Now You See Her Read online

  She wobbled her way to bed. The electric blanket was still on. Naked, she crawled between the blissfully warm sheets and was asleep as soon as her muscles relaxed.

  * * *

  Detective Joseph Aquino was a burly guy with shrewd eyes and a homely, lived-in face that invited confidences. Detective H.E. Ritenour was lean and more pugnacious, his sandy hair cut military short, and he had a habit of fixing his pale gaze on suspects and not blinking until they began to squirm.

  Richard didn’t play games. He didn’t fidget, and he would bet the discipline trained into him would outlast the detective’s technique. He wondered if Ritenour would stare until his eyes dried out.

  When they had come to his house early that morning to tell him of Candra’s death, he had known immediately he was at the top of their list of most-likely suspects. He kept his behavior low-key and cooperated with everything they asked of him, functioning despite the shock that tried to numb his brain.

  He hadn’t loved Candra in a long time, and for the past year had actively hated her, but he had never wanted her dead. He just wanted her out of his life. Now she was, in the most final way. The death of someone you knew well was always a shock, like a wound in your concept of reality. The world had changed, and for a while you had to struggle with the abrupt alteration.

  Because their divorce wasn’t final, he was still legally responsible for the arrangements. He identified her body, and though he had seen bodies before, that had been in military action, undeclared war, where they had gone in knowing there could be casualties and accepted the risk, doing it anyway. This was different. This was the woman with whom he had shared his life, even if only superficially, for ten years. He had slept with her, made love to her, and, in the beginning at least, loved her. All he could feel now was regret, but it was genuine.

  He called her parents, who had moved from Manhattan when her father lost almost every penny he had in some bad stock decisions. Now Charles and Helene Maxson lived just outside Ithaca, their circumstances so reduced Candra had always invited them to the city rather than spend a night in what she called “little more than a shack,” though Richard thought the brick ranch house was upper-middle-class and a lot better than what most people had. But Candra had grown up in wealth, while Richard had a different perspective.

  Because of the circumstances, Richard quietly told Charles he would defer to him and Helene in the necessary decisions. Candra was their daughter; their grief was sharp. The location and means of interment would be their choice, as would the service.

  Every step he took, Richard was aware of the pair of detectives. One or both of them was always within earshot when he was on the phone. Any resentment he felt was immediately controlled, because they had a job to do and murder statistics showed that any time a woman was murdered, either her husband or boyfriend was the one most likely to have done the deed. Because he and Candra had been embroiled in a divorce, that tipped the percentages heavily against him. So he remained calm, even when the detectives finally took the step of taking him into precinct headquarters and sat down with him in an interrogation room, a small, dingy square space occupied by three chairs and a beat-up table that wobbled.

  He was read his rights and asked if he wanted to call his attorney. “No,” he said, surprising both of them.

  “You want a cup of coffee, some water?” Ritenour asked.

  “No, thank you,” Richard said, and managed to hide a small spurt of amusement. That was a basic trick; offer the suspect anything he wanted to drink, keep the coffee coming, and pretty soon he would be squirming with the need to piss. Only they wouldn’t let him go; they would keep him there, asking the same questions over and over, maybe phrased a little differently, while the sap’s bladder got more and more uncomfortable.

  He made himself as comfortable as possible in the chair to which they had steered him, which made him wonder if the front legs had been shortened a little so he would slide forward every time he tried to relax. He put both feet solidly on the floor and kept them there.

  Detective Ritenour started. “The housekeeper says you and Mrs. Worth were divorcing.”

  “That’s right.” Richard kept his tone neutral. “We’ve been separated a year.”

  “Divorces are messy things. I’ve been through two of them myself.”

  “They aren’t pleasant, no.”

  “People get all upset. It’s understandable. You’d have a lot to lose, wouldn’t you, Mr. Worth?”

  “In what way?”

  “C’mon, you’re worth a lot of money, no pun intended. A woman can take a man to the cleaners, get everything he’s worked for, unless he’s smart enough to protect himself from the beginning. You didn’t have much money when you and Mrs. Worth married, though, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So there wouldn’t have been any need for a prenup then.”

  “Gentlemen.” Richard said it quietly, because he sympathized with them. He wanted them to succeed. “If you’re asking if I stood to lose half of everything I own, the answer is no. When we married, my wife’s family was wealthy. Her father insisted on a prenuptial agreement. His intent was to protect his money from me in case of divorce, but the agreement went both ways. She kept what was hers; I kept what was mine. Candra couldn’t touch anything.”

  He saw the quick glance that went between the two detectives. One of their motives had just gone down the drain.

  “You’ll have a copy of that agreement, of course.”

  “My lawyer has it. Gavin Welles. Candra’s attorney, Olivia Yu, also has a copy.”

  They made a note of the names.

  “The housekeeper said you and Mrs. Worth had been having some trouble coming to an agreement about the settlement.”

  The housekeeper had said a lot, Richard thought. “Candra wasn’t happy with the settlement. She wanted more. We had several arguments about it, but she had agreed to sign the papers. We had an appointment with the attorneys today, at one o’clock, to sign the papers.” Automatically Richard glanced at his watch and saw that it was after two already. He hadn’t called Gavin to cancel the appointment, but Gavin would know. Someone would have called him. Olivia, probably. One of Candra’s friends would have called Olivia immediately, in the guise of passing along the news but really trying to find out some of the details.

  The news that Candra had agreed to a settlement took away another of their motives. The two detectives looked thoughtful.

  “Did you have a key to her new apartment?” Detective Aquino asked, the first words he had spoken since they entered the interrogation room.

  Richard shook his head. “No, not likely. I’ve never been in her apartment.”

  “Never?”

  “Never.” Never was an absolute term, difficult to support. Knowing they were now thinking along the lines of fiber samples, he said, “She came to my town house a couple of times to talk, and to collect her belongings, but I never went to her place.”

  They hid their disappointment well. Any cross-contamination of fiber samples between the two dwellings now had an explanation. Everything Richard had said was something that could be easily verified, and they knew it.

  “Mrs. Worth was a popular woman. Were you jealous of her male friends?”

  Richard couldn’t help it. He laughed. The sound wasn’t particularly humorous. “No.”

  “When she filed for divorce—”

  “She didn’t file. I did.”

  “You did?” Another quick look between them. “Why was that?”

  Richard had never told another soul why his break with Candra had been so abrupt and final. Sweeney knew, but only because she had been present during that last argument. He didn’t want to say anything against Candra now, especially not anything that would get back to her parents.

  “I don’t want her family to know,” he finally said. “It would hurt them.”

  “Know what, Mr. Worth?”

  “I found out she had an abortion two years ago. She hadn