Julia Spencer-Fleming - All Mortal Flesh

She noticed the badge, but her gaze went immediately back to Russ. She looked, he realized, afraid. Of him. Suddenly, Lyle’s offer to take him home took on a whole different cast. MacAuley hadn’t just been trying to protect Russ’s feelings. He had realized, where Russ had not, that there were going to be people they spoke to in the course of the investigation who believed Russ was responsible.

For Linda’s murder.

“I already gave a statement last night. To Officer McCrea.”

“I know.” Lyle’s voice was warm and grateful. “Thank you. But you didn’t just find Mrs. Van Alstyne’s body. You were her best friend. We’re hoping that, as her friend, you’ll be able to fill in some of the missing pieces. To give us a clearer picture of her last few days.”

Her eyes flickered warily, but she stood back from the door. Immediately, two knee-high white Eskies exploded onto the porch, their thick fur giving them the appearance of hairy, short-legged marshmallows. They danced around Russ and Lyle, barking furiously. “Don’t mind them,” Meg said over the racket. “Snowball! Fluff! Down!” The dogs ignored her, bumping and winding through Russ’s and Lyle’s legs as they crossed the threshold into a well-used family room.

“Treat! Treat!” Meg said, patting her thigh, and the dogs bounded after her, around the corner into the kitchen. There was the rattle of something hard hitting the dog bowl, and then Meg returned, closing the door behind her. “Okay, that’ll keep them happy.” She gestured toward the sectional sofa. “Please.”

Russ sat down. It was more comfortable than it looked. The sofa and the matching armchairs were upholstered in denim, which went well with the rest of the room’s décor-early American teenager.

Meg must have been reading his mind, because she said, “This is the kids’ room.” She rapped on the blocky coffee table. “Everything’s meant to be indestructible.”

“Except that.” Lyle nodded toward the wall, where a plasma-screen TV hung in all its pricy glory.

“I want my house to be the place where all the kids hang out,” she said. “If they’re in here, scarfing down pizza and watching satellite TV, I know they’re safe.” She paused, and Russ could see the exact moment she remembered why they were there. How safe could she claim her kids were when Linda had been murdered in her own kitchen? “Do you… do you have any idea who might have…”

Lyle shook his head. “Not yet. We have some theories, and that’s why we needed to talk with you.” He leaned forward. “Did Mrs. Van Alstyne talk to you about a possible, uh, rendezvous this weekend?”

Russ watched the blush turn her face red. Meg folded her hands over her cheeks and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was looking, again, at Russ. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible.

“Pardon?”

“Yes.” She was louder this time. “Not in so many words, you understand. Just that there was something special going on and a man was involved. I told her to go for it.” She switched her attention from Russ to Lyle, sitting up straighter. “I told her what’s good for the gander is good for the goose.”

What Russ wanted to do was stand up and snarl, You idiot, know-nothing busybody! What he did instead was look out the window, as if the station wagon and pickup alongside the house were the most fascinating things he had ever seen.

“Who was Mrs. Van Alstyne thinking about seeing?”

“I don’t know his name. She was very discreet. She wasn’t the sort to flaunt it all over town.”

The pickup was rigged for plowing. One of the Tracey boys liked working outdoors-plowed in the winter and did landscaping in the summer. He and Linda had hired him a few times, but damned if Russ could remember the kid’s name.

“Do you know anything about him? Do you have any idea how she met this man?” Lyle’s voice was smooth as maple syrup. He was good at this.

“Through her work, I think.”

“Was he a customer?”

“I don’t know. He could have been. Or maybe someone she met on one of her fabric-buying trips. She didn’t share what she thought were the unimportant details with me. To Linda, what mattered, what she wanted to talk about, was the way he made her feel. Valued. Appreciated. Wanted.”

The kid’s name. The kid’s name. Maybe he should ask Meg. Maybe he should remind her that he wasn’t a scum-sucking bottom dweller when he hired her kid. Maybe he should-

“Did Mrs. Van Alstyne agree to go on a date with this man?”

“I don’t know what she decided! She asked me my opinion and I gave it to her. For chrissake, what does this have to do with finding who killed her?”

Eyeballing trucks and contemplating kids’ names wasn’t going to do it for Russ anymore. “I’m not being some sort of jealous asshole, Meg.” He was too loud. She flinched. “This guy who was promising her ‘something special’ may have been the one who killed her. That’s why we want to find him.”

Meg stood abruptly and walked to one of the windows. She yanked it open, pushed the storm window up a few inches, and dug a package of cigarettes out of her sweater pocket. She patted the other pocket. “Crap. Forgot my matches.” She looked at the cellophane-wrapped box. “I’ve been trying to quit.”

Russ heaved himself off of the sofa and pulled his Zippo out of his jeans. He tossed it to her. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Her hand shook as she lit the cigarette.

“I’m not the enemy here, Meg.” He dropped his voice. “I loved Linda. I may have done a half-assed job of it, but I loved her.”

She nodded. “She knew him before you two started having troubles. She told me that. I honestly don’t think she was all that interested in him as a man. He was more-when she talked about him, it was always with a reference to you. Comparing him to you, or how it would piss you off, or how you wouldn’t believe someone else would find her attractive.”

He shut his eyes. Linda had always been the most physically perfect woman he knew. Every man found her attractive. They would go out to dinner and busboys would trip over themselves passing their table. How could she not have known?

“She never told me his name or anything. However, I got the impression from some of the things she said”-she took a long drag on her cigarette-“that she had something going with him years ago.”

What? Russ squinted at her, as if he could make what she said come into focus. What?

“What do you mean, Mrs. Tracey?”

She had almost finished off the first cigarette. She flicked it through the window into a snowbank and tapped out another. “I mean I think she had a relationship with this guy several years ago. Not long after she moved to Millers Kill. She…” Meg lit her second cigarette with a much steadier hand. “She never came right out and said it was the same guy. But I-” She looked at Russ, finally meeting his eyes through a veil of smoke. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Russ. I may be wrong about this. I may have been misreading what she said entirely.”

“You think… she implied she had had an affair?” He sounded as if he were the one who had been smoking. “Linda?”

Meg and Lyle both looked away.

“I gotta-” He could not have said what he had to do. His feet moved, and he was walking, and the next thing he knew he was standing outside, leaning against the bed of his Dodge Ram pickup, losing his breakfast.

He was scrubbing his mouth out with snow when Lyle caught up with him. “Chief?” He glanced down. “Oh, Christ almighty.”

Russ spat out some icy water and scooped up another handful. He stuffed his glasses in his coat pocket and washed his face with snow.

“This is all news to you.” Lyle pitched his sentence halfway between a question and a declaration.