by Kelly Irvin
“Yes, ma’am.” Aaron cast a last glance at Nina. She nodded and he tromped into the house, Peanuts on his heels, tail still wagging.
“I’m so sorry you had to find him. It must’ve been horrible.” Her mother’s arms lifted in a wide-open gesture that said, “Come in, be hugged, be warmed, be comforted.” “I know you’ve had a terrible shock, just terrible. Rick told me all about it.”
Nina couldn’t move. Her feet were stuck to the ground. Her mother’s arms dropped, but she moved forward, her fair face creased with undiluted sorrow. Her eyes bloodshot and her long, regal nose bright red. “Your father had all his affairs in order—burial plot, his plans for his service—his wishes were explicit. It will be simple. He left nothing to chance because that’s the way he was. We’ll go to the funeral home and finalize arrangements for when his body is released, but for now, I was just waiting for you to get here. You and Jan. Trevor will be here tomorrow. Then we’ll talk, all of us, about what to do next.”
“I know what you did.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you filed for divorce.”
Grace’s hands covered her ashen cheeks. Neither of them moved for a two-count. Her hands dropped. Her shrug had an elegant touch to it. “I asked Pearl to come a day early too. Those police officers made such a mess in the house, tromping in mud on the wood floors, leaving powder everywhere and mussing up the furniture. We need to have the house ready for the reception afterward. She’s cleaning and taking care of the food people keep bringing. Why do people bring food when someone dies? Like we suddenly forget how to cook, and we suddenly run out of groceries because there’s a death in the family. She’ll spend the night for a few nights—”
A death in the family? “Grace, stop. Stop!”
“I filed.” Grace dropped onto an ornate wrought-iron bench snuggled between two crepe myrtles. “I would’ve told you, too, when I returned from Indianapolis. I never had the chance.”
Nina collapsed into the space next to her. The bench was wet from the earlier rain, but it didn’t matter. “Why now? Why after thirty-five years of marriage?”
“Why? Why does any couple separate?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I suppose not.” Her expression pensive, Grace plucked at a wet, limp leaf stuck to her skirt. “At first I thought we’d simply grown apart. Your father and I were very different people. From the beginning. But in many ways that is what made our marriage work for so many years. We had our own lives, but we always came back together here at the house. For family dinners, for church, or just him reading the paper and me working on edits in the same room. But all that changed.”
“I know he stopped coming out for dinner more and more.”
“It wasn’t just that.” She shivered. “I’m so cold. Why am I so cold? It’s eighty degrees out.”
“Shock, I guess.” Nina took her mother’s hand between her own two and began to rub. Grace’s fingers were icy. It had to have been more than that. Her parents loved each other. They believed in the sanctity of their vows. They had vowed before God to become one.
“Until death do us part.”
A tremor ran through her. Death had parted them in a terrible, violent, irrevocable way. “Why was it more than that? Did something happen?”
Grace’s chin quivered, but her voice held steady. Whatever her protestations, she, too, was well trained in the Geoffrey Fischer creed. Chin up. “It seems your father had another life he forgot to tell me—us—about.”
8
Upstanding citizens of the community did not lead double lives. Nina dropped her mother’s cold hand and moved over on the bench. A breeze rustled the tree branches overhead, casting leftover drops of rain on her warm face. Not tears. She would shed no tears. Geoffrey Fischer had been a judge and an officer of the court and a father and a husband. What other life could he possibly have or want? “I don’t believe you. Do you have proof?”
“I was searching for a printer cartridge one day. I went into his office to raid his supplies.” Grace’s smile was bittersweet as if the memory brought her a bit of joy. “He was always so much more organized than me. He always had an extra everything. Cartridges. Pens. Reams of paper—”
“Grace.”
“No, it’s funny, really. He liked to hide his office supplies from me. It was a running joke.” She tugged a tissue from a pocket embroidered with large stitched sunflowers and blew her nose with great gusto, not like the lady she so often pretended to be. “I’m supposed to buy my own supplies and keep the receipts for tax purposes, but I never remember to buy things until I run out, so I’m always stealing his stuff. Especially printer cartridges. We have the same printers. So he would hide them.”
“He hid them and one day you went looking for a printer cartridge?”
“Yes. In the closet in his office. I always thought it was cute that we had his-and-hers offices down the hallway from each other. We could pop in and say hello. I could steal his stapler or take his scotch tape—”
“You found some receipts instead?”
“I moved boxes of files and all sorts of junk around. I just knew there had to be a cartridge in there somewhere. And in the back was a box that should’ve had reams of paper in it.”
“But it didn’t.”
“No.”
“What was in it?”
“Credit card receipts, among other things.”
“Receipts for what?”
“Plane tickets. Hotels. Las Vegas.”
Geoffrey Fischer, the staid judge who ushered at church on Sunday and belonged to the Rotary Club, went to Las Vegas without telling them. There had to be a logical explanation. “People go to Vegas all the time for fun. They enjoy the shows and the restaurants. It’s not just a place to gamble.”
“So why did he hide it?” Grace snorted, this time in a delicate, ladylike way. “When I thought he was hunting with his buddies, he was in Las Vegas. I found paperwork for a condo. He bought a condo in Las Vegas and never told me.”
