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Passion,
Betrayal
And
Killer Highlights
Kyra Davis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication

For my mother, Gail Davis, who always offers me an ear when I need to vent, a shoulder when I need to cry and a hug when I crave the comfort of her unconditional love.

Acknowledgments

This book wouldn’t be in print if it weren’t for the hard work and enthusiasm of my agent, Ashley Kraas. I also want to thank my editor, Margaret O’Neill Marbury, for all of her guidance and support.

Kathy Vizas allowed me to pick her brain and benefit from her years of experience as a lawyer. Her insights proved to be indispensable for the plotting of this novel. The same could be said of the help I received from Lieutenant John Weiss who patiently answered my countless questions and actively assisted me with my research. Detective Sergeant Donna Lind was a fountain of information as well. I hope they will all forgive me for occasionally taking a bit of poetic license with the facts they so generously supplied me with.

Last but absolutely not least I need to thank my stepbrother Chris Sullivan for watching my son while I struggled to meet my deadlines, and my mother for all the free childcare she provided and for her willingness to be my brutally honest and marvelously detail-oriented volunteer proofreader.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

PROLOGUE

I arranged some Pacificos in an ice bucket and slipped Sarah McLachlan into the CD player in anticipation of Leah’s visit. My sister and I love Sarah. She may be the only thing we agree on. At first glance people always assume our differences fall into the good girl-black sheep categories, with me playing the role of the rebellious farm animal, but in reality it’s much more complicated than that.

First off, although in humid weather my shoulder-length hair can resemble a ball of fluffy fleece, thanks to the genes of our now deceased African-American father and our very much alive Latvian-Jewish mother, my skin tone is much more bronze than black and Leah’s is a bit on the olive side. Second, I’m not that rebellious and Leah’s not that good.

The difference between us lies in our approach to life. My motto is: Always be true to yourself. It’s why I became a writer. Writing’s one of the few careers in which I can be paid for being a nonconformist.

Leah, on the other hand, has made it her life’s ambition to be someone else, specifically Martha Stewart (without all that messy felonious stuff). She’s not very good at being Martha; her ethnicity makes that whole WASPy look hard to pull off (despite all the relaxers), she’s not all that creative and she’d rather die than see her name stamped across any item that would ever be carried at Kmart. Yet she keeps trying, and she’s certain that once she achieves her metamorphosis she’ll have found true inner peace. So it wasn’t a big surprise when she announced her engagement to Bob Miller. Bob’s as average as his name. He’s Caucasian of the mutt variety, of medium build, moderately intelligent and, when in social settings, reasonably polite if not out-and-out friendly…or personable…or enjoyable to be with in any way. But as far as Leah’s concerned Bob is Town and Country’s version of Prince Charming.

So unless Martha had written a book about the heightened social status of imported beer, it was probably a safe bet that Leah would not be drinking a Pacifico. But Anatoly Darinsky might be.

Lately Anatoly had been starring in a lot of my more memorable dreams. He’s tall, has dark brown hair that matches his penetrating eyes, a tight physique—you know, all the good stuff. But there’s more to it than that—something I can’t put my finger on but that makes me want to put my fingers on all sorts of other things. Not that Anatoly’s perfect. At times he can be cocky, egotistical, argumentative—and don’t even get me started about the defamatory statements he’s made regarding Frappuccinos. He also hates me.

I suppose he has his reasons. I did frame him for assault and battery, and I kind of inadvertently got him shot in the process, but that was all due to a big misunderstanding. I thought he was a psychotic serial killer who wanted to murder me in some violent and horrifying way, and he thought I was the psychotic killer. Or maybe he just thought I was psychotic. That’s the problem with our relationship—not enough open communication. If we just talked more, we would spend a lot less time trying to send each other to death row.

But now I had another chance with my non-murderous love interest, for Bob had given Leah reason to believe that he had been cheating on her, and as luck would have it Anatoly is a private investigator who has loads of experience proving and disproving those kinds of suspicions. I had to offer Anatoly an obscene amount of money, but I did get him to accept the case.

I kneeled down to stroke my cat underneath his chin. “Okay, Mr. Katz, our guests should be arriving—”

The buzzer echoed through my apartment.

“—now.”

CHAPTER 1

“My divorce attorney gave me a list of everything we can take from Dan,” she said mildly. “I’m beginning to think it would be more humane to just kill him.”

—Words To Die By

Anatoly pushed past me into my apartment without bothering to so much as grunt in greeting. “Where’s your sister?”

“Hello to you, too. Want a beer?” I popped the lid off one of the Pacificos.

He stuck his thumbs through his belt loops. “Where’s your sister?”

“You see, it’s like this—nobody ever told Leah about setting the clocks forward during daylight savings time, so she spends half the year running an hour behind.”

He took the beer and threw his jacket over the armrest of the love seat before lowering himself onto the leather cushions. “I’m not waiting an hour.”

“Oh, please, I was kidding.” I took a beer for myself and leaned against the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen. “I’m sure she’ll be here in forty-five minutes, max.”

“She has twenty.”

“Okay, I know you’re pissed at me, Anatoly, but I’m paying you a lot of money to sit on your tuchas and drink my beer, so the least you can do is give her thirty.”

“Twenty-five. Why don’t you give me the details of the case while we wait? Why does Leah suspect her husband of sleeping around?”

“You know, the usual. After years of inattention he suddenly began to shower her with gifts while at the same time scheduling a lot of late-night meetings, and if that isn’t code for ‘I’m screwing my secretary’ I don’t know what is.”

Anatoly waited for me to continue and when I didn’t do so immediately his countenance assumed a more pleading expression. “There’s more than that, right? Tell me your sister isn’t as paranoid and insane as you are.”

“Oh, excuse me!” I slammed my beer on the counter. “I am nowhere near as crazy or paranoid as my sister!” Anatoly took a long swig of his beer in lieu of responding. I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “A couple of weeks ago, the night before I accidentally got you shot…”

“Accidentally?”

“We’re not getting into that now. Anyway, Bob told her he had a dinner meeting with his employer so he wouldn’t be at Chalet.”

“Chalet?”

