Murder on the First Day of Christmas (Chloe Carstairs Mysteries) (14 page)

    
He had granola-guy bumper stickers on his Jeep, and several women apparently thought like-minded T-shirts would attract his attention. Not that I’m above such behavior, but I had it on good authority that Stairmaster-Dude preferred the scenery in his own locker room to that of women’s.

    
As I undressed, I also thought about everything I had learned from Robin and Lance. Nothing that could help Angela.

    
If anything, Robin had made a pretty convincing case that Angela’s ambitions had gotten the better of her, and you only had to spend a minute or two with Angela to corroborate the theory. It gave her a pretty strong motive for killing Saul, but right now her only motive for killing Oscar was the one Robin had suggested - he might have suspected her in the first murder.

    
I didn’t see how, though. Oscar had been fixated on Robin and Tony Trianos.

    
And what about Robin, I wondered as I headed toward the sauna. She was a mystery unto herself.

    
Really, you have to admire women who feel confident in a locker room without swaddling themselves in towels and darting from locker to towel rack (take the shape of the towel rack), from towel rack to upright scale (take the shape of the upright scale) before finally slipping into the vapor folds of the steam room.

    
In the sauna I coated my hair with deep conditioner, let the steam work its magic and thought about Robin and her somewhat ingenuous claim that she hadn’t expected Saul to use his knowledge of the affair against Nancy. Really?

    
Given the way Saul had treated Robin or the way he had treated Angela for that matter, it had been obvious the man liked to hold things over people’s heads. Had Robin been deflecting some of his mind games away from herself and onto someone else? Couldn’t blame her for that.

    
And what about Saul, knowing his best friend was being cuckolded, to use the
Canterbury Tales
term for it? Did he tell his best buddy Oscar? No. He taunts Oscar’s wife with his knowledge - not a nice man.

    
My skin was pinking and puckering like a finely done roaster. Heaven. Just then, who should walk in but Robin herself, wrapped only in a towel round her hair. Walking slowly enough for me to see that every inch of her was waxed, buffed, plucked and polished to perfection, she joined me on the cedar steps, one tier up.

    
I was a little surprised that she sat so close. There were just the two of us in the room. And yet, there were Robin’s long bare legs, curving right next to my head. Her intent wasn’t sexual, but rather one of intimidation, someone who knew how to use her body as a weapon.

    
She clasped her bent knees and rested her cheek on her hands so that her mouth was near my ear. I scooted over a little, but that’s not a good idea on a soft wood like cedar. To get up would have been to admit that I was unsettled, and for some reason, I didn’t want her to know that.

    
“Now I want to ask you a question,” she said softly.

    
I waited, marveling at this sudden shift in her personality. From trophy girlfriend to uber athlete to dangerous adversary, all within the space of a couple of hours.

    
“What’s your family’s interest in all this?” She used that same soft, confidential tone. “First your mom, grilling me at the Browley’s. Now you at the gym. What gives?”

    
I shrugged with more nonchalance than I felt. “Guess we’re just nosy like that.”

    
“You two wouldn’t be playing girl detectives, would you? Spicing up your dull routines.”

    
“Hardly. My mom’s life is full.”

    
“Because, as either of my former husbands could tell you if they were in a condition to do any talking, I’m not someone you cross.”

    
I pretended to play a piano in minor key, “Da, da, da DUM. Come on, Robin. Naked threats? Very Movie of the Week.”

    
She sighed and sat back. “Why do people continue to underestimate me? Is it the ponytail? The boobs?”

    
“I don’t underestimate you. I just don’t intimidate easily.” Lie. Lie.

    
“Is that what you think I’m doing? I thought I was letting you in on a little secret.”

    
“That you killed Saul?”

    
“Not even close. I’ve got a lot of sins on my soul, but that isn’t one of them.”

    
“How about your husbands?” I countered.

    
“Let’s just say I find widowhood to be a very satisfying lifestyle and pursued it.”

    
“With insulin and an empty Epi-pen?”

    
“One sometimes does what one must.”

    
“So you’re admitting you killed them?” I wanted to be clear on this.

    
“I’m telling you that I didn’t kill Saul or Oscar. I hope my being candid on other subjects will convince you of my truthfulness.”

    
“So by admitting you killed your husbands, you think I’ll believe you when you say you didn’t kill Saul or Oscar.”

    
“No stranger to nuance, are you?” she said dryly. “I admit nothing. I merely point out that if I killed before, there was something in it for me. Saul’s death and Oscar’s? Not much benefit for Robin.”

    
“That we know of.”

    
She stood up, towering over me. “I’d like it if you believed me, but it’s not crucial. Just stay out of my business. Because if I am a killer, I’m a good one. I’d think about that if I were you.”

    
I wanted to do the whole minor key piano thing again, but didn’t trust my voice to come through. I watched her go in silence, the back view even better than the front.

    
When I was sure she had had enough time to clean up, I left the steam room and did my walk of shame toward the showers.

    
Stopping for gas on the way home, I felt tired and a little depressed. After my talks with Robin and Lance, I needed an infusion of Christmas spirit and fast.

    
I wondered if any of the classic claymation shows would be on TV that night. The previous year Jacob and I had gone to the Alabama Theater, where we had sung Christmas carols with other theatergoers to the Mighty Wurlitzer while lyrics flashed on-screen. But there was little chance of our doing that this year.

