The Borrowed and Blue Murders (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (4 page)

“Molly.” I knelt to look her in the eye. “Nick came home early because Tony and Sam are visiting, not because of the woman.” I omitted the part about her being dead. It wasn’t a lie.

And, apparently, my answer satisfied Molly. “So it’s okay if I take Uncle Sam to the zoo?”

“It’s absolutely okay. Have fun.”

“And you’ll help me with my project?”

“I will.”

Nodding, she gave me a quick kiss and took Sam’s hand. “Do they have elephants at this zoo, Molly? Because I know lots of elephant jokes.”

“Elephant jokes?” Molly glanced at me. “What’s that?”

“Here’s one. What weighs five thousand pounds and wears slippers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Cinderelephant.” Sam laughed out loud, wheezing, winking at me as they started across the street. “Get it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Molly was unimpressed, but I was certain she’d hear a hundred more before they got home, maybe even before they got to the zoo.

They walked off toward his Lexus, and I stood alone at the curb, holding a loaded book bag.

B
Y THE TIME
I got to talk to Susan, it was almost ten. By then, everyone in Philadelphia had heard about the murder. It had been a feature on the six o’clock news. People had been calling ever since, but we hadn’t answered, letting the voice mails pile up. Molly, wearing a zoo T-shirt and holding a new stuffed elephant, had finally gone to bed. I’d fed Luke, so he was set and happy for another four hours, and the brothers had stopped hovering over me long enough to eat. Dinner was pizza in the living room with a couple of cold six-packs. Grabbing a slice of mushroom, I’d retreated to the bedroom with a glass of seltzer and my cell phone.

Susan Cummings was my best friend. A prominent criminal defense attorney, she was also the very married mother of three girls, an incredible homemaker and cook, an avid volunteer for a dozen charitable organizations and president of the Home and School Association. For Susan, life was a matter of juggling projects. Her projects ranged from dieting to decorating, fund-raising to child rearing, attending
Carmen
to arguing in court. Susan attacked every project with passion—baking, shopping, defending clients, being married to Tim. But for all the commotion in her life, Susan was a constant friend; normally, she steadied me. Her home, her presence, even her voice grounded me. Whenever I faced trouble, I sought her out.

“Finally,” she scolded me. Her voice was angry and very un- grounding. “Why didn’t you answer my calls? I tried the house. I tried your cell. I was about to come over there and break the door down.”

“I couldn’t call you or anybody. The cops were here until just now.”

“Well?”

Well. What should I say?

“Zoe. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. We’re all fine.”

“Of course you are. And the pope’s a Hindu.”

She was right. I wasn’t fine. I was numb, way too calm. Probably in some kind of shock. “I mean, under the circumstances. We’re fine under the circumstances.”

“Okay. So, spill.”

I spilled, recounting events as if telling her would somehow make them less unfathomable, as if words might diminish the grisliness of the woman’s death. They didn’t, but as I finished, I felt somehow validated by Susan’s reactions, her occasional “damn” or “no way.”

“So. Do they know anything yet? I mean do they have any leads? What does Nick say?”

I gave her the latest update. “They don’t know who she is, but they think the murder was about drugs.”

“Well, duh. That’s obvious.”

It was? “How is it obvious?”

“Get real, Zoe. Why else would they cut her open?”

“So, you knew about that?” I hadn’t. Until that day, I hadn’t any idea that people swallowed bags of drugs and transported them across borders in their stomachs, primarily to get the drugs past Customs.

“Of course I did. You mean you didn’t?” She paused, and I didn’t answer. “Of course you didn’t. You’re Zoe.”

“Don’t start.” Save me, she was going to start her “you live in a bubble” routine again, depicting me as a completely naive and idealistic airhead.

“But it’s true. Zoe, you live in a bubble, ignoring unpleasantness, shutting out whatever you don’t want to know. You simply refuse to accept the ugly parts of life.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true.”

I wanted to say, “It isn’t,” but she’d just say, “It is,” and we’d go back and forth, arguing like a couple of six-year-olds. Still, I’d seen my share of ugliness, and I was irritated at the way she repeatedly claimed to be worldlier, more knowledgeable than I. “So what are you saying, Susan? That people commonly jog around the neighborhood with bellies full of heroin?”

“Maybe not. Could be full of cocaine.”