“His place of work, Chalet.com. They sell home furnishings via catalogs and the Internet. Think Pottery Barn but twice as expensive. Bob’s the comptroller. Anyhoo, that night James Sawyer, Bob’s employer, called looking for him. When Leah told him she thought Bob was with him, this Sawyer guy claimed that they had no plans to meet. When Bob came home, she asked him how the meeting went and he said it was great. Gave her all these details that she didn’t even ask for. Just totally lying. The next day he got her a pair of 1.5-carat studs. God, he’s such a pig.”

Anatoly jotted something down in a pocket notebook. “She have any idea who he’s cheating on her with?”

The buzzer went off before I had a chance to respond. “Well I guess you’ll just have to ask her yourself.” I pressed the intercom button. “Leah, is that you?”

“Yes.”

I hesitated. Leah is one of those people who uses five words in place of the one that was necessary. When she did opt for brevity it was never a good sign. I buzzed her in and stood by the door in wait.

When she reached the top of the stairs my level of alarm rose a notch. Her perpetually saturated hair seemed unusually devoid of products. As she moved closer I could see that the tip of her nose was a little too rosy and her waterproof mascara was barely hanging on. She nodded at me in acknowledgement before wordlessly passing into the apartment. She dropped her Louis Vuitton on the floor and paused while she impassively studied Anatoly.

He rose and offered his hand. “Hi, I’m…”

Leah walked past him to the window and stared blankly out at the street.

“Great. Just what I need, one more mentally imbalanced client.”

I gave Anatoly a warning look before crossing to my sister. “Leah?” I put a cautious hand on her shoulder. “Leah, Anatoly’s the PI I’ve told you about. He’s going to…”

“I don’t need him.”

I glanced at Anatoly, who looked incredibly relieved. I held my hand up to indicate that he was not yet free to bolt for the door. “Leah, I know you think that Bob’s cheating, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to get some proof before you—”

“He already confessed…this morning before he went to work. I was standing there holding my son, our son, and he confessed to screwing some pathetic little home-wrecker. He says he’s leaving me for her. Just throwing it all away for some twenty-one-year-old whore.”

I removed my hand from her shoulder and clenched it into a fist. I was going to kill the SOB. I was going to reach down his throat, grab his tonsils and—

“All right, then—”

I started at Anatoly’s chipper tone.

“Sophie, thanks for the beer. Leah, it was nice meeting you. All the luck with the divorce…”

“There’s not going to be a divorce.”

My head snapped from Anatoly back to Leah. Either I had just misheard her or she had lost her mind. “What do you mean there won’t be a divorce? You just said…”

“I’m going to fight—for him and for my family. I can win him back, Sophie. I know I can.”

She made eye contact with me for the first time, and I saw the desperation tempered with what I assumed was some kind of psychotic determination. I opened my mouth to speak before I had formulated what the next words should be.

“Even better, then,” Anatoly boomed. “I hope you two have a wonderful life together. See you around.”

“Anatoly!” But he was already out the door.

Pig. Men were all pigs. I turned back to Leah. “Honey, you know you can’t win this one. Even if he did come back to you, why would you want him?”

“I knew you’d say something like that. I’m sorry if I actually take my vows seriously—unlike some people around here. I took a vow—”

“Yeah, you did. So did Bob. But he broke the deal, Leah. You can’t honestly think of being loyal to someone who has no interest in being loyal to you.”

“Lots of marriages survive adulterous affairs. Just because yours didn’t…”

“And thank God it didn’t! Don’t you get it? Finding Scott with that Vegas showgirl was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Otherwise, I might have actually done something stupid like try to stick it out in a doomed relationship. Hell, I still send that woman holiday cards.”

“Sophie, I’m not you and I don’t want to be you. I want to be Mrs. Bob Miller. That’s my life. Everything I have, everything I do…it’s all about being Mrs. Bob Miller. I’m good at it. My life with Bob…well, it’s what it’s supposed to be. He’s just forgotten that. He’s confused. But I’m going to make him see.”

“Leah, you can’t—”

“The hell I can’t!” I involuntarily stepped back. I had never seen her like this. She swallowed and looked away. “I found a receipt from Tiffany’s. He bought her a six thousand dollar bracelet. He bought it on the same day he bought me the diamond studs.”

“And what does that tell you, Leah?”

“It tells me that she’s using him. He bought the earrings for me because deep down he loves me, and he bought her a bracelet because he thought he had to in order to hold on to her.”

“Well that’s an interesting spin, if lacking in the logic department.”

But Leah wasn’t listening to me anymore. She brushed past me and stared at the chilled beers without reaching for one. “I am not going to take romantic advice from a divorced woman who talks to her cat.” I peeked guiltily at Mr. Katz, who was sleeping through the current fireworks. Leah snatched up the phone from the end table and started jabbing her fingers against the numbers.

“Leah, who are you calling?”

“Erika.”

“Bob’s secretary, Erika?”

“I spoke with her earlier. She’s as outraged as I am and offered to help me win him back.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Erika? Erika, are you there? It’s Leah. I’m coming over so if you get this message just…just wait for me. I need to come up with a plan before this goes too far.” Leah slammed the receiver onto the cradle.

“Leah this is crazy. You can’t put yourself through this. Plus you have Jack to consider—wait…where’s Jack?”

“He’s with my friend Miranda, and for your information I’m doing this for Jack.” She bent over to pick up her purse and made a beeline for the door.

“Oh come on, Leah, stay and talk to me about this. Erika’s not even home.”

“She will be soon and if not I’ll…I’ll just go home and do the laundry. Bob will need his golf clothes ready for the weekend.”

“Leah!”

“Goodbye, Sophie.” In an instant she was gone.

Well, that had been disorienting. It had looked like Leah, but I swear to God if I had closed my eyes I would have mistaken her for someone else. It wasn’t her words so much—although she had used more profanity than I was used to hearing from her—but her tone that had really thrown me. It had fluctuated from hollow to restless then back again. She seemed on the brink of losing her mind.

My eyes wandered to my unfinished beer on the counter. I picked up the bottle, then thought better of it and went to get the vodka from the kitchen. Leah would snap out of it. She just needed time. I poured the clear fluid over some ice cubes, then added a little cranberry juice for color. I should write something…like a book, or more specifically, the book my editor thought I had already started working on. In four months I would be touring to promote my latest finished Alicia Bright mystery, Words To Die By, and it would be helpful if I could complete the first draft of the next book in the series before hitting the road.

I silently welcomed the burning sensation the liquor provided as it worked its way down to my liver. The problem was I wasn’t quite ready to write another murder mystery yet. It had only been a few weeks ago that some lunatic had tried to break my head open with a golf club. Funny how being stalked by a homicidal maniac can knock the blood lust right out of you. Although I did want to kill my brother-in-law, Bob. That was promising progress.

I eyed my drink. It looked a little too red so I diluted it with more alcohol. If only Leah had gone running off to her friend Becca. Becca would have told her to kick Bob to the curb. But Becca was currently touring Europe with her boyfriend and it was doubtful Leah knew what country they were in, let alone what hotel.

I took another sip. I needed to relax. Erika may not give the best advice in the world, but evidently she and Leah had become close. She would undoubtedly offer Leah the emotional support she needed. This was good. Leah had Erika, and I had Absolut.

My pet strolled into the kitchen and blinked at me. “That’s what I like about you, Mr. Katz. You’re quiet, nonconfrontational, and it was legal for me to cut off your balls.”

It must have been a little after 10:00 p.m., because a Friends rerun was on. That meant I’d been unconscious for one…no, two and a half hours. The last thing I remember was watching a Will and Grace rerun. I had only consumed two cocktails (albeit, two very strong cocktails), but the combination of the alcohol and a good dose of emotional exhaustion had pretty much done me in for the evening.

It took a little effort but I managed to get off the couch. Unfortunately, the ringing of the phone interrupted my journey to the bedroom. I tapped the receiver with my index finger and considered my options. It rang again. Hell, it was worth picking it up just to keep it from making that shrill sound two more times. “Hello?”

“Sophie?”

I rolled my eyes skyward. “Leah, I’m tired, I’m grouchy, I’m intoxicated and I’m going to bed.”

“Sophie, please.”

There was something in Leah’s voice that stopped me. It wasn’t the desperation that had colored her tone earlier, but it was unnerving nonetheless. I sighed and leaned against the dining table. “Okay, what is it this time?”

“It’s Bob…I’m home…I’m here with Bob. Oh God, Sophie!”

I stood up a little straighter. “What? Did he hurt you?” My bloodlust was definitely back. I was going to kill him. Actually, I’d do better than that. In my next book I’d castrate a philandering husband named Bobby by rigging his inflatable sex doll with explosives.

“No, no, he didn’t hurt me. He can’t. Oh God, Sophie…Oh God, he’s dead! Bob is dead!”

My eyes traveled to the depleted bottle of vodka on the counter. “I’m sorry, Leah, but I think I must have misunderstood you—”

“He’s dead! D–E–A–D. BOB IS DEAD!”

“You mean like dead dead?”

“How many kinds of dead are there?”

“I’m not getting this.” I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. “Bob is only five years older than I am. Thirty-five is a little young for—”

“I think he was shot or something.”

“Shot or something?”

“I think so. I don’t know. He’s just lying there and there’s all this blood coming out of his head. Sophie, what do I do?”

Well, I wasn’t sure about her but what I wanted to do was throw up. “Leah, how exactly did Bob get ‘shot or something’? Who shot him?”

“How in God’s name would I know? I just came home and found him in the middle of the living room with a hole in his head! And our pictures, the framed wedding pictures that were in the room, they’re all smashed up. No one even bothered to clean up the glass! What if Jack had come home with me and cut himself?”

Excuse me? I lowered myself into a chair and tried to figure out if Leah’s instincts proved her to be Mother of the Year or just stark raving mad.

“Sophie, are you still there? What am I supposed to do?”

“I’m here.” Big sisters taught their younger siblings how to straighten their hair and apply their makeup. They did not instruct them on how to behave at a murder scene. “Leah, I honestly don’t know. What do the police say?”

“The police? I don’t know, they’re not here. Do you think they’re coming?”

“Didn’t they say they were coming?”

“No, no, I haven’t called them yet…. I called you. Oh, Sophie, he’s really dead! I mean really, really…”

I couldn’t hear Leah anymore, nor was I suffering the effects of the alcohol. All I could feel was the beginning of a panic attack. I took a deep breath and tried to make my voice slow, steady and clear. “Leah, I need you to hang up the phone right now and call the police.”

I could make out Leah’s quiet sobs on the other end of the line. “Leah, this is really important. I’m coming over but I need you to call them right now.”

She made some kind of weak affirmative noise. I hung up and for a few moments I couldn’t get myself to move. This was very bad. Hours after Bob had informed Leah that he was leaving her, he had transformed into a bloody corpse, and the phone records would show that the first number Leah dialed after discovering his body was not 911, but mine.

I looked down at Mr. Katz who had wrapped himself around my foot. “What now?”

My first stop was not Leah’s but Anatoly’s. I double parked in front of his building, ran up to the stoop and stood methodically tapping the buzzer until he relented and came down. He threw open the glass door and glared at me.

“Get your finger off the button, now.”

“Anatoly, I need help.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“Not that kind of help—” I took a moment to turn and acknowledge a driver yelling obscenities as he maneuvered around my illegally parked Audi “—although that should probably be my next stop. I’m here because Leah’s in trouble.”

“Leah’s made her choice, and you’re going to have to deal with that. Who knows—maybe she’ll get lucky and he’ll end the affair.”

“The affair’s pretty much a nonissue now, unless of course his mistress is into necrophilia.”

Anatoly’s lower jaw seemed to detach from his head. “She killed him? What the hell is wrong with you people? Doesn’t anyone in your family understand that vigilante justice is wrong?”

“She didn’t do it.” As soon as I said the words I realized my voice lacked the conviction to make them believable. I cleared my throat and forced myself to look Anatoly in the eye. “My sister did not shoot her husband. She loved him. Yes, they were having problems, but she was fully confident that they would work through them.”

