The Sense of Death: An Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel (The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels Book 1)

by Matty Dalrymple

  “Biden, coaster,” she said, and Biden returned to the bar for a coaster, moved his wife’s drink onto it, and wiped the moisture off the table with a clean handkerchief. He sat down at the other end of the couch. They sat in silence for a minute, sipping their drinks, Biden looking into the empty fireplace and Elizabeth glancing around the room.

  It was a handsome room, lined with built-in bookshelves filled with a mixture of old and new hardcover books and objets d’art. A large oil painting of a hunting scene, painted a century and a half before in nearby Chester County, hung over the fireplace, and smaller oils of the same era decorated the walls not covered with shelves. A pair of wing chairs flanked the couch and a grouping of two antique chairs and a table provided seating in front of the windows that looked onto the street. Across the room from the windows was a large mahogany desk set at an angle. Several richly colored Persian rugs covered the floor.

  Elizabeth stood, crossed to one of the bookshelves, and adjusted the placement of a jade elephant. “We should leave by 6:30,” she said.

  Biden nodded.

  “Joan had to run an errand but she’ll be back by then. Sophia’s asleep.” Sophia was their two-year-old daughter.

  Biden nodded again.

  “The Jurgensens will be there.”

  “Great.”

  “They’re buying a house in Bermuda.”

  “Great,” said Biden again, and drained his drink. He returned to the bar for a refill.

  “Take it easy, Biden, it’s going to be a late night,” said Elizabeth.

  Biden dropped ice cubes into the glass with a clatter. “Let’s skip the dinner,” he said, knowing that there was no way in hell his wife would miss the charity dinner scheduled for that evening—a chance to see and be seen by Philadelphia’s most wealthy, a chance to show off whatever dress she had bought for the occasion which would, of course, never be worn again.

  Elizabeth crossed to where Biden stood, put her glass down on the bar, and patted his cheek. “Take it easy on the scotch. I’m going to go change.” She headed for the door.

  “Elizabeth, we need to talk,” said Biden.

  “Not now, Biden.”

  “Now, Elizabeth,” he said with unaccustomed force.

  Elizabeth turned at the door and looked at him quizzically.

  “You took all the money out of the house account,” he said.

  She examined him for a moment then shut the door and said, “Yes, I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were making withdrawals without discussing them with me first.”

  “I’ve never discussed the withdrawals I make with you before.”

  “I was always able to confirm that withdrawals from the house account have been spent on the house. Except for the past few months.”

  “You’ve been checking up on me?”

  Elizabeth laughed humorlessly. “Trust yet verify.”

  “I can’t believe it …” said Biden.

  “You can’t believe it?” she said incredulously. “So, what were you spending the money on?”

  “It was a surprise.”

  “It certainly was.”

  “It was a surprise for you.”

  “What was it?” she said sharply and, when he didn’t answer, turned back to the door and said, “Get ready for dinner, Biden.”

  “I was trying to make some money,” he said angrily. “I was trying to make some money to keep you in the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed,” he added nastily.

  She turned back to him. “I had ‘become accustomed’ to a certain lifestyle long before I met you, Biden,” she shot back. “I thought you would be able to support that lifestyle. If not, you shouldn’t have asked me to stop working.”

  There was a long silence, Biden looking down into his glass, Elizabeth looking first at him and then toward the window, her arms crossed. The street lights had come on outside. She crossed to the window and pulled the curtains shut.

  “I need some money,” muttered Biden.

  “Good luck with that,” she said coldly.

  He paused. “Maybe your father …?”

  “Don’t even think about it. It is not my family’s responsibility to bail you out of your financial difficulties.”

  “There are worse things than having financial difficulties,” said Biden, beginning to sound petulant.

  Elizabeth walked over to where he stood and took his glass from him. She leaned toward him and, almost whispering, said, “No, Biden, there are not. A person’s financial standing determines his standing in his community and is an indicator of his success, of his worth. Having money ensured that your daughter would have the best in life because that’s what she deserves. It’s what I deserve too. I expect you to be able to continue to provide that. If you can’t, then I’ll go back to work and do it myself.”

  Biden looked into his wife’s eyes and saw nothing but cold appraisal and contempt.

  “You’re a bitch,” he said, and she flung his scotch into his face.

  Biden’s hand shot out and slapped his wife across the face. She dropped the glass which bounced on the thick carpet and put her hand to her cheek and glared at him with undisguised hatred.

  “You’re pathetic,” she said, and turned once more toward the door. “Can’t you do anything right?”

  Biden felt a stab of pain like a needle in his eye and with a cry he grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and spun her around. He thought he was going to hit her again but instead he found himself shaking her, her head whipping back and forth. There was a moment when the pain of his anger receded before the shock of what he was doing and he loosened his grip, and in that moment she drove her knee into his crotch and twisted away as he gasped and doubled over. Elizabeth ran for the door and was through it before he recovered, but she hesitated in the entrance hall and that’s where he caught up with her, tackling her like the football player he had been in high school. His 185 pounds landed on top of her barely hundred pounds and he felt the breath whoosh out of her body. He flipped her over so she was facing him and now her face was filled not with contempt but with terror. He straddled her and then closed his hands around her neck and tightened, his thumbs pressing into her Adam’s apple, his fingers digging into the back of her neck. He was going to choke off every slight, every insult she had ever thrown his way.

  She was thrashing beneath him trying to get air, her feet banging into an antique sideboard and rattling the dishes in it. Her eyes were bulging, her body jerking spasmodically beneath him.

  “Shut your eyes!” he yelled, and banged her head against the marble floor. Her eyes, huge, stayed on his face. “Shut them!” he shrieked and banged her head against the floor again, and then he wasn’t looking at her eyes anymore, just tightening his fingers still more and listening to the thumps as her head hit the floor again and again.

  It seemed to take forever for Elizabeth to stop struggling and even when she was motionless he still sensed a flicker of life in her. I could stop now, he thought, and then realized that there was no going back. He kept his hands tight around her throat as he fought back his rising gorge.

  Eventually, when he could sense no life left—not a hint of breath, not a flutter of a heartbeat—he let go and her head bounced on the marble floor one last time. She was not the beautiful Elizabeth she had been a few minutes before, hers was a grotesque parody of a human face, her tongue and eyes protruding, her legs splayed out behind him.

  Dimly he heard Sophia crying from the second floor for the nanny—“E-mee! E-mee!” He pushed himself to the wall of the entrance hall and leaned against it, burying his head in his hands. His blood pounded in his ears and his breathing was fast and shallow, his body covered with a cold slick of sweat.

  After a minute, when his breathing had slowed somewhat, he crawled over to Elizabeth. “I can’t do anything right?” he said, gazing into her glazed eyes. “We’ll see about that, you bitch.” Then he leaped to his feet.

  How long until the hou
sekeeper got back? It would be easier to explain a blocked entrance than a body—he went to the front door and slipped on the chain. Then he ran to the back of the house and down the stairs to the garage and popped open the trunk of his Mercedes. Running up to the master bedroom, past the room where his daughter was still crying, he pulled a large bath sheet from the linen closet and, returning to the garage, spread it on the bottom of the trunk. Returning to the entrance hall, he gathered Elizabeth’s body up, carried it to the garage, dumped it into the trunk, and slammed the trunk shut.

  He stepped back, breathing heavily, the image of her jumbled limbs searing his brain. He steeled himself, then popped the trunk open again. Her legs were twisted, her hands obscenely caught between her thighs. He arranged her legs as best he could, and folded her hands across her chest. Then he slammed the trunk closed again and ran up the stairs to the kitchen.

  Elizabeth’s purse and keys were on the counter where she always put them, next to the charger that held her cell phone. A stopwatch ticking in his head, Biden considered, then grabbed the purse from the counter. He went to the coat closet and pulled out the coat he knew she had been wearing earlier in the day, and, carrying these down to the garage, opened the trunk again and threw them in without looking.

  He grabbed a flashlight from the workbench at the back of the garage and, returning to the entrance hall, knelt and examined the floor. There was no blood that he could see. He found a few strands of Elizabeth’s hair which he flushed down the powder room toilet.

  Was there anything else incriminating to be dealt with before Joan arrived? Nothing that he couldn’t explain. He went to the front door and took the chain off, then climbed the stairs to the second floor.

  Sophia was screaming now, not used to having her needs ignored. He started for the master bedroom and then retraced his steps to her room. She was standing in her crib, little fists around the bars, hair a messy halo, her face red. When she saw Biden she quieted with a hiccup, a look on her face not of comfort but of confusion. Biden gazed back from the doorway. What could a two-year-old have heard? What would she remember? What did it matter? She couldn’t tell anyone anyway. He turned from the door and gritted his teeth against her wail.

  In the master suite he dried his face on a hand towel then, in the walk-in closet, threw his wet shirt and sweater into the laundry hamper and put on fresh clothes. As he pulled the sweater over his head, he heard, over Sophia’s wail, the front door close and steps climbing the stairs. He met the housekeeper, Joan, in the hallway.

  “I was just going to check on her,” he said.

  “I’ll check,” said Joan, taking off her coat and hanging it over the banister. She started for Sophia’s room then turned. “Everything all right, Mr. Firth?”

  “Absolutely,” he said with a bright smile. He turned to the stairs and the smile turned to a grimace. Normal, he must act normal—he would never say “absolutely” and he rarely had cause to smile.

  In the library he could still smell the spilled Scotch. Biden picked up the unbroken glass and put it in the sink at the bar—Joan checked the bar periodically to take away dirty glasses and restock with clean ones—and then used some paper towels from under the bar to dab at the Scotch that had soaked into the carpet. As he finished this, there was a knock at the library door. He dropped the paper towels into the wastebasket by his desk.

  “Come in,” he said.

  Joan came in, carrying Sophia who was red-eyed but quiet.

  “Are you and Mrs. Firth going to the dinner tonight?” she said, glancing at her watch.

  “No, my wife and I had a bit of an argument,” said Biden. “I don’t think we will be going to the dinner tonight.”

  “Oh,” said Joan. “Would you still like me to stay tonight?”

  “Yes, that would be helpful.”

  “Certainly,” Joan said and left the room.

  If he hadn’t killed her, what would he be doing now? Biden looked up the number of the hotel where the charity dinner was being held. He called and asked the concierge to deliver a message to the host and hostess of the event that Mr. and Mrs. Firth would not be able to attend this evening’s event; unfortunately Mrs. Firth was not feeling well.

  What else would he be doing? Trying to call her, he supposed. From the phone on his desk he dialed her cell and heard the faint ringing coming from the kitchen. She didn’t take her phone with her, he coached himself, she left in a hurry. Then he found some maps of the Philadelphia area and New Jersey in one of the room’s built-in cabinets and, spreading them open on his desk, began scanning them, committing the parts he needed to memory.

  *****

  Biden went up to his bedroom in the early hours of the morning, Joan having retired to the small apartment on the third floor long before. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulled off his shoes, and fell back on the pillow, lying on top of the covers. After a minute, though, he pushed himself up and forced himself through his normal nighttime routine—stripping and throwing his clothes in the hamper, pulling on pajama bottoms. His hands shook as he squeezed toothpaste onto his toothbrush and for a moment he thought about going downstairs for another drink. Instead he rinsed with Listerine, climbed under the covers, and switched off the light.

