Brenda Novak - In Seconds

“Why not?” This came from Mia, who’d entered the kitchen behind him. Still in her nightgown, she looked as tired as Jake. But, in true Mia fashion, she wasn’t about to miss out on anything. She seemed to feel as if she should be able to trail after her brother 24/7.

“Because it’s not your half birthday,” he said with sufficient exasperation to tell them both that he was tired of repeating it. “You’ll get your turn. I was born first, so I get to go first. You heard Nana.”

Her bottom lip jutted out. “I want to catch a fish.”

Vivian handed Jake a bowl and a spoon, which he carried, together with his cereal, to the table. “Then ask Nana to take you fishing when it’s your turn,” he said.

“I’m calling her!” Mia started for the phone on the wall, but Vivian intercepted her by sweeping her into both arms for a hug. She was getting too big to carry, but Vivian couldn’t resist. Besides, this day meant a lot to Jake. Vivian felt she had to agree to it or risk driving an even bigger wedge between them.

“We’ll let Jake have his half birthday and plan yours, okay?” she said.

Mia opened her mouth to complain, but Vivian spoke before she could. “What are you going to do for yours?”

The furrows on her forehead disappeared. “Make a cake,” she announced. “And have a party!”

“That sounds like fun,” Vivian said. “Will I be invited?”

Her daughter gave her an impish grin. “Will you bring a present?”

Vivian laughed. “Of course.”

“What kind of present?”

“Aren’t presents supposed to be a surprise?”

As Mia tried to weasel an answer out of her, Jake wolfed down his cereal, set his bowl in the sink and went up to brush his hair and teeth.

Just as Vivian heard the faucet go off, a car horn sounded outside.

“Nana’s here!” she called up to him.

Rapid footsteps pounded the old wooