Stevi Mittman - What Goes With Blood Red, Anyway?

He tells me to relax—as if that’s possible—and explains that my prints will serve to show whether or not anyone touched it after me, and whether they then wiped my prints off along with theirs.

“Not that we’ve found it,” he says. “Yet. But we will.”

I ask if he’s going to fingerprint me, hiding my hands because of those two missing nail tips.

“Got ’em, sweetheart,” he says. I’ve never been fingerprinted, not even after the whole Rio fiasco, and it must show on my face. “The bottle of Scotch,” he says. “Can you believe the maid must have dusted the bottle? Yours were the only ones on it. They matched the ones on the glass you gave Jack Meyers. Of course, now we’ve got his, too.”

I decide that they did that to isolate Jack’s prints, and not because they suspect me. To be sure that this is the case, and because this is a murder investigation and there are things I know that the police should know, I decide I need to fill him in on a few things.

I take a deep breath. I do not like to carry tales, but… Our dinner comes and again we are silent until we are alone.

“You should understand…” I tell him off the bat “…that I am not a fan of cheating husbands. And that I might be overly suspicious and prejudiced, because of…well, my experience.”

“I know,” he says, and I get the feeling that this murder wasn’t the only investigating he did this afternoon. He nods, like yeah, I saw your file. I nod, too. Fine. I have nothing to be ashamed of, except my naiveté.

“Okay, so you know that I think Jack probably did it, alibi or not. I mean, even if it checks out, which I doubt it will, he could have hired someone, right?”

Drew’s elbow knocks his knife off the table and he bends down to pick it up. He makes a fairly big deal of getting the waiter’s attention to replace it, and it seems to me that it’s all some sort of diversionary tactic. I think about how you’re always hearing about hit men.

Only if Jack had hired a hit man to kill Elise, wouldn’t he have put himself center court at a Knicks game where a gazillion witnesses would have seen him? And wouldn’t the hit man have taken Elise’s ring and some other stuff to make it look like a robbery? When I ask him this, Drew appears noncommittal.

“So you’d say that their marriage was not exactly made in heaven?” he asks.

“Elise got along with maybe three people, and Jack wasn’t one of them. I don’t know who started the cheating, but it was like they were in a competition. I know she slept with one of their neighbors, a man who Jack owed money to. And I know that he slept with one of Elise’s friends.”

He waits for me to continue, sensing that there is more, and of course, there is.

Not able to look him in the eye, I tell my salad that, “She kept a score sheet. I saw it once—”

His eyes are penetrating and I refuse to look at him. I’m not guilty of anything, but I feel like he’s thinking that if I’d be friends with someone who would do that kind of thing, maybe I would. I suppose it’s no more of a stretch than me thinking every man has the potential to do what Rio did. And yes, I know there’s a lesson in here, but frankly I’m not really interested in it. My wounds haven’t healed yet, and I’m not about to start picking at the scabs.

He asks if I know where she kept the list, but I don’t. It wasn’t in the notebooks.

And then it occurs to me what was missing in Elise’s kitchen.

He asks if I can remember any names on the cheat sheet. “There were initials,” I say, but I’m trying to decide if I should tell him about the notebooks.

He asks if that’s all. There must be something about the way I say things. People always pick up vibes. He knows if he waits long enough I’ll divulge more.

“There were grades,” I say. “A, B…I don’t know if they were for performance or you know, like importance or something.” I have a feeling that my cheeks are redder than the checks on the tablecloth. I excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room while he ponders what Elise’s criteria might have been.

In the bathroom I dial up Bobbie on my old cell because I still haven’t programmed the new one my father gave me. “I think all her Shit Lists were gone,” I say.

“What are the bets Teddi Bayer and Bobbie Lyons are on them?” Bobbie asks.

“Seriously, Bobbie, there’s incriminating stuff in there. People’s darkest secrets.”

“Just Elise’s,” Bobbie says. “Right?”

“Wrong. She had plenty of dirt on other people. She had stuff that other people did that somehow she knew about. People who bought clothes at Saks, wore them and then returned them. People who left restaurants without paying.” Bobbie wants to know who, but instead of telling her I throw out a line to see if she’ll bite. “People, happily married people, who had affairs.”

Bobbie and I never ever mention her mistake. I don’t think we could be easy around each other if we acknowledged it. I don’t know who she cheated with and I don’t want to know. I know she felt she had to even the score after Mike had the affair and that she did.

“So how did you wind up with a friend like that?” Bobbie asks. Does she mean a friend who was happily married and had an affair, or does she mean Elise? “Teddi? You there?”

“Elise wasn’t a friend, she was a client. And I don’t know if I should tell Detective Scoones about the notebooks. I mean, I’m pretty sure she made some horrible accusations that could ruin people’s lives. Everyone would hate her for the rest of her—” I stop myself.

“—and even after that,” Bobbie adds.

“They could just all be lies,” I say, “but they could still do an awful lot of damage.”

Bobbie asks if I’m sure the notebooks are gone. “Only one way to be sure,” I say.

“You aren’t thinking of going back there?” Bobbie asks, and there is a slight quiver in her voice. I don’t know which one of us she is scared for.

I tell her I’ve gotta go, the detective is waiting, and I close the phone while she’s warning me that I could get into trouble.

When I return to the table Drew asks if everything is all right. Remind me never to play poker.

“So you were telling me about this list,” he says. This is my chance to come clean.

“What would you do if you found it?” I ask.

He gives me that intent look that demands that I tell him the truth. But first, I demand an answer.

“Up to the Department, I guess,” he says. Is that a warning? That he’d have to turn it over and it would be out of his hands?

I’ve already told him about the Jack and Elise Scorecard, so I reiterate that there were grades on it.

“And you said the grades might have been for importance?”

I explain that, first off, Jack had powerful clients and friends. There was a celebrity element. And then there was a one-upmanship sort of thing, a what-would-hurt-the-most, be-the-most-vindictive thing. Because I feel I’m withholding information, I wind up fumbling for the right words, hoping he won’t ask me for an example, which, of course, he does.

“I’m not saying she did this,” I say, making myself clear. “But like if Jack had a brother and they were sort of rivals and she were to sleep with the brother…”

He asks if Jack has a brother. I remind him it was just an example. He asks if Jack knew about the list, but I have to admit that I don’t know. He gives me a little smile and asks who was winning, and I’m not sure if he is joking or not.

“So your theory is that he was losing? Or maybe tiring of the game?” It’s a good question, except I don’t really have a theory. Just a suspect. And a burning need to get myself into Elise Meyers’s kitchen one more time.