Elizabeth Zelvin - Bruce Kohler 04 - Death Will Save Your Life (4 page)

When we got back down the hill, I made a beeline for the Can. I needed caffeine and sugar. Then I swung by my room. I took a quick shower and flopped down on my bed, but I was too wired to rest. I went looking for Honey. At least I’d made sure she wouldn’t face the glare of the police spotlight alone. I found her watching a yoga class down by the lake. Advanced, I bet. Their moves looked more appropriate to a ball of yarn than a group of human beings.

I put my hand on Honey’s shoulder. She turned to me, all puffy eyes and red nose. Her hair was damp and a little ratty, dark amber instead of light.

“Hey,” I said. “You look terrible.” I brushed a strand of hair back over her shoulder.

“You heard.” Her voice wobbled.

“We found him. They didn’t tell you? Jeez, Honey, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Let’s walk.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “What do the cops say?”

She shook her head.

“Tell me.”

“They made me look at him.” She shuddered. “He was in, oh God, a big bag, like a garbage bag.” Her hand rose to her throat. “He was strangled. I know they think I did it.”

“Plenty of people must have wanted him dead. I’m sorry, Honey, but—”

“He wasn’t a very nice man.”

“I know.”

“I told you, he could be very charming,” she said. “His public face, what he wrote in his books, when he was interviewed—that’s the Melvin I fell in love with and married in spite of what they said.”

“They?”

“My family. They kept pointing out how much older than me he was. They kept saying ‘He’s from New York.’ And ‘What kind of a name is Markowitz?’ I thought they were just being anti-Semitic.”

“Oy vey.”

“We don’t get to meet a whole lot of Jews back home,” she said. “The way folks there talk embarrasses me now.”

“I bet they don’t eat bagels either.” My inner smartass coming out. Not good. I tried again. “It’s never fun to hear ‘I told you so.’ Especially when you’re in trouble.”

“It’s my problem,” she said. “I guess I’m on my own. The only folks I know up here are Melvin’s people,” she said. “His sister, his agent, his ex-wife. They’d all be relieved if the police just tidied me away.”

“You know me,” I said. “Let me help.”

Her face lit up.

“Would you really? You could figure out who did it! You and your friends. You’re all a lot smarter than me.”

That wasn’t exactly what I’d meant.

“It must be that New York thing.”

“Don’t joke. You are. Please.” Her voice faltered. “I know it’s asking a lot.”

“What if we make it worse for you?” I said. “The cops up here probably like smartasses from Manhattan about as much as your folks do.”

“I still want you,” Honey said. “Don’t say no. Ask your friends.”

Barbara would kiss me. Jimmy would kill me.

“Bru-uce,” Barbara said. “Why do you have to fall for the prime suspect?”

We lay on the warm grass, watching the ecstatic dancers do their thing in the golden late afternoon sun. The air smelled of green and growing things.

“Think about it, Bruce,” she said. “She’s an abused wife whose husband has just been murdered, and nobody knows whodunit. And now I bet she’s a very rich widow.”

“I agree my timing is terrible,” I said. “But we have to help her. Callaghan will eat her for breakfast. And that ex of Melvin’s will pass the cream and sugar.”

“The ex is a better suspect,” Jimmy said. “The cops don’t know Melvin and Honey had a bad marriage. The guy had a convincing public face.”

“Attaboy,” I said. “C’mon, Barbara, are you in?”

“I’m not saying no,” she said.

“She’s very scared, Barb.”

“It’s so sweet when you let yourself be vulnerable,” she said.

“You’re like a vulture with a juicy antelope carcass,” I said. “Leave me alone. Go chew on the murder instead. Talk to her.”

“In the old days,” she said, “you used to move heaven and earth to keep your girls away from me.”

“Yeah, well, I was afraid you might tell them what I was really like. This is different.”

“I know it is, baby,” she said happily. To Barbara, my sobriety is like a big ice cream sundae.

“Anyhow, she’s not my girl,” I said. “And for God’s sake don’t overwhelm her with my life story, or Jimmy’s, or even yours. The poor girl’s from Nebraska. You’ve gotta maintain some boundaries.”

“I have boundaries,” Barbara protested.

“Yeah, the Mongolian border,” Jimmy said.

The generic twelve-step meeting, like everything else at Woo-Woo Farm, was up a steep hill more suitable for mountain goats than out-of-shape alcoholics. I sat next to Honey. First, we listened to the speaker, a hard-core heroin addict turned Buddhist. Then everybody took a break and we could talk.

“How are you holding up?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to be a widow, or a murder suspect either. Am I supposed to be sad or scared or what?”

“You feel what you feel.” As I’d learned in AA, sometimes a dumb platitude is the exact right thing to say. “The situation sucks.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I can’t believe how easy it is to talk to you.”