Everything Nina had ever known about her adopted father took a hike into never-never land. She didn’t know any more about him than she did the biological father her mother had never told her about. In some ways it was worse. To think she knew her father, to love a curmudgeon with a penchant for overstatement, only to find he had tricked her into believing something totally untrue. Fathers couldn’t be trusted. Are You surprised I can’t trust those who call themselves father, God?
“Are you saying he was leading a double life? Are you saying there was another woman?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. I think he was just having some fun on the side.”
“Was there another woman?”
“It wasn’t a woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t cheating on me with another woman. He was gambling.”
The idea didn’t mesh with any image Nina could conjure of Geoffrey Fischer. He grumbled if one of them left a room without turning off the light. He bought a Prius. He trolled the internet for the cheapest places in San Antonio to buy gas. He bought clothes at the outlet malls in San Marcus. He was tight. Frugal. Downright cheap. Under no circumstances did he waste money. They joked about it. “How do you know?”
“He admitted it.”
“Just like that. He said, ‘Hey, dear wife, I’ve been gambling and hiding it from you’?”
“Not exactly. He broke down when I told him I couldn’t stay married to a man who kept secrets from me, who lied to me, who was cheating on me. That even God would understand if it was obvious we were unevenly yoked.”
“So he told you he had a gambling problem. That’s not the same as cheating.”
“It is when it becomes more important than anything else in your life. More important that your wife and children. So important you have to hide it.”
“Did he say why he hid it from you?”
“He said he was ashamed.”
If Geoffrey was gamblin
g, he either won or lost. Most people lost. How could Grace not know? Hadn’t their finances suffered? “Didn’t you notice that money was missing?”
Grace’s pale-blue eyes filled with tears. “That’s what I can’t understand. It scares me, because I can’t understand it. As far as I could tell no money was missing. When I asked him about it, that’s when he clammed up and refused to talk anymore. Even when I told him I was filing for a divorce. He wouldn’t tell me where the money came from or where it was going. If he won, where was the money? If he lost, why didn’t it show up in our accounts?”
Some sort of finance trickery? A second set of books? “You have joint accounts, right?”
Grace stood, took a step, then stopped as if she couldn’t remember where she intended to go. “We’ve always kept the money I make from my books in separate accounts. I have a checking and a savings account in my name only. For tax purposes.”
“But you make more than he does—did—don’t you?”
“In more recent years, yes. But he never seemed to mind. If he did, he never expressed it. He always supported my writing career.”
He never thought she would become rich and famous from it. Most novelists didn’t. But Geoffrey had underestimated his wife’s talent and how much women across the country loved to escape in a good romance, especially in hard economic and political times. Her sweet romances never failed to make New York Times and USA Today bestsellers lists. “But there are joint accounts.”
“There are and the balances are always good. I pay the household bills from those accounts. I have no idea how it’s possible that the amounts of money I saw being spent in those receipts didn’t drain our joint accounts.”
“So maybe he had his own accounts too. Secret accounts you didn’t know about.”
“Maybe. I suppose that could come to light now that he’s . . . gone.” Grace choked on the word in an effort to stifle a sob. “I have no intention of crying over him. He doesn’t deserve it. Yet I can’t seem to stop.”
“Dad was a good man. You loved him.” So did Nina. She contemplated this new scenario. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“Who would I tell that my husband, a district court judge, had a secret gambling fetish and a source of money to supply it?”
No one. Absolutely no one. Geoffrey Fischer had counted on his wife’s discretion. Who else knew? His staff at the courthouse? His hunting buddies? People in Las Vegas? Who went with him on these trips?
Had he owed someone money? Had someone owed him money and they killed him for it? Questions crowded her, fanning her exhaustion and a surreal sense of falling into a deep, black hole. The only facts in evidence were that someone confronted her father in the study and killed him.
Aaron shoved through the screen door with his shoulder. He held a tray with two mugs on it. “Pearl says you need to come in and eat some real food. She sounds serious about it.”
Nina shook her head. He eased the tray onto a small rattan table with a round glass top between two Shaker rocking chairs on the back porch and retreated. Nina stood and put an arm around her mother. “We’ll figure this out.”
Her mother’s face blanched even whiter. “To be honest, I’m not sure I want to figure it out.”
“Don’t you want to know who killed Dad?”
“I suppose. It won’t matter. He’ll still be dead. I still won’t be able to change the last words I spoke to him.”
“Which were?”
“I don’t love you anymore.”
“Did you?”
“Of course I did. I was simply hurt and angry. I gave Geoffrey Fischer my heart more than thirty-five years ago. I thought our arrangement worked for us. Until I found out he wasn’t who I thought he was. There was no getting it back even if I wanted it.”
“Then we’ll figure it out.”
“Whatever he has done, he doesn’t deserve to have his reputation shredded in the media now that he’s dead.” Tears trickled down her mother’s face. Geoffrey might have been a Fischer, but Grace wore her heart on her sleeve. “Not only his name, but our name. Yours, Jan’s, Trevor’s. If this comes out now, it’s all he’ll be remembered for and we’ll be destroyed.”