Anatoly’s forehead creased and he leaned against the door frame. “What is this? Rehearsal for when you have to talk to the police?”

“Why? Didn’t I sound convincing?”

“That’s it. We’re done here. Goodbye, Sophie.”

I put my foot in the path of the door, inadvertently bringing myself closer to Anatoly. I could feel his breath in my hair and, despite his harsh words, I could see the twinkle of interest ignite in his eyes as he noted my new proximity. His mouth curved into a little half smile. I know that people often find themselves craving sex after a funeral but it probably isn’t healthy to be overcome with lust right after a family member has been shot. I distracted myself by looking at his feet. I’ve never been into feet no matter how big they are.

“Anatoly, I’m here to hire you. I was going to pay you six thousand dollars to find out if Bob was messing around. Now I’m offering you…ten. Ten grand to find out who messed with him.”

“It’s not about the money, Sophie.”

“What if I raise it to twelve? Then can it be about the money?”

He was silent for a bit and I kept my eyes glued to his boots. My friend Marcus always says that if a man’s shoes match his belt it means he’s gay. Anatoly must be the straightest man alive because his shoes never match anything. They are always ugly and—

“If you hire me I might uncover information that you don’t want to know.”

The statement was loaded with enough reality to quiet my raging hormones. I refocused on his face. “Then I’ll fire you.”

Anatoly snorted and looked out to the street. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”

“Great!” I pulled my keys out of my pocket and dangled them in front of him. “Get your coat and get in the car. I’ll fill you in on the details on the way.”

“I didn’t say I would take the case.”

“But you were about to. Come on, no more banter. The police are arriving at the scene as we speak.”

Anatoly shook his head in defeat. “I’m going upstairs to get some things. Wait for me in the car.” He retreated into the building and I ran to my car. I snapped on my seat belt and put my hand on the gearshift, ready to press it into first the minute his cute butt hit the seat. Anatoly was obviously less anxious. He strolled out wearing a generously cut leather coat and no other visible accessories. Maybe he had all his James Bond–like spy stuff hidden in his inside pockets.

Instead of taking his place in the passenger seat he came around to the driver’s side and opened my door. “Move over, I’m driving.”

“It’s my car.”

Anatoly bent down so that he was at eye level. “After your sister left your apartment, what did you do?”

“I watched some TV.”

“Right. Did you have any snacks while you were watching?”

“What would I snack on?”

“Vodka.”

“Vodka’s a good snack. Easy to prepare, light on calories…”

Anatoly smiled. “I’m driving.”

I gripped the wheel possessively. “Anatoly, you can’t possibly think I’m drunk.”

“No, I think your blood alcohol level is hovering around .08 but since we’re going to a place that we know will be crawling with cops it would be best if we don’t test fate.”

I grunted in disgust but relinquished my seat to him. “You think you know me so well.”

Anatoly positioned himself behind the wheel and adjusted the rearview mirror. “I guessed correctly, didn’t I?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you were playing PI in the apartment across the street, spying with a telescopic lens.”

“I don’t have to play PI, I am one.” He started the ignition and turned off the radio. “And I also have a life. Which way?”

“We’re going to Forest Hill. You know how to get to that neighborhood?”

Apparently he did, because he turned the car in the appropriate direction. I spent the first half of the drive giving him what little information I had. He listened, only interrupting occasionally to ask a question that I inevitably didn’t have an answer to. When I finished, the conversation lulled and I focused on the cars and street lamps we sped past. I hated to admit it to myself but I was pleased that he had insisted on driving. I consider myself to be a pretty independent person but in times of extreme crisis it was nice to have someone around who wanted to take control. That didn’t mean I was going to give him control, but I could take some comfort in knowing that it was an option.

As we got closer I broke the silence in order to direct him but I didn’t need to give him the exact address. Once we were within a block of the house all the flashing lights and uniformed officers served as a pretty clear indicator of where we were going. Anatoly parked several houses away and pulled the keys out without making any move to get out of the car. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you again, Sophie. Are you sure you want me to investigate this?”

I should have been flattered by the note of concern in his voice, but its implication frightened me. I shook my head violently in an attempt to shake off the dark thoughts that were creeping in. “She’s innocent, and yes, I want you to investigate.”

We stared at each other for a beat. Finally, in what seemed to be slow motion, our hands simultaneously reached for our respective door handles and we got out and approached the crime scene.

CHAPTER 2

“Life is like a never ending play,” he said between drags on his cigarette. “We all have roles to perform and there’s always some critic insisting we’ve been miscast.”

—Words To Die By

We hadn’t gotten very far before we were headed off by a particularly butch policewoman who used her hand as a barrier. “Sorry, no one’s allowed beyond this point.”

“My sister’s in there,” I argued. “This is her house.”

The woman was completely unmoved. “You’ll see her later.”

“Well, if it isn’t Sophie Katz and her victim—er—friend, Anatoly Darinsky.”

I looked up to see the tall, lean form of Detective Lorenzo. His eyes narrowed as they met mine. He had let his black curls grow out since the last time I had seen him, which made him look younger, if not nicer. I felt the muscles in my neck tighten.

“You’re the detective handling this case?” I asked.

“One of them.”

“I think there’s a conflict of interest here. You hate me and you’ve been sent to investigate my brother-in-law’s murder. It doesn’t seem reasonable to expect you to remain objective.”

Anatoly put his hand on my shoulder in what must have appeared to others to be a supportive gesture. Only I knew that there would be permanent indentation marks where his fingers were digging into my flesh.

“What exactly do you want me to be objective about?” Lorenzo asked. “And how do you know your brother-in-law was murdered?”

Anatoly loosened his grip, but not enough to eliminate all the discomfort. I’m not sure what he thought he was accomplishing. Obviously what I needed was to be smacked upside the head.

I took a deep breath and soldiered forward. “Leah called me a little while ago, distraught. She told me she had…found him.”

“Do you know if this was before or after she called us?”

“I…don’t know. I didn’t think to ask. She loved him so much…. I’m really very worried about her—can I see her?”

