Leslie Glass - Over His Dead Body

"Isn't that kind of thing unusual?" she asked, trying not to be unnerved.

"Well"-he exercised his neck, circling his head one way and then the other-"it's not that unusual. More people than you'd think live off their credit cards."

"But wouldn't you say this is a lot of debt to carry?"

"I did wonder why you kept the receipts locked away. Surely your husband knew about them." Now he started with the tilting again, as if his head were so heavy with information, he could hardly hold it up. "But maybe not," he concluded. "People live mysterious lives."

Cassie couldn't resist a bitter laugh. "Yes. I saw the file for the first time after my husband had his stroke. I was looking for a living will. Imagine my surprise when I found a whole other me."

"Amazing," Charlie said wonderingly.

"It was so bizarre. I thought it had to be a mistake. I didn't have those cards. Mitch knew I didn't have those cards. I thought maybe the people in the computer had stolen my identity. Or I had a mental disease, one of those multiple personalities that does things you don't know about. Take that Jaguar. I just couldn't remember buying it or where I kept it. Quite a step up from losing your car in a parking lot, wouldn't you say?" Cassie hiccuped on another laugh.

"Uh-huh, very strange," Charlie agreed.

"The Jag wasn't in my garage. Those curtains with the custom fringe from France, not in my house. As you said, amazing. The dishes and jewelry. Never saw 'em. I said to myself, who's this Cassie buying all this stuff, and where is it?"

"Hmmm," Charlie murmured.

"Guess what happened when I tried to cancel the cards and stop this leak."

"How about, denied."

"How'd you know?" Cassie turned to him, surprised.

"You're not the primary cardholder, am I right?"

"Who would have thought I couldn't cancel the cards with my own name on them? Know what else? This morning I called and told customer service the primary cardholder was dead. They told me they'd need a letter to that effect from his lawyer. When I told them the cards had been stolen, they promised to send new ones right out, so I gave up. Ah, here we are."

Cassie made a little sound of triumph and turned in at the iron gates with the Sales logo. She drove up the drive to the stone house. Beside her she could feel Charlie tense as soon as he saw the place in its entirety. It was then that she realized she'd been right: He'd never believed a single word she'd said.

"Voilà, the new house of my husband's partner, Mona Whitman, aka Cassandra Sales." From the front, all looked quiet as Cassie slowed to a stop.

"The little devil." Charlie whistled, and before Cassie had time to kill the engine, he was out of the car taking pictures with the camera that five weeks ago she'd thought was a gun.

"Wait a minute, where are you going?" she asked.

"Going inside. Let's do an inventory and see what items come up. This is interesting."

"But there must be an alarm." Cassie opened the door and inched one leg out of the car. This made her nervous. How many things could go wrong in one day? He might be setting her up for some kind of fall. She was immune now, but what if she went in the house? Would she stop being immune on a B and E? She'd seen this on Law and Order.

"So it goes off. What's the worst thing that could happen? The cops could come." She was scared, but Charlie laughed. He was excited now and headed toward the back of the house, firing off rounds of photos as he went.

Cassie wanted to see for herself what was inside the house, but the police had already questioned her once today. She didn't want to get in any deeper. She hitched the sunglasses up higher on her nose, as if she could disguise herself. All her life she'd been afraid of going out on that limb. Afraid to look an attractive man in the eye. Afraid to be bold and have an extramarital orgasm. What the hell, she was going inside.

For once, however, Cassie's fears were for nothing. The house was wide open. Where the service road led, there was a brick-walled courtyard. Inside was a station wagon and a medium-sized van withMOVING DEPOT stenciled on the side. The back doors of the van were gaping wide, and furniture and boxes were scattered all over the tarmac, ready for loading. Looked like Mona was moving, but Cassie knew she was only packing up the juice. The glassed-in mudroom door was propped open for easy access, and Cassie followed Charlie in.

Inside, the huge kitchen and pantry were in complete disarray. Silver and dishes were laid out on the counters in preparation of packing. Two movers were smoking, talking, and wrapping Tiffany china in recycled paper. They didn't bother to look up when Cassie came in.

"Is Miss Whitman around?" she asked.

The packer with the black handkerchief tied around his head said, "She'll be back after lunch, who's asking?"

"I'm her sister," Cassie said. She picked up a huge crystal candlestick and wondered how much it had cost her. "Charlie?" she called.

"In here."

Cassie moved into the dining room, where two men were struggling to take down heavy curtains dripping with beaded fringe. Charlie held his cell phone to his mouth. He was talking excitedly, watching the maneuver with one hand on a hip. Cassie moved into the living room, where her mother's Napoleonic settee and side chairs were now covered in gold brocaded velvet. Seeing them there like sentries in front of the fireplace was a kick in the gut. There was Marsha's piano with its leather stool. What warehouse or secret love nest had they been in all these years? The library was through an archway that could be closed with sliding doors. In there, the shelves were filled with leather-bound books, leather furniture, and more velvet curtains.

Cassie stepped into the large entry gallery and eyed the chandelier with all that crystal. She studied the mahogany staircase with its heavy carving of pineapples, the symbol of fertility. This was not the house she would have chosen for herself. She hesitated for a moment, then climbed the stairs and found her rival's bedroom. Here, she stopped. Like everywhere else in this place, nothing was white, nothing simple. This room was red, red, red, like the library and the dining room. Red satin and velvet and taffeta, different textures. Not bad if you liked Victorian bordello. Cassie moved to the closet where the juice was, but the door was locked. She wanted to see that jewelry. "Charlie," she called out.

"Right behind you," he said.

Didn't take him thirty seconds to get the door open. He was good at B and E; must have gone to break-in school as part of his training. The jewelry box was locked, but he didn't have any trouble with that, either. Inside, nestled among ropes of pearls and gold chains and diamond tennis bracelets were the Cassie credit cards, bundled together with a few new receipts and a rubber band. Bingo. Charlie stepped back and took some photos. Then he pocketed the cards and moved on, taking notes on a PalmPilot.

MONA SAT IN PARKER HIGGINS'S RECEPTION ROOM and waited for twenty of the longest minutes of her whole life. During that time she went to the bathroom twice to check on her makeup. Twice she marched down the hall to see his stupid new secretary, whose name she couldn't remember at the moment.

"He's on the phone, Miss Whitman." The girl did not seem impressed by Mona's outfit, her importance to the firm, or her sweetness. She wasn't helpful at all.

Mona was terribly upset and felt her throat closing up. Parker had never kept her waiting before. Now that Mitch was not behind her with his old-boy friendship and special one-two punch, even the $187,500 certified check for her house (which had cost her only $89,250) in her purse and the new $4,300 Chanel summer suit on her body didn't make her feel as powerful as she really was. The suit was a lovely powder blue-signature Chanel-with a tight skirt that stopped way above her knees, elbow-length sleeves, and a prim white collar and cuffs. She'd bought it in Paris a month ago, and this was her first opportunity to wear it.