    
Chilled in my light warm-up jacket, I got back in the car while the gas pumped and watched a girl and two guys who were hanging out by the back of an old Chevy Blazer. Their stories were immediately clear.

    
She was pretty enough, dark hair and smooth skin, but the baggy jeans and too-big cotton cardigan she wore to conceal her weight accentuated her self-consciousness. The skinny guy who was flirting with her looked to be about thirty, although he had the build, mischievous grin and animated hand gestures of an eleven-year old. His tawdry charm and her low self-esteem promised a long and rocky relationship. The third man - smoking and saying nothing - was bigger, older and harder, and he watched his little friend close the deal as he had many times before.

    
The younger man opened the Blazer’s tailgate, which was crammed with luggage, boxes and a dog carrier holding a yappy dog.  Skinny wiggled his fingers into the carrier, and he and the woman laughed as the yapping cranked up a notch. He then dug in the Blazer’s way-back and pulled out a gift for the woman, a piece of corrugated metal cut out to look like a fish and painted the Alabama state flag colors. She was touched and would sleep with him the first time he asked.

    
He reached back into the depths of the Blazer and pulled out a tin of store-bought cookies. She hugged the tin to her and would soon let him store his things at her apartment, trusting him with the pin number of her ATM card.

    
The dog barked sharply, and Skinny slammed a fist against the door of the carrier, probably the same way he would react in six months when she complained of the charges he’d run up on her cell phone bill.

    
I replaced the nozzle back into the pump and screwed on my gas cap. What was Jacob doing right now?

CHAPTER 15

    
“The hardest part is waking up in the morning.” Nancy stared into her glass.

    
We were in her back sunroom overlooking the pool. Neither she nor Mom had touched the bagels I had contributed to this little party. I’d eaten mine with a speed and enthusiasm Mom obviously found alarming. Luckily, our hostess provided plenty of distraction.

    
Eleven-thirty on a Wednesday morning and here was Nancy, still in a matching nightgown and peignoir, sipping mimosas like it was Sunday brunch. The Pekingese pup at her feet regarded me warily.

    
“I thought getting to sleep would be the worst, tossing and turning, but it’s that moment when I realize for the first time each day that he’s gone, that it wasn’t a dream.”

    
I felt my eyes tearing up. Mom reached over and touched Nancy’s hand.

    
“Our marriage wasn’t a great one. What marriage is?” Nancy spoke with great concentration, her high-heeled slipper going still on the soft cork floor, stained a rich mahogany.

    
Mom’s eyes met mine as we both thought of one.

    
“But now that he’s gone…” Nancy gulped some mimosa.  “I always thought he would be around to take care of me. There’s never been a time when someone wasn’t taking care of me.”

    
“We’re all here for you,” Mom said. “You have many friends who are here for you.”

    
Platitudes - all we had for her. It felt even more wretched.

    
“We hadn’t made love in fifteen years, you know.”

    
Okey-dokey, then.

    
At this little tidbit both Mom and I reached for our own drinks, and seeing our discomfort, Nancy giggled and sloshed juice on the table. I suspected this wasn’t her first cocktail of the morning. Maybe not even her first pitcher.

    
“I’m being horrible, but it’s true. Good thing I didn’t have to identify the body. I don’t think I would’ve been able to.” Here her laugh ended in an unbecoming snort. Not exactly the picture of a grieving widow.

    
The previous day’s funeral should have been our first clue that Nancy wouldn’t be observing an extended mourning period. It was a small private ceremony, the family and a few of Oscar’s friends. The main goal had been to repay Nancy’s social debts and to throw another elegant party. The Christmas theme at this one had been garish and unseemly. The only genuine emotion the grieving widow had displayed was when her hairdresser asked delicately if she would need to cancel her standing Friday appointment.

    
“No! Of course not. Whatever for?” Nancy had removed the thought from consideration.

    
Standing appointments at Tress Chic were hard to come by, and it had taken several minutes and half a Xanax to calm her down. So now, I was a little curious about how far Mom would push her.

    
“You two always seemed so happy,” Mom ventured. “I know he cared for you deeply.”

    
“And I cared about him. Of course, I did, but..” She looked out over her beautifully maintained pool and exquisitely manicured backyard. “It was a partnership more than a marriage. A joint venture without passion. Remember passion, Amanda?”

    
I looked away, not really wanting to know the answer to that one.

    
“Marriages evolve over the years,” Mom said. “You do what you have to in order to keep them strong.”

    
“I think he had girlfriends,” Nancy confided. “I never asked, and he never said. He was very careful.”

    
We weren’t about to touch that one. Her dog sank into a weary heap at her feet, obviously having heard it all before.

    
“Women always turn a blind eye, don’t we?” Mom sympathized.

    
I hid a smirk. Yeah, like Amanda Carstairs would ever live like that.

    
Nancy chuckled. “I come by it honestly – a mother who put up with anything to keep the peace and a father who thought of himself as a patron of the arts. Put a lot of strippers through Ole Miss one dollar at a time, my daddy. Class of ’76 had an unusually high concentration of fake boobs and press-on nails, thanks to our family’s money.”

    
Mom smiled, knowing Nancy was taking her measure, trying to determine if we were shocked by her alcohol-induced honesty.

    
“Some men don’t have a lick of sense,” Mom commiserated. “Sometimes it works in our favor, sometimes it doesn’t.”

    
A nice, neutral response. Empathetic. Just one of the girls.