“Just a few more questions.” Lorenzo pulled out a pocket notebook and pen. “Did she tell you how he was killed?”

“She wasn’t sure. She said there was a lot of blood and it seemed to be coming from his head.”

“She called and told you there was blood coming out of her husband’s head,” he said flatly.

“Mmm, I think that was it. It wasn’t all that clear…you know, with all the crying and all.”

“And the first thing you did was go out and hire a private detective? Any particular reason for that?”

Anatoly slid his hand down to my waist. “I was with Sophie when Leah called. We’ve become…close. I wanted to be here for her and her family.”

He pulled me tight against his side and I could feel his body heat radiating through his jacket. I reached my arm out to return his squeeze, somehow managing to “accidentally” brush it against his butt in the process.

“Right.” Lorenzo made another note.

I’m not very good at reading upside down but I think I could make out the word dysfunctional.

“When was the last time you saw Leah?”

“This afternoon,” I said. “She was on her way to see a friend…not sure who. Anyway, she stopped by to say hi.”

Lorenzo made another little note. “Did she say anything else?”

“It was just a basic conversation between sisters. She asked how I was, inquired about my next book, and then told me to stop talking to my cat and find a human companion to date and converse with.”

The detective glanced up at Anatoly. “She doesn’t consider Mr. Darinsky here to be human?”

“Well, Anatoly has a lot of apelike qualities, so it can be confusing.”

Anatoly removed his arm.

“How was her marriage?” Lorenzo said.

“Spectacular.”

“Spectacular?”

“Mmm-hmm. He brought home a paycheck and left her alone,” I explained. “A woman couldn’t ask for more.”

Anatoly made a noise of disapproval.

“That isn’t very liberated of you,” Lorenzo noted.

“Don’t get me wrong, she loved the time they did spend together, but Leah had a life of her own. She adored Bob because he gave her the space she needed to maintain her individuality while still supporting her. And he always made time to take her out on the occasional date or family outing with their son. I mean really, how much more liberated can you get?” It was also complete bullshit. I pretended to search my purse for a tissue so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with either of my current male companions. Hopefully the picture I had painted of Leah would make her seem like the kind of gal who wouldn’t get all homicidal if she discovered her husband was messing around with some college-aged slut.

“Sophie!”

I looked up just in time to see Leah hurl herself in my direction. She flung her arms over my shoulders and tucked her tear-stained face into the crook of my neck. “Oh, how can this be happening to me?”

Lorenzo looked more irritated than sympathetic, but he did have the courtesy to put the notebook away. “It’s going to take a while for us to finish searching the house and dusting it for prints. Why don’t you come down to the station with us, Mrs. Miller? We can finish up the questions, and if your sister here would like to follow us she can give you a ride when we’re done.”

“Do you expect to be finished with the house by the time Leah’s through with questioning?” Anatoly asked.

“Not likely. I’m sure you understand the necessity of being thorough,” Lorenzo said, directing his comments to Leah.

Leah nodded numbly, and Anatoly took a step closer to her. “We’ll take Leah to the station.”

Lorenzo paused and studied Anatoly for a moment. “It might be more efficient if she rode with me or one of the other detectives. That way we could ask her some questions on the way over.”

“She’s been through enough without being forced to ride in a police car like some kind of criminal,” Anatoly said firmly.

My eyes traveled from Anatoly to Lorenzo. It was a nobrainer that Anatoly wanted to coach Leah on what to say before she answered any more questions, and it was equally obvious that Lorenzo would do whatever he could to prevent that from happening.

Lorenzo smiled and turned his attention back to Leah. “You know, Mr. Darinsky is right. You’ve been through enough. The last thing you need is to be dragged to some ugly police station. Why don’t we just sit in the car over there—” he instinctively held up his hand to block Anatoly’s predictable protest “—the unmarked car, in the front seat. I’ll have one of the guys bring us some coffee and we’ll finish the questions here.”

Anatoly’s jaw got a little tighter but he didn’t say anything. Leah looked to me questioningly for what I assumed was guidance. Ironic, since if she had ever taken my guidance before she never would have married Bob in the first place. But now I was all “guidanced out,” so of course I looked to Anatoly, who managed to loosen his jaw enough to speak.

“Go ahead, Leah, we’ll be waiting for you here.”

Leah allowed Lorenzo to steer her gently to the proper car. He stopped to talk to one of the uniformed officers, possibly to request the promised coffee, which was just stupid because the last thing Leah needed was to be more amped.

Anatoly stood silently with his arms crossed in front of him.

“Where’s the hidden camera?” I whispered.

Anatoly’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“You know, the spy stuff that detectives carry around with them when they go to crime scenes.”

Anatoly shook his head in disgust. “I was in the Russian Army, not the KGB. I don’t have any spy stuff.”

Well, that was disappointing. “Not even a mini tape recorder?”

“Not even that.”

“Then what the hell did you go back up to your apartment for?”

“A jacket.”

“You are so not worth twelve thousand dollars.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you had ever given me the opportunity to get you undressed.”

I opened my mouth to make a clever comeback, but then quickly closed it in order to keep the drool in. Not healthy. I really needed to try to be more somber. I thought about Bob’s early demise. Unfortunately that didn’t sufficiently lower my spirits. I turned my thoughts to Leah’s potential incarceration. That did it.

“Do you think she’s telling him—”

“Sophie, do us all a favor and shut up.”

“That wasn’t very nice.”

“When did you get the impression I was nice?”

“Good point. So this undressing thing…is that really part of services rendered? Because it’s a good marketing tool. ‘Hire Darinsky, he’ll catch your spouse with his pants down, and as a consolation he’ll lower yours, as well.’ Really, I think there could be a high demand for that. But since I’m hiring you for more solemn purposes, I think I’ll have to pass.”

“I didn’t actually offer.”

“The hell you didn’t.”

Anatoly smiled slightly. “I’d forgotten what you were like when you weren’t busy setting people up for murder.”

“Yep, this is me. Spunky and fun.”

“I was thinking argumentative and insane, but you should stick to the euphemisms that work best for you,” Anatoly said.