  Early in their marriage, Elizabeth had been interested in sex. To tell the truth, Biden had never been as interested in sex as he gathered other men were—or as interested as Elizabeth seemed to be—but he hardly objected when Elizabeth had slipped into bed in a skimpy silk nightie and ran her hands—or her mouth—over his body. He reciprocated, too, and, based on the reactions he got, he figured he must have been doing a good job. When Elizabeth had gotten pregnant she didn’t initiate sex as often and, in the last months of the pregnancy, didn’t initiate it at all, but he could hardly blame her—she couldn’t have felt sexy looking like that, with her thin body distorted by her bulging stomach. Why did small women always have big babies? After Sophia was born, however, he looked forward to getting back to their pre-pregnancy pattern but it never happened. One of the few times he had tried to initiate sex she had barely looked up from the book she was reading.

  “Biden, please,” she said, turning a page, her face creased with annoyance.

  “You used to like it,” he said in a voice he hoped mixed reproach and conciliation.

  Elizabeth snorted. “Yes, well ...” And eventually he stopped waiting for her to finish the sentence and turned over and switched off the light.

  Now he lay with his arms at his sides on top of the covers. This is how a body would be laid out for a viewing, he thought. This is how Elizabeth would be laid out if there was a viewing of her body. But there would never be a viewing. Not if he could help it.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning Biden dressed in old jeans, a blue t-shirt, a plain sweatshirt, and worn sneakers. He wished he had a baseball cap but the closest he could find was a golf hat which he thought would make him more conspicuous, not less.

  He got his gym bag down from the closet shelf and put a t-shirt, underwear, socks, and a toiletry bag in it. He didn’t actually plan to stay anywhere overnight—he just needed the bag and a couple of the things in it—but if someone happened to look in it, it would be best if it were stocked like an overnight bag. Acting normal and keeping it simple—that was what was going to let him get away with murder.

  Downstairs in the library he called his credit card company and told them that he was afraid his wife might have misplaced her card and asked if it had been used since five p.m. yesterday; they assured him it had not. He called the Rittenhouse Hotel where Elizabeth had gone once before when they had an argument and asked if they had an Elizabeth Firth or Mrs. Biden Firth staying there and was told that they were not at liberty to share that information. He called the Sofitel and got the same response.

  All things a concerned, but not overly concerned, husband might do.

  He hardly felt like eating but since he rarely skipped breakfast he buzzed Joan on the intercom an
d asked her to bring eggs, toast, juice, and coffee to the library. While he waited, he paged through the Philadelphia Chronicle, paying special attention to the restaurant reviews—he wasn't ready to give up on his restaurant ambitions yet.

  There was a knock on the door and he called “Come in” as he began making room on his desk for the breakfast tray. He glanced up and started, the blood draining from his face, as Elizabeth entered the room carrying the tray.

  “Good morning, Biden, we missed you last night,” she said and Biden realized it was Amelia Dormand, Elizabeth’s mother—Jesus, they looked alike. Amelia put the tray down on the desk, picked an extra coffee cup on a fine china saucer off the tray, and began to take a sip, then stopped and looked closely at Biden. “Good heavens, are you all right? I thought Bob said it was Elizabeth who wasn’t feeling well.”

  Biden panicked for a moment—what the hell was she talking about?—then remembered the excuse he had given for missing last night’s dinner. He had forgotten that Elizabeth’s parents had also planned on attending.

  “Yes. I mean no, not really. We’re both fine, just had a ... an argument. Weren’t in much of a mood for a party.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, that’s understandable,” said Amelia, her voice carefully neutral. She paused. “Is she upstairs?”

  “No. She got angry and left. I wanted to skip the dinner.” He had to keep the story as close to what had actually happened as possible, they would likely find out about the missing trust fund money eventually—for all he knew, Elizabeth had told her mother. “And other things,” he added.

  After a beat, Amelia asked, “Do you know where she is?”

  “I’m thinking maybe the shore house, she did that once before ...”

  “Yes, but in February? It doesn’t sound so appealing. Have you tried calling her?”

  “She didn’t take her cell phone.”

  Amelia knit her brow. “That certainly doesn't sound like Elizabeth. Maybe she went to a hotel—”