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As the wipers swiped at the rain, she drove home lost in random memories of her marriage to Court.
It had been so hot on their wedding day, and he’d been in a bad mood. She recalled how he battled back and forth with the people they purchased their house from, insisting that she keep going back to the other agent with yet another demand. He’d been unhappy when he learned they were having a girl. He’d flirted outrageously with attractive, twentysomething women, then pretended that she was the one who had a jealousy problem.
Yeah, their marriage had been dying for a long while she decided as she drove into the garage and walked into the house they’d shared. Funny, it didn’t seem any emptier than it had when Court was alive, but then he’d rarely been home.
She understood why her vague suspicions, those worries she’d buried deep in denial, had finally been unearthed.
Once in her bedroom, she glanced at the racks of his clothes neatly pressed and hung in the closet—jackets and slacks, suits and ties. Her throat clogged for a second, not so much for the death of the man or the marriage, but for the demise of the dreams. Her dreams.
Before she could go any further down that dark emotional path, she changed into fashionable sweats of her own; Vivian wasn’t the only one who wore Lululemon and the like.
Later in the afternoon, she found a bottle of chardonnay in the fridge. Opened a few days earlier, the bottle was less than a third full. She poured a glass and tasted the wine. Satisfied that it was still good, she carried her glass and the bottle to one of the sea grass chairs that faced a wide window to the backyard. The window was open a bit, a little breeze slipping into the room. Sipping the white wine she observed the rain spatter between the slats of the white wooden portico that shaded the corner of the slate patio.
I’m going to have to sell, she thought. During the week, she’d taken a very brief look into their accounts and finances o
nly to learn that Court had been stealing from Peter to pay Paul and they were virtually broke.
Well, except you have Mazie’s clients now, don’t you?
Elizabeth swallowed hard. Mazie Ferguson, her boss, the hard-driving, bitch-on-wheels whom Elizabeth had also wished dead. Mazie, who’d also died in an auto accident. The difference was that Mazie had been way over the legal alcohol limit when her Lexus had sailed off the edge of the 55 freeway. Luckily, she hadn’t killed anyone on the street where her car had landed in a crumpled heap of twisted metal. Only Mazie had died. But then, she was the only person Elizabeth had silently wished dead.
“I didn’t kill her,” she said aloud, smelling the eucalyptus, watching the shivering, fingerlike green leaves of the rafus plant dance in the breeze.
Chapter 3
The doorbell rang and Elizabeth thought, what now? She walked to the front door, recognizing the shape of Barbara’s hat through the translucent glass panels inset into the thick panels of her front door. Great.
Reluctantly, she opened the door to her sister-in-law who bustled inside.
Immediately and with disapproval, Barbara eyed Elizabeth’s half-drunk glass of chardonnay. “People are talking about you, you know,” she warned once in the foyer.
It had begun to pour outside again and Elizabeth watched Barbara shrug out of her dripping coat, rain puddling onto the travertine of the entry floor. “The rain’s supposed to be gone by tomorrow,” she said distractedly.
“Elizabeth,” Barbara snapped in annoyance and started in again. “Chloe should have been at her father’s funeral.”
“I’ll hang your coat in the closet. It’ll drip on the floor, but it’s travertine, too, so it should be okay.”
“For God’s sake, are you deaf?”
“No, I was just tuning you out. Chloe didn’t go and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s over.”
“Give me the hanger. You’ve got a glass of wine in your hand and I don’t want you to spill it—”
“I won’t.” Geez, her sister-in-law was a workout. “But have it your way.” She slapped a hanger into Barbara’s outstretched palm then watched as her sister-in-law carefully hung her coat in the closet and placed her hat on the shelf.
Perfect.
She nearly slammed the door to the closet shut, then reminded herself to be cool, not get emotional, not to lose control. “So, Barbara,” she said, forcing a calm she didn’t feel, “How about a glass of wine?”
“What? No, I don’t . . .” Barbara lifted a hand in frustration and dropped it back down as Elizabeth walked to the kitchen, her sister-in-law following and still jabbering at her. “Elizabeth, we haven’t really talked about what happened to Court. I know he was in an accident, a horrible accident, but not much more. With all the arrangements for the funeral, you and I haven’t really had a chance to talk. But now . . . Do you know how that damned accident occurred?” She paused for a moment. “Or do you not want to talk about that, either?” An undercurrent of accusation ran through the question . . . as if Elizabeth were somehow holding out on her sister-in-law.
Elizabeth forced herself to ignore Barbara’s tone.
“Well, just so you know, I’m in the dark here because no one’s telling me what the hell happened!”
“It was a single car accident. But that’s all I really know, too.” Elizabeth glanced out the window again. The rain was letting up a bit.
“What about that woman detective?” Barbara said, standing on the other side of the island and snapping her fingers in frustration. “Oh, what’s her name?”