I gave him what I hoped came across as a disdainful glare. “I’m cold. I’m going back to the car.”

Anatoly hesitated, then carefully removed his jacket and held it out for me. I couldn’t help grinning while I slipped my arms into the sleeves. This is what I liked about Anatoly: he was full of contradictions. Though the jacket was about eight sizes too big, I managed to find a way to get my hands into the pockets. Anatoly reached out to stop me but it was too late—I had already felt it.

“What’s this?”

“Nothing, now just—”

“It’s a tape recorder! And it’s on, isn’t it.”

“Shh!”

“You do have spy stuff,” I hissed.

“Sophie, this is not the place. We’ll talk about it when we’re alone.”

“Oh, please, no one’s listening. You just don’t want to admit I was right.”

“You were right. Now shut up.”

I wasn’t quite as offended by the command now that I knew I was right. I simply spent the rest of the time smiling smugly at him while he ignored me. Finally, Leah emerged from the car and came over to us.

“Please get me out of here.”

My smugness was instantly squashed. Hopefully the fact that I kept forgetting about Leah’s plight was due to shock and denial and not extensive egocentrism. I ushered Leah to my car, where Anatoly once again assumed the role of driver. Leah refused my offer of the front passenger seat and tried to open the back door for herself. Unfortunately her hand was shaking so badly that she found even this task too difficult. I opened it and buckled her seat belt for her before crawling into the seat next to Anatoly.

The first five minutes of the drive were silent. It occurred to me that it would have been better if this had happened back when Leah was under the illusion that her marriage was successful. That way her final memories of Bob likely would have been positive. As it stood now, she had been robbed not only of her husband but also of the right to be angry with him. Unless of course it had been that anger that had led to his death. I shook my head vigorously and Anatoly gave me a questioning glance that I didn’t bother responding to. I wasn’t going to allow myself those thoughts. Leah was a lot of things—neurotic, insecure, judgmental—but she also had a good heart. She was simply not capable of murder.

“Jack! Oh my God, I forgot about Jack!”

I quickly turned toward Leah. “Forgot him? Forgot him where?” Images of Jack suffocating in the back seat of her Volvo flashed in front of my eyes.

“I dropped him off with Miranda for a playdate this afternoon. Oh Lord, what am I going to say to him?”

I doubted it was necessary to explain a father’s death to an eighteen-month-old child, particularly if the victim was a man that had a stronger relationship with his laptop than his son. “Why don’t you call Miranda and see if Jack can sleep over?”

“I couldn’t. It’s asking too much.”

“She’ll understand.”

“Sophie…”

“Phone.” I stuck my hand between the seats and Leah reluctantly pressed her cell phone into my palm. I looked up Miranda’s number in the memory and pressed Call.

“Allen residence.” The woman on the other end of the line spoke with a Mexican accent and sounded extremely harried.

“Hi, this is Sophie Katz, Jack’s aunt….”

“Oh, thank goodness! You’re coming to get Master Jack.”

Master Jack? Who instructed their ethnic nanny to call their charge’s playmates “Master”? “Well, actually I’m not. You know I think I should explain this to Mrs. Allen.”

“But you are picking him up?” The desperation in the woman’s voice was palpable.

“I really need to talk to Mrs. Allen.”

“Of course.” Was she crying? “I’ll get her.”

My heartbeat quickened as I waited for Miranda to pick up the line. What had Jack done now? Polluted the family’s drinking water with Epsom salts? What if they didn’t let him stay? I empathized with the nanny, but this felt like a her-or-me kind of situation, and I’d be damned if I was up for dealing with a Junior Moriarty.

“Hello? Sophie? It’s Miranda. Is Leah all right?”

“Hi, Miranda. Leah’s…” I looked behind me to see Leah methodically rotating her wedding band around her finger. “Leah’s had a rough night.”

“Yes, she told me about the affair….”

“It’s more than that,” I began. “There’s been a…an unexpected death in the family.”

“I am so sorry to hear that, Sophie. Was it your mother?”

“Mama? Oh, no! Nothing that bad, it was just Bob.” As soon as the words came out I realized how bad they sounded and how horrible I was for saying them. Fortunately my rabbi had informed me there wasn’t a hell to go to. I just had to learn to live with guilt.

“Bob? What happened to Bob?”

There was absolutely no delicate way of putting this. “He was shot.” I thought I saw the corners of Anatoly’s mouth twitch in amusement.

“I don’t understand.”

“I know it’s shocking. We have no idea who did it—a burglar maybe. Leah’s an absolute wreck. Would it be all right if Jack spent the night with you?”

“Of course, of course.” Miranda sounded a little dazed. “Consuello will make sure he’s comfortable.”

Sorry, Consuello, you lose. “Great, Leah will pick him up tomorrow, before nine.”

“No rush, you can pick him up as late as eleven-thirty if you like. Just…give Leah hugs and kisses from us.”

“Will do. I’ll have Leah call before she comes over.” I hung up just as Anatoly was pulling into a parking spot five blocks away from my home.

He tossed the keys onto my lap and made eye contact with Leah through the rearview mirror. “Leah, I’m going to have to ask you a few questions.”

“No more questions. I can’t take it.”

Anatoly sighed. We both got out of the car and Anatoly opened the door for Leah. “I know how hard it is to lose someone you care for,” he said, “but if you’re going to get through this, we’re going to have to put the pieces together so we can figure out what happened tonight.”

“The police are already doing that.”

“Yeah, but unlike the police, Anatoly works for us, not the state,” I said. “He’ll be more sensitive in his approach to this and he’ll conduct his investigation in a way that will best ensure your protection.”

“My protection? Do you think whoever did this is planning on shooting me?”

No, I thought that the police had plans to arrest her for being the “whoever” who did this. “I think you should answer Anatoly’s questions.”

Leah shifted her weight from foot to foot. She is an inch taller than me, but right then she seemed much smaller.

Anatoly put a gentle guiding hand on her shoulder. “Let’s walk.”

Leah nodded and fell into step with him as I trailed behind.

“When was the last time you saw Bob?”

God, Anatoly’s tone sounded so comforting that even I felt myself lulled into a sense of tranquility.

