Peter Spiegelman - Red Cat

“So no one has an alibi for anything,” he said finally. “That’s great.”

“She’s not in bad shape for business hours; neither is David.”

“It’s not business hours I’m worried about. The ME is placing time of death somewhere between seven p.m. Tuesday and midnight Wednesday.”

“That’s new.”

“I just got off the phone with my friend. They’re basing it mostly on stomach contents. The cops found someone who claims to have seen Holly at a diner near her apartment at around five Tuesday afternoon.”

“Stomach content isn’t very precise.”

“Nope. So it would help if David and Stephanie could account for even some of that time period. Unfortunately, they can’t. Add to that Stephanie saying she wanted to kill Holly, and it’s almost more good news than I can handle.”

“I’m guessing you’ll counsel her against putting things quite that way when she talks to the cops.”

“Assuming she’ll take my advice.”

“She knows she has to,” I said. “And by the time I left, she seemed ready. She’s scared out of her mind- she and David both.”

“An entirely reasonable response, all things considered. We need to come up with a viable alternative soon- either that, or consider whether they need separate counsel.”

“Christ! What’re you going to do, hang one of them out to dry, to defend the other?”

“If it comes to a trial, we’ll be looking for reasonable doubt where we can find it.”

“There’s got to be a better place than with each other.”

Mike went silent, and I could almost hear him weighing something. After nearly a minute, he decided to say it. “Have you considered the possibility that the cops may be looking in the right place?”

“David? You’ve got to be kidding. Why the hell would he hire me, if he was planning something like that? Or keep me on the job afterward, if it wasn’t planned? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m not talking about David.”

It was my turn to be quiet. I thought of Stephanie, ashen, exhausted, and medicated in her chair, and I tried to picture it. But it was a stupid exercise, I knew: my ability to imagine her pulling a trigger had nothing to do with whether she actually could.

“Any word on Coyle?” I asked finally.

“I haven’t heard anything about him being picked up. And you- any word from the cops?”

“No one’s thrown me in a holding cell yet.”

“Are you headed up to Tarrytown again?”

“This evening. I want to see where Uncle Kenny was going with those doughnuts.”

Clare was off the phone when I came out of the bedroom, standing at the kitchen counter with the newspaper spread before her. Apartment listings.

“Shopping?”

“Getting the lay of the land, anyway. I don’t want to overstay my welcome, after all.”

I went into the kitchen and poured myself a seltzer. “I’m not complaining,” I said. “Who’s Amy?”

Clare smiled. “My sister- my big sister- who knows all there is to know about divorce, real estate, career planning, you name it. I try to listen politely, but it doesn’t always work out.”

“She lives out west?”

Clare turned and leaned against the counter. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “In the Bay Area,” she said. “How are things with your brother?”

I shook my head. “Not improving.”

“You’ve put in some long days on this- and nights.”

“Tonight will be another.”

“He must appreciate the effort.”

“He’s got other things on his mind,” I said. “And so far the effort hasn’t done much good.”

“I’m sorry,” Clare said. Her gray eyes held mine, and there was no irony in them. She put her hand on my cheek. I kissed her palm, and I thought again of Stephanie- her hands clutched together in her lap, her desperate fingers.

“Why did you stay?” I asked.

Clare’s brows knit. “Stay where?”

“With your husband. Why did you stay so long?” Clare’s face stiffened and her hand withdrew. I caught her wrist. “I’m not making trouble,” I said.

She pulled her hand free. “Yeah,” she said, “it’s just your great timing again.”

I stepped closer and took her around the waist. Clare brought her fists to my chest. “I just want to know,” I said softly.

She raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Curious,” she said, but her fists uncurled. She wriggled away and drank from my glass and looked at me over the rim. “Staying was easy,” she said. “It was the path of least resistance. He may be self-indulgent, and completely self-absorbed, but he’s not a mean bastard, not in the usual ways. As long as he could do his thing, and so long as I showed up on his arm when he wanted me there, he was happy to let me do mine.

“And the perks didn’t hurt, either- the real estate and the vacations and the rest. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought twice about walking away from all of that. How does the song go? ‘Money changes everything.’ I didn’t have a lot of it growing up, and it definitely changes the calculus of leaving.”

“Still, you left.”

She drank some seltzer and put the glass down. “As far as I know, you only get this one life, and I wasn’t getting any younger. And it turned out I still had some ideas about marriage that I wasn’t ready to trade for another HermДs bag.” A crooked smile crossed her face. “Who knew I was so fucking noble?” she said, and she turned back to her newspaper.

I came up behind her and put my face into her hair. I slid a hand under her shirt and across her warm belly, and I slid my fingers down the waistband of her low-slung jeans. “There’s something about all that integrity…” I said softly.

She shuddered, and rolled her ass against me, and unbuttoned her jeans. “Mr. Curious,” she whispered, and she slid my hand lower.

I drove north with the first wave of rush hour. The sky was purple going to black, and the traffic was stop-and-go into Yonkers and again in Tarrytown as I made my way along Route 9. I parked three long blocks from Van Winkle Court and took a cold, roundabout walk to the condo complex. I kept my eyes open the whole way; if there were cops staked out, I didn’t spot them.

Hagen’s basement door was locked, and there were no lights on in the windows that I thought were his. I followed the path he’d taken the night before and went two buildings south and tried the basement door there. Locked. I circled the building and checked the basement windows. I saw an empty laundry room through one. The rest were dark, and one was painted black. Yellow light seeped through a crack in the frame. I went back to the basement door and looked over the Van Winkle Court footpaths. No one. I pulled a small pry bar from the pocket of my parka and slipped it in the door jamb. I barely leaned and the door popped open with a sound like a cough. I put the pry bar away and took out a flashlight.

Inside, I smelled damp cement and laundry soap. I listened for a moment and heard mechanical ticks and water in pipes and the rush of air in ductwork, but nothing else. There was a dark corridor ahead, and I walked in what I thought was the direction of the painted window. There was a fine grit on the concrete floor, and I tried to move quietly on it.

The hallway branched. To the right, light spilled from a wide doorway. The laundry room. To the left was darkness. I went left. I passed by a dented metal door, and the reek of rotted vegetables and dirty diapers. Garbage room. I kept going. At the end of the hall, opposite a small mountain of bundled newspaper and flattened cardboard boxes, there was another metal door. There was a lock in the knob, another, heftier one above it, and a seam of light at the sill. I leaned closer and, faintly, I smelled coffee. And cigarettes.