“His murder may have nothing to do with the gambling.” The words sounded naive said aloud. “I’ll see what I can find out quietly.”
Somehow she had to walk the line between removing herself as number-one suspect in her father’s murder and keeping his secret life out of the news. For Grace’s sake. For their family’s sake.
More of a high-wire act.
Grace sniffed and wiped at her nose with a tissue. “What do I do?”
“You take care of the funeral arrangements and Trevor and Brooklyn.” If the secrets were dirty, they had to be kept away from Grace as much as possible. She had opened the door and walked through alone. Now Nina would take her place. “Did you keep the paperwork?”
“I dumped the receipts back in the box and returned it to the spot behind the other boxes.”
Nina squeezed her mother in a quick hug. “Drink your hot chocolate. I have to talk to Aaron.”
Leaving her mother in a rocking chair, she slipped into the house and found Aaron in the kitchen, sitting on a stool at the mammoth island, Daffy on his lap, a mug of black coffee in one hand. “Is she okay?”
“Let’s find out who killed my dad.”
He set the coffee aside. “Now you’re talking. When do we start?”
“Right now.” She touched the ring his coffee cup had made on his napkin. “This is off the record.”
Hard lines etched his face. “Your private life has always been off the record.”
“I understand what a huge story this is. You get the jump on other stations and you can springboard into a top-ten market.”
“Have I ever expressed a desire to go top ten?”
He hadn’t, which always surprised her. Aaron was an East Coast guy who’d ended up in Texas because his mother returned to her family when she divorced his father. He was smart and ambitious. He had the best eye for a shot that she’d ever seen in a commercial photographer. He would take LA or Chicago or New York by storm. “You’re good at what you do and it’s important to you. The story is important.”
“Not as important as you are.”
“Aaron—”
“Don’t sweat it. I know where to draw the line and if it gets fuzzy, I’ll tell you. I will be here for you no matter what it means. A job’s a job. I can always get another one. I’d flip burgers before I’d give you up. Friends—true friends—are worth way more.”
His words rang true. As crushed as she’d been time after time by simply trusting people, Nina couldn’t help believing in those blue-gray eyes and that genuine smile that had curled her toes the first time she saw it in a photo-lab class at UT. “How do you feel about removing potential evidence from what’s left of a crime scene?”
9
“What are you doing?”
So close yet so far. At the sound of Jan’s voice behind her, Nina dropped her hand just short of the study door.
Her sister scowled. “You’re not going in there are you? Surely you’ll have enough nightmares as it is?”
“We were just—”
“Revisiting the scene of the crime? Seriously?” Her face white with fatigue, Jan smoothed back her dark hair and shut the front door. “I thought you were the smart one, Sis.”
“We wanted to search for—”
“I need closure.” Improvising, Nina shook her head at Aaron. Jan didn’t need to know about her father’s secret life. Not today. Not after spending hours being interrogated by Detective King. Not two weeks from deployment. “I wanted to visit his office one more time.”
“You’re delirious. You need to go to bed.” Jan strode down the hall, her cowboy boots clacking on the tile. “Is Mom okay?”
“She’s asleep. So is Brooklyn. She was asking for you when I tucked her in. I told her you would check on her when you got home.” Nina turned to Aaro
n. “I’m really tired. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
Aaron’s eyebrows rose and fell. “Sure, sure. I’ll call you in the morning.”
He called her every morning. With the weather. With the sports stats of the day. With his verse of the day, even though he knew she found it hard to believe. “Just come over. Thanks for everything.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, you did and you know it.”
He stepped forward and hugged her. A bear hug that should crush bones but, instead, made them melt. He smelled of Irish Spring soap. His five o’clock shadow scratched her cheek. She held on longer than she intended.
Finally, he loosened his grip. “Be safe,” he whispered as he stepped back. His gaze enveloped her. “Be careful.” He turned and headed toward the door. “Bye, Jan.”
The urge to follow him, grab his hand, and make him stay billowed through Nina. Along with the heat of his sure touch. She folded her arms across her chest and bit her lip. “Text me when you get home so I know you got there safe.”
“Will do.”
Two words, but he made them sound like a promise.
The door closed behind him. Jan sat on the bottom stair step and pulled off her boots. “That King guy is a case. He actually said the words, ‘Don’t leave town.’ He sounded like a bad TV show.”
A rerun too. “What did you tell him? Why did it take so long?”
“He wanted our life story. I’m sure he wanted to see if our stories matched.”
“You weren’t even here.”
“Yeah, but I know my way around guns, and he figures a sniper knows how to be stealthy. Waring’s a forty-five-minute drive at the most. Each way.” She hoisted herself from the steps and padded barefoot down the hall. “I need water. Do you want anything?”
Nina trailed after her. “He really thinks you’re a suspect?”
“I suspect he thinks everyone is a suspect.” Jan snorted at her play on words. She pulled two bottles of Dasani from the stainless-steel fridge, handed one to Nina, and sat down at the island. “Somehow he knows I didn’t get along with Dad. Did you tell him that?”