“This morning when he…told me.”

Anatoly nodded and slowed his pace. “Sophie tells me you went to see Bob’s secretary after you left her place a little after five.”

“Erika wasn’t home.”

Anatoly’s pace didn’t change but his shoulders seemed to get a little more rigid. “What did you do then?”

“I parked my car in front of her house and waited for about a half hour. Then I just drove. Erika lives in Daly City, so I got back on Highway 1 and drove down the coast for a while. Then I came back up to the city and drove around the Presidio. I just drove.”

“So you have no—you were alone.” His voice remained steady.

“Yes, that’s right. I needed some space so I could figure out how to get Bob back, and now—now he’s gone forever. I’m a widow.” She stopped in her tracks and turned to look at me. “I don’t know how to be a widow, Sophie.”

Leah didn’t look so steady on her feet, and I contemplated whether it was necessary to remind her to breathe.

“Let’s keep walking,” Anatoly said. We all resumed our journey to my apartment. “When you came home did you see anything unusual? Any people walking around nearby or cars pulling out of parking spots?”

“No, nothing unusual or out of place. I don’t think there were any pedestrians out, and the streets were quiet. I had no idea…I just had no idea.”

“Was the front door locked when you came in?”

“Yes, double locked. Bob is always so careful.”

I stopped myself from correcting her use of the present tense.

“Sophie said that when you got inside there were a few frames containing your wedding pictures that had been smashed on the floor.”

“In the living room, next to him. The rest of the house was in order, just as I had left it. But all three of the framed photos we display in the living room had been broken, and there was a broken highball glass.”

“A highball glass?”

“Shattered right next to Bob. And there was all this blood.” Leah blinked a few times. “Do you think it will always be there?”

Anatoly shook his head uncomprehendingly.

“The blood. Will it stain the floor? I have a book that tells you how to get the worst stains out…but there was so much.”

Leah was in shock. That was obvious. I wanted to reassure her that Pergo didn’t stain, but it didn’t seem appropriate at the moment. “The blood’s going to go away, Leah. It’s all going to get better. Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll make you a little tea with brandy?”

“Yes, if all else fails, get her drunk,” Anatoly muttered.

I shot him a warning glance before escorting them up to my place. Leah took a seat on my couch without bothering to take off her jacket, and I went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Mr. Katz strolled into the living room undoubtedly hoping to cajole some food out of me, but once he saw both Leah and Anatoly he pulled a U-turn. He was too proud a cat to beg in front of company.

“After you found him you called Sophie. Did you call anyone else before you talked to the police?”

“Not before, no. After the police arrived and right before I came out and saw you I called Cheryl, Bob’s sister.”

Shit, I had forgotten about Cheryl. Usually that was a good thing, but in this case even Ms. Shallow deserved some consideration. “That couldn’t have been a fun phone call,” I said. “How did she take it?”

It was hard to tell from where I was standing, but I could have sworn that I saw a spark of annoyance in Leah’s eyes.

“She reacted like she always reacts—lots of dramatics and lamentations. You’d think that this whole thing was a personal assault against her, as if I weren’t suffering at all.”

I did a quick double take. That was a bit judgmental. Maybe Leah was returning to her old self again. “Well, he is her only living relative,” I pointed out.

“Please. She reacted the same way when Jason Priestley crashed at NASCAR.”

Yep, she was definitely coming around.

Anatoly seemed less impressed with her sarcasm. “Did the police find the murder weapon while you were there?”

“No, I showed them where Bob kept his gun, but it was missing.”

Great, just great. I could easily remember the debate Leah and Bob had over that stupid gun. She didn’t want to have one with a child around but he had insisted that it was a good security measure for the family. Apparently Bob was wrong.

Anatoly leaned against the counter that divided the living room and kitchen and shot me a look that said We’re in deep doo-doo. “Leah, I’m almost done. Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill Bob, or for that matter, anyone who held any kind of grudge against him at all?”

“No, everybody loved Bob.”

What drug was she on? Nobody loved Bob, not even her.

“He had lots of friends,” she continued. “The people who worked with him loved him. He was just offered a promotion. It was going to be announced in a few days. His employees couldn’t have been more loyal. Erika thought the sun rose and set around his head. No one wanted to hurt him—to my knowledge. Unless that slut he’s been sleeping with wanted to do him in. That’s always possible.”

I felt like screaming. The woman he had been sleeping with had no motive. Leah did. She had to see that. She had to realize how bad this all looked.

Anatoly cleared his throat. “Last two questions. Did you tell the police about Bob’s affair, or that he told you he was leaving you?”

“No, I…I couldn’t. The only people who know about that are the two of you, Erika and Miranda.”

I could tell by the look on his face that we were thinking the same thing. That was two too many.

“Leah, what’s Bob’s e-mail and password?”

I handed Leah a Post-it and she scribbled down Bob’s private e-mail address and handed it to Anatoly. “The password is June 21.” She hesitated a moment before adding in a much quieter voice, “That’s our anniversary.”

Anatoly waited a few seconds for her to reflect, but I sensed his chivalry was close to used up.

“Any other addresses? His work e-mail, for example?” he asked.

“It’s bmiller@chalet.com. I don’t know what password he used there. I tried accessing his messages when I suspected…” Leah got another faraway look in her eyes.

Anatoly motioned with his hand for her to continue. “I know what you suspected. So what passwords did you try?” he prompted.

“Well, I started with our anniversary, of course. We use that code for all of our accounts, our checking, our various online retailers….”

“What other passwords did you try?”

“My birthday, the date of our engagement, my name, and I tried one other before I gave up…what was it? Oh, of course, the day we first met. None of them worked.”

Anatoly jotted it all down. “Did you try narcissistic?” he whispered under his breath.

I shot him a dirty look, but Leah didn’t appear to have heard him.

“Last thing,” he said. “Are there any questions that the police asked you that I haven’t, or vice versa?”

“No, I’ve answered all these questions before,” Leah said. “I don’t think newly widowed women are supposed to answer all these questions right away. I think they’re supposed to be too distraught to talk. Maybe I’m being callous.”