I leaned back against my pillows. Damn. Was she right? Was it really common, mainstream knowledge that people swallowed bags of drugs to transport them inside their bellies? Couldn’t be.

“Susan, the only way you know this stuff is because you work with criminals. You defend drug dealers on a daily basis. The underbelly of society is your bread and butter, so your viewpoint is skewed. The average person has no idea—”

“The average person is a moron—forget about him. Tell me more about what Nick said.”

“He just said what I told you. That the cops think it was drugs. One theory is that one of the bags burst in her belly and killed her, so they had to cut out the other bags. Another is that maybe she was holding out on the dealers, making off with a bag or two. Whatever the reason, they think she got cut open to retrieve drugs she was carrying. But all they really know so far is that she was already dead when she was cut open.”

“Well, that’s a blessing.”

A blessing? “I guess.” I pictured the blood and body parts, couldn’t see their owner as blessed.

For a moment, Susan didn’t say anything. I stared at my pizza slice. The cheese had cooled and hardened; grease had congealed. The tomato sauce had darkened into clots. I picked a mushroom slice off the top, put it in on my tongue. Chewed.

“Okay. So that explains why they cut her open. But it doesn’t explain a more important question.”

I swallowed. What question?

“Why was she on your patio?”

Oh. Right. That question.

“I mean, out of all the gates in the alley, why would she pick yours?”

And that one, too.

Staring at my sorry pizza slice, I drifted, letting Susan go on as I considered possible answers, so that, when her voice stopped, I had no idea why.

“But please don’t pick the hazelnut. And God, not the Amaretto—nobody likes that. Go with chocolate mousse? Please?”

Oh, she was talking about the cake. How could she think about the cake now, when a woman was dead? But she went on.

“Anyhow, the jury should be in, the latest by Tuesday, so how about a girls’ day out? I can show you my dress—Zoe, I swear, I look twenty pounds lighter in it. If I don’t watch out, I might outshine the bride. But we’ll go out for lunch. A leisurely, expensive lunch. And then, we’ll have a massage and a pedicure. Yes, that’s what we need: a spa day. How’s Thursday?”

Susan went on, her voice lilting and chirpy, as if she were having a normal conversation with a normal bride-to-be on a normal night. What was with her? How could she be so blasé about the murder? Were sliced bodies and drugs really not big deals anymore? Was the world just, ho-hum, another bloody mess in the backyard, let’s go get a facial? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t listen anymore.

Abruptly, I interrupted with a lie. “Susan—uh-oh, Luke’s crying. Got to go.” And I hung up suddenly, drained, not certain that I even said good-bye.

I
LAY THERE FOR
a few minutes, staring at nothing. I was irritated with Susan but knew it would pass. Susan was blunt, honest and painfully practical. She didn’t dwell on subtleties; she said what she thought and moved on. Sometimes, that was what I loved about her. At that moment, though, it wasn’t. I wanted to be comforted, or at least reassured. But Susan, for all her fine qualities, wasn’t in a comforting or reassuring mood. She was in the mood to think about chocolate mousse cake and matron-of-honor fashions. Since Nick was occupied, I was on my own, would have to comfort and reassure myself.

Maybe some television would help. I could watch a sitcom and vegetate, lull myself with canned laughter. I reached for the remote, but it wasn’t on the nightstand. I leaned on an elbow and looked across the comforter, to Nick’s nightstand. No remote. Where was it? Maybe on the floor or under the bed? Okay. If I wanted to watch television, I’d have to get up, either to search or to turn the thing on the old-fashioned way. No sitcom was worth that amount of effort. I lay there feeling lonely and neglected, fully aware that I could go downstairs and join the brothers, partake in some actual human companionship.

But I didn’t. If I went downstairs, I was sure that Sam and Tony would fuss over me and hover as they had all afternoon and into the evening.

“Zoe shouldn’t be alone,” Tony had told Nick earlier. He’d said it right in front of me as if I weren’t there. “She’s vulnerable. A woman with small children in a high-crime area. She should have somebody with her.”

Nick hadn’t argued. He’d pulled on his beer and watched me.

“I’m fine on my own,” I began. “I’ve lived here for ten years, and I have a babysitter part-time. The neighborhood’s actually safer than it used to be.”

