Leslie Parrish - Black at Heart

"His father never suspected?"

"Who knows what that old man thinks?" Bitterness oozed from her. "Precious Roger could do nothing wrong, and if he suddenly decided he wanted to fuck the family dog, Alfred would have found a reason to justify it."

It was only eleven thirty, but Judith seemed to need a bracer. She walked over to a small wet bar, opened a miniaturized wine refrigerator, and pulled out a pricey-looking bottle. "Care to join me?"

Though he couldn't blame her, he declined.

"Suit yourself." Judith was almost ruthless in her movements as she peeled the foil off the bottle. Retrieving a small device, a plastic tube holding a tiny air canister, with a long, slim needle at the end, she plunged the sharp point into the cork, pushed a button to release the compressed air, and watched as the cork erupted out.

Violent, but expedient.

"That's unusual-looking," he murmured.

Judith pushed the cork off the needle with her thumb. "Wine has always been the unhappy wife's best friend, hasn't it? Anything that gets the cork out of the bottle a little faster is okay by me."

He hadn't been thinking of how fast that needle could get a cork out of a bottle, but of all its other potential uses. "Your husband was opening a wine bottle when he died, wasn't he?"

Glass clinked against glass as she poured herself a generous helping of Chardonnay. "He was a connoisseur, had already gone through a few bottles earlier that night with his sister and her husband, who had come over for dinner."

Wyatt narrowed his eyes in concentration. "You mentioned that when I was here the other day. Can you tell me more about that night? What happened?"

Carrying her drink, she returned to her seat. "There's not much to tell. We ate, drank. Roger and his sister were very tense with one another, so she and her husband left early to walk back to their place." She smiled bitterly. "I assumed they were having a lovers' quarrel."

Seeing the flint in her eyes, and remembering how little she and Angela liked each other, he took that for nothing more than spite. "Go on."

"There's nothing else. After they left, I told Roger I was going to bed. I came down the next morning and found him on the floor in the living room, surrounded by broken glass and reeking of wine." She shook her head. "Unfortunately, he'd been opening a bottle of really nice white Burgundy he'd brought back from France last year. What a waste."

Wyatt leaned forward in his chair, dropping his elbows onto his knees. "Can you back up a little, to before the dinner? What had you noticed that week?"

"Roger had been gone a lot and his mood vacillated between foul and violent. He wasn't happy when I reminded him we had dinner plans. Considering he was the one who invited his obnoxious sister and her weak little husband over, I wasn't going to let him bow out."

"They were close?"

Judith merely stared.

Good God. "Even at that point?"

"She was absolutely insane for him and had been for years."

Wyatt suddenly had a suspicion, and while it didn't make things much better, it made them a little less degenerate. "Wait a minute, we're not talking about Angela and Ben-she told me they live in Richmond."

Judith's eyes flared in surprise and a soft, humorless laugh emerged from her mouth. "Oh, goodness, you thought I meant… Well, I wouldn't be surprised to learn some of the things that went on in the house they grew up in after their mother died. But I was referring to his stepsister, Cece. She and her husband live a few doors down from us."

"Philip's sister."

"Yes."

"The one Roger seduced when she was a teenager."

"Exactly."

"No offense, Dr. Underwood, but this is like an episode of some high-melodrama soap opera about the lives of the rich and shameless."

"Think I could sell the movie rights?"

He'd bet she'd like to do just that. Earn as much money as possible and get as far away from her in-laws as she could. Though he didn't know her well, he sensed Judith Underwood was desperate to wash the stench of Roger Underwood and his family off her forever.

Almost conversationally, he asked the question that had been most on his mind. "So did you kill him?"

The query didn't shock her; she merely shook her head and took another sip of her wine. "No, Agent Black-stone, I did not," she eventually replied. "I believed, and I still believe, that his own evil eventually broke him. How long can a corrupt heart keep beating?"

Too long, as far as Wyatt was concerned.

"Evil or not, I did cry a real tear or two at his funeral." A crocodile smile made a mockery of any tears she might have shed. "But that night, I went home, got good and drunk, danced naked around my living room in sheer joy, then had sex with my gardener."

Wyatt reached for the recorder, pocketed it, and stood. "Thank you for your time."

She stood as well. "I suppose I shouldn't have said that last part. Does this mean you're no longer interested in lunch?"

He extended a hand and answered truthfully. "If I weren't already involved with someone else"- and completely in love with her-"l suspect I might like to have lunch with you, Dr. Underwood."

She nodded her appreciation, shook his hand, then turned to lead him toward the door. Before he reached it, though, Wyatt stopped, glancing at the huge Underwood family portrait. "I'm curious. Which one is Cece?"

Judith stepped close, leaning toward the framed picture. Then she tapped one long, perfectly manicured nail on the glass frame, pointing toward a woman standing a few feet from Roger Underwood.

Wyatt stared. And stared. He couldn't move, just letting it all sink in, all the puzzle pieces move around, twist, turn, then come back together to form a picture in his mind.

"Even here you can see she's making goo-goo eyes at him, despite the fact that she's standing right beside her own husband, and I'm there on Roger's arm. I think the woman would have cut her own heart out of her body to save Roger's when his went bad."

His stepsister would have died for him. And yes, indeed, she was making goo-goo eyes in the photograph, wearing her emotions on her face so obviously anyone could see them.

She might be brilliant, but the woman with the severe hairstyle was not good at masking her own feelings. Not even behind those trendy silver eyeglasses.

"Good-bye, Doctor, and thank you again," he said as he turned and opened the door, now knowing exactly where he was headed.

Wyatt no longer had any interest in going down the hall to try to talk to Dr. Angela Kean. He wanted to pay a visit to Cece-the woman who had gotten Jesse Boyd out of jail to draw Lily out of hiding. The woman whose job made her the perfect person for Roger Underwood to call for help in a legal emergency. The woman who was madly in love with her stepbrother, would die for him. Might even kill for him. Claire Vincent.

Lily refused to run.

Jackie had pushed and prodded, ordered, and tried to strong-arm her into at least hiding, but in the end, she had been the one to walk over to the front door and answer it after Anspaugh had nearly pounded it down. The look of shock on the man's face when he saw and recognized her would live in Lily's memory for a long time. But probably not as long as the flash of sheer furious hunger she'd seen there before he could disguise it.

Anspaugh had always desired her. Now, though, his desire had been overshadowed by anger. Wyatt hadn't been exaggerating. Anspaugh didn't just resent her for ruining his career. He hated her. Probably because he'd once so wanted her and she'd chosen to fake her own death and let him swing in the wind.

Never mind the fact that his ineptitude was what had caused her to nearly die in the first place.