Maybe she was being crazy.

Anatoly studied her. I got the feeling he was trying to pull information out of her—that she didn’t want to voice. Finally, he shrugged and joined me in the kitchen.

“Come to help me with the tea?”

Anatoly didn’t even bother acknowledging the question. “Meet me at Leah’s at ten-thirty tomorrow morning.”

“Is that a request or an order?”

“Ten-thirty, Sophie. And if you hear anything from the police, call me.” Anatoly left as the kettle began to whistle.

Leah entered the room and crossed to the stove to turn it off. “Skip the tea. Just give me the brandy.”

The next morning I awoke to the sound of grinding coffee beans, which would normally fill me with the kind of inner peace others only experience after visiting the Dalai Lama. However there was an odd pattern to the noise this morning. Normally when you grind coffee you press the top of the coffee grinder for a minute or so until the beans are as fine as grains of black sand. However the person preparing these beans was pressing the grinder for five seconds at a time, and, taking two-minute breaks in between to utter phrases like “Oh, my head!”

I pulled on a robe and went out to the kitchen to see Leah braced against the sink, the grinder currently silent beside her.

Her angry, bloodshot eyes zoomed in on me. “Look at me! Look what you’ve done to me!”

I didn’t immediately answer. I understood that she was hungover but I missed the part that made it my fault.

“Why did you let me drink all that brandy?” She ran her fingers through her hair, inadvertently molding it into a wing formation. “How am I going to reevaluate my life if I feel like my head is going to explode?”

I pulled out a filter and began to prepare the coffeemaker for the beans that I was clearly going to have to grind myself. “Maybe you shouldn’t reevaluate your life just yet.”

“Of course, I have to reevaluate! Weren’t you listening to me last night? I’m not the wife of a comptroller anymore. I’m the widow of a comptroller. That’s an entirely different situation. I have to figure out—OH MY GOD!”

I almost dropped the coffeepot. “What? What is it?”

“This nightgown I’m wearing! You lent me a pink nightgown!”

I blinked. “I thought you liked pink.”

“I’m in mourning! I’m supposed to be wearing black.”

“To the funeral maybe…”

“No, no, no, no.” Leah shook her head hard enough to cause her hair wings to make a flapping motion, then abruptly stopped as she struggled to regain her equilibrium. “There is a period of time in which widows are supposed to wear black, I’m sure of it.”

“Leah, this isn’t Gone with the Wind. No one is going to blackball you for wearing a pink nightgown.”

She started pacing the narrow kitchen. “There’s a way to do this…I know, a book! There’s got to be a book that explains the proper protocol for a newly widowed woman.”

“Like what? Mourning for Idiots? Why don’t you pick up Emily Post’s book on how to be a socially gracious murder suspect while you’re at it, because that seems to be the more pressing problem.”

Leah stopped pacing. “Murder suspect? I didn’t kill Bob.”

“I didn’t say you did, but I’m sure you’ve heard the saying ‘perception is the greater part of reality.’ And I’m pretty sure I know what the police department’s perception is right now.”

Leah looked bewildered, although how this could have been news to her was beyond me.

“But once the police start investigating, they’ll see it wasn’t me. There’s no evidence that could say otherwise because I really am innocent.”

“Wake up, Leah. Innocent people go to jail all the time on bogus charges. It was barely a month ago that Anatoly was charged with assault and murder.”

“But that’s because you set him up, Sophie. You invited him up to your place, kicked a few chairs over or something and then called 911.”

“Okay, forget about that. How many times in the past couple of years have forensic scientists used old DNA evidence to prove that some of the people who have served time for various crimes were actually innocent? While researching Words To Die By, I found out that Ray Krone was in prison for ten years before DNA evidence proved him innocent. What about the cases when DNA evidence isn’t available? Do you think the courts get all those right? You need to look at this realistically and prepare to fight the accusations that are going to come your way.”

In one fluid movement Leah picked up an empty coffee mug and threw it across the room. It exploded against my cabinet door in a burst of ceramic. “I didn’t do it!”

I stood motionless, looking at the remnants of the cup. I had a long history of throwing things, but that’s because I have no self-control. Leah, on the other hand, had always managed to be on the verge of a breakdown without ever actually having one—until now.

Her action must have surprised her, as well, because she had become completely still. Then she slumped against the counter. “I know it looks bad, but I honestly never wished him dead. I wanted the chance to make it work. Why wasn’t I given that, Sophie? Why would anyone do this?” She slid down to the floor, buried her face in her hands and cried.

I reluctantly crept forward and sat down beside her, careful not to get shards of ceramic stuck in my butt. I understood where Leah was coming from. I’m not sure she valued Bob the individual all that much, but she did value their union and the life they had made together. Her choices were not ones that I would ever have made for myself, though they apparently worked for her. But Bob’s extramarital affair had not been one of her choices, nor had his murder. At least I hoped it hadn’t been. Now, after spending years perfecting her role as Mrs. Bob Miller, she was forced to redefine herself, and she had no clue how to do it.

I put my arm around her shoulders. “I’ll ask Mary Ann about the black,” I said, referring to my friend who worked at Neiman Marcus. “She’ll know what you should wear.”

Leah choked back a sob.

“Do you want to cover the mirrors?” I asked.

Leah lifted her tear-stained face. “Cover the mirrors? Bob would have hated that. He wasn’t even Jewish.”

“Look, God’s got Bob covered, so now we’ve got to do what’s necessary to get you through this. The rabbis wrote out some pretty clear instructions on what we Jews are supposed to do when we lose a family member, and you need guidance, soooo…”

Leah nodded and chewed on her lip. “I guess it’s not such a bad idea, but do you think…perhaps just for this morning…?”

“You want to wait until you’ve finished with your makeup and hair.”

“Am I completely shallow and horrible?”

“Maybe, but if so, it’s hereditary, because there’s no way that I’m going to go through the day without my undereye concealer.”

Leah rested her head against my shoulder, which required some contortionist moves on her part, but the gesture was irresistibly sweet. “If you ever try to remind me that I said this I’ll deny it, but honestly—I don’t know what I would do without you.”