. “She doesn’t seem to like me much.”
“Give her time,” I said.
The police being what they are, Rodriguez made me stand outside for a while in the freezing night before letting me off the hook.
“So she paid Kevin two hundred grand to kill the guy because he was too good a husband,” he marveled, shaking his head. “Makes you wonder.”
It was making me wonder about a good many things, including why I was freezing my butt off outside Karen’s house when we could be having this conversation in the nice, warm house. Cops like you to be uncomfortable when you talk to them, because they think it gives them the upper hand. But Rodriguez was just as cold as I was, so I failed to see the logic.
“Fowler didn’t put up the money to bail out his brother,” Rodriguez said. “He kept that money and got Karen to call her Uncle Shapiro for the bail. Can you imagine?”
“And Shapiro paid it? Nice guy.”
“That’s what he’d like you to think,” Rodriguez said.
We jousted for a few minutes over my statement, which he wanted taken at the North Brunswick station that night. I told him he already had the statement taken here and the recording of my conversation with Karen, and I’d be happy to come in to answer any further questions tomorrow.
“Tomorrow’s Christmas.”
I shrugged. “Your holiday, not mine,” I said.
“Come in Friday. And Tucker, we still haven’t found Kevin Fowler. He might not feel too fondly about you right now. I’d stay indoors tonight if I were you. Your family, too.”
“That’s my plan. Merry Christmas, Lieutenant.”
He smiled and turned away. “Good yom tov,” Rodriguez said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“No, you don’t love me too much,” Abby said wearily. “You love me just the right amount. So can we drop it now?”
Dinner had been over for about a half hour, but Abigail and I had stayed in the kitchen, sitting at the table for a good while as the rest of the folks dispersed. Now, we were cleaning up said kitchen, as usual without any assistance from the aforementioned Steins under our roof. I was loading the dishwasher while Abby sponged off our large, faux ceramic tile kitchen table.
“It’s just that I saw a lot of parallels,” I told her. “I send you flowers. I spend my day thinking of ways to tell you I love you. I cook your dinner.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that . . . she began.
“You know what I mean.”
Abby walked to where I was standing and put her arms around my waist. Since I had no objection to this, we stood there that way for a while. Then she said, “Karen Huston is trying to justify what she did. She didn’t kill her husband because he loved her too much—she killed him because she didn’t love him enough. She got involved with him because he was better than the abusive jerks she was used to. I got involved with you because I love you.”
I kissed her, because that’s my second favorite form of recreation. “But you don’t seem to expend as much energy at it as I do,” I said.
“In that sentence, the important word was ‘seem,’” said Abby. “I love you just as much, but I don’t put on a show about it. I think private things should be private.”
“You could tell me when we’re alone,” I suggested.
“Later.”
Given that piece of encouragement, I went back to my task, and
Abby attacked our marble-pattern countertop, which was installed by the previous owners of the house, whom we have dubbed “The Sadists.” I personally believe the house was designed by Stevie Wonder, with no professional assistance whatsoever. But then, nobody can touch Stevie musically. We each have our strengths.
Howard’s strength was being awkward, so it was no surprise to see him in the doorway to the kitchen, clearing his throat theatrically and looking to see if it had gotten our attention. I worried that he might have heard some of our conversation while standing there, but there was nothing to be done about that.
Abby looked at him, probably thinking the same thing. “What is it, Howard?” she asked.
“We—that is, Andrea and I—oh, and Dylan, of course—we thought that since this is our last night here, and what with Chanukah” (he pronounced it without the “Ch,” as if there were an “H” at the front of the word) “so close, well, we have some gifts for you . . . if you’d like to come in.”
Abby looked at me, giving me the opportunity to respond. What the hell, I’d take it. “That’s very nice of you, Howard. Thanks. We’ll be inside in a minute,” I said. Howard turned and walked out, probably grateful that he hadn’t had to say more, and I gave Abby a panicky glance.
“We don’t have anything for them, do we?”
She smiled. “I was going to send them. They’re upstairs in a Target bag next to our bed.”
I kissed her again. “You’re perfect, you know.”
“Don’t start,” Abby told me. “Man can get shot talking like that.”
I went upstairs and found the bag—Abby hadn’t just bought the presents, she’d wrapped them, the little minx. I met the others in the living room. Abby had dusted off—literally—our menorah, and was trying to find candles that would fit, since we always leave such things for the last minute, which was still forty-six hours away.
We managed to discover just enough candles (you only need two the first night of Chanukah, and this wasn’t even that) left over from the previous year, and approximated a Jewish festival celebration. We sang the prayer, or as much of it as we could remember, and Ethan got to light the candles. Ethan has a rather unhealthy fascination with fire, so he wasn’t necessarily paying attention during the whole “singing the prayer” part of the festivities.
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