“But you’ve got kids now,” Tony persisted. “And somebody got murdered on your back porch. You need to be more—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me or the kids.” I looked to Nick for support.

Nick returned my look but didn’t say a word, and I couldn’t read his expression.

“Seriously, Zoe,” Sam chimed in, selling real estate. “You guys should take the kids and move somewhere safer—I can get you guys a deal, believe me. What do you want? A condo? A nice house in the burbs?”

“This is our home. We like it here.” I made my voice flat, trying to sound final.

Sam scowled. “Look, I’ll gather up some information on properties. No pressure. When you’re ready, you and Nick can look it over—”

“But for now, you’ve got bodyguards,” Tony had volunteered. “As long as Sam and I are here, you don’t need to worry. You won’t be alone.”

And, for the rest of the day, while Nick worked with the detectives, his brothers had followed me, a tag team, wherever I’d gone. They’d taken turns. For a while, Sam had disappeared into my office to talk on his cell or work on his laptop, but Tony had stayed glued to me. If I turned around too fast, I bumped into him. Tony had stayed with me while I bathed Luke; he’d watched as I measured the kibble to feed Oliver. Then, when Sam had finally emerged from my office, they’d switched places. It was Tony’s turn to disappear and Sam’s to be my shadow. I’d had to insist that he wait downstairs when I went up to the bathroom. One or the other had been with me every second, watching but not necessarily helping as I cleaned up the kitchen, tossing out empty beer bottles and finally putting away the wilted lettuce and other groceries I’d bought that morning. Sam or Tony, together or apart, had shadowed me as I’d ordered pizza, as Molly and I had made salad, as I had emptied and refilled the dishwasher. They’d backed off a little when Nick came in, gathering around him to hear the latest from the police. Finally, when the pizza had arrived and they’d been distracted by food, I’d escaped, tucked Molly into bed and taken refuge in my bedroom, where I’d called Susan. I didn’t want to stay in my room all night, but if I went downstairs, I’d risk reactivating my security detail.

Wait a minute, I told myself. This is your home, not theirs. It’s not even Nick’s yet. They are all merely guests here. And they have no right to crowd you or make you a prisoner in your own home. Go on downstairs and, if they bug you, tell them to back off. Since when have you been shy?

On the other hand, since when had I had family? Never. As an only child, I had no idea how to coexist with siblings. What were the rules? These men were Nick’s brothers, and I wanted to become close to them. I wanted them to accept me, even love me, so I hadn’t complained once since they’d arrived. Not made one peep. Not about the way they were taking up every spare minute of Nick’s time. Not about how both Sam and Tony kept using my private home office repeatedly for hours at a time without even asking. Not about Tony spilling coffee on my purple velvet sofa, not about them repeatedly letting Oliver out of his crate so he kept peeing on the floor, not about the clutter Tony left in the living room or the raised toilet seats or the shaved-off whiskers lining the bathroom sinks—

Wait, whoa, I told myself. Stop. Do not go down the list-of-resentments path. I reminded myself that Sam and Tony were family, that they would be there only for another week and that no mess, no inconvenience, no invasion of privacy could compare to the joy their presence brought to Nick. Besides, Molly was getting to know and adore her uncles. I needed to stop being a sulky spoiled brat and go join them.

And so, smoothing my hair, taking a deep breath and putting on what I thought might pass for a sisterly smile, I got out of bed and winced as my bare foot land on something hard and rectangular. The remote control—good. I’d found it.

I knelt to pick it up, but it fell apart in my hands. The plastic was demolished, the case all mangled and rough-edged. Damn it. Oliver. He’d struck again, had chewed the thing to smithereens. Shoes, chair and table legs, books, wallets, wires, purses, underwear, socks, key chains, pillows and now a remote control. It was no big deal, I reminded myself. It was just another casualty of the puppy

Even so, tears flooded my eyes. I bit my lip, scolding myself. Stop it. You can get another remote. They’re cheap. They are only pieces of plastic, nothing worth crying about. Still, the tears welled up. What was wrong with me? I hadn’t cried at the sight of a carved-up woman, but I was bawling about a broken TV remote?

From downstairs, the brothers’ voices rose, overlapping, interrupting each other in heated, animated conversation. I listened, suddenly jealous. I needed Nick. I wanted to be with him, and I didn’t want to share him with Tony and Sam. I wanted Nick’s undivided attention.