“Yeah, me too. Let’s go outside, get some air.”

Beyond the wooden sliding doors, a buzz of conversation filled the twilight. Yellow-green fireflies pulsed among the trees. I could hear Lorenzo the chiropractor’s booming voice. I wondered which program he was in.

“Look, there’s my sister-in-law,” Honey said. “Feather was crazy about Mel. She doesn’t like me much, but I should say something, I know she’s hurting.”

“I didn’t know she was in recovery.”

“They were ACOAs like me.”

“Melvin went to program?”

“No.”

It figured. No stars or gurus in any of the anonymous programs.

“Look, she’s talking to my friend Barbara,” I said. “Why don’t we kind of mosey past them and eavesdrop a bit?”

Feather looked like hell. Her swollen nose shone, and her slightly bulging eyes were dull and red around the rims, the delicate skin under them smudged and bruised-looking.

“So your husband doesn’t come to meetings?” Barbara was saying.

“Oh, Madhusudhana doesn’t need a program,” Feather said. “He’s very pure.”

Barbara winked at me over Feather’s shoulder. She knew we were listening.

“Before we turned to Buddha,” Feather said, “when we believed in changing the world, and, you know, ate animals that have parents, we thought drugs would lead us to the answers. Not anything
hard
, just weed and a little peyote. We thought it was part of the Revolution.”

Yeah, right.

“Madhouse too?” Barbara asked.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Rick was quite the activist. He hadn’t taken his Buddhist name yet. Anyhow, he said we had to give up all that, but it’s been harder for me than for him, somehow. I guess I’m not as far along the Path. When we used to get stoned together, well, it was fun. But he decided it was incorrect.”

“I bet a Tibetan begging bowl he still gets high,” I whispered to Honey.

She almost laughed. It felt as if we were on a date, one that was going really well. I almost forgot she had more on her mind than cute but self-absorbed Bruce Kohler. But then the meeting started again. Honey raised her hand. She cried as she talked about how confused she felt.

“How do you guess what’s normal when your husband’s been murdered?” she said. Guessing what’s normal is an ACOA thing. Alcoholic parents can’t teach you normal.

No one tried to give her any answers. People muttered, “Thanks for sharing,” and, “Keep coming back,” the way they do. I told myself the hell with it and put my arm around her.

After the meeting, Honey was surrounded by a crowd of well-wishers saying they were sorry and offering hugs. Finally she broke loose. Honey’s fingers found mine as we descended the hill. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held hands with a girl. Barbara and Jimmy walked ahead of us, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm.

“Let’s sit in the garden,” Barbara said when we reached the bottom. “You don’t mind talking about it, Honey?”

“Not at all,” Honey said. “Anything to make sense of this nightmare. That detective didn’t believe a word I said.”

“Who else has a motive?” Jimmy asked.

“Everyone who knew him well,” Barbara said. “Annabel had become a business rival. Does Feather inherit money? And what about Jojo?”

“Jojo was snoring away when I got up,” I said. “Besides, he got fifteen percent of every golden egg, so why kill the goose? I wonder if Annabel has an alibi.”

“Annabel despises me,” Honey said. “She’d sure be glad to see me in trouble.”

“Did they have a nasty divorce?” Barbara asked.

“Very.”

“Media, lawsuits, the works,” I added. “Right, Honey?”

“You must think I was crazy to have married him,” Honey said.

We all made soothing noises. One thing about people in recovery, no craziness involving families or relationships surprises us.

“They wanted to know when he left our room,” Honey said. “I was reading in bed, and at about 10:30 he said he was going off campus to use his cell phone. I fell asleep waiting for him. No matter what time he died, I have no alibi.”

“Why would Melvin have gone up to the Outlook anyhow?” I asked. “He wasn’t that much of a nature boy, was he, Honey?”

“He wasn’t athletic,” Honey said, “but he was crazy about nature stuff, you know, as something to look at. He could have wanted to see the sunrise.”

“Or the Northern Lights,” Jimmy said. “He was cold by sunrise, so he’d been there a while.”

“Yes, we’d heard you could sometimes see those from up there,” Honey said. “It was his kind of thing. He liked to give his workshops on cruises. He did them in the Caribbean, Alaska, the Galapagos, all those places.”

“Did Annabel ever go with him?” Jimmy asked.

“No, he always said she thought cruises were bourgeois.” The word sounded funny on her Nebraskan lips. “Besides—”

“Besides?”

“He liked not having her along. He liked the freedom.”

“You mean he’d play around?”

Honey nodded unhappily.

“I can see it,” Barbara said. “Charismatic older guy, young women yearning for the good relationship, he’s an expert so he must know what’s right.”

“Enough, Barbara,” I said. “Honey met him at a workshop, right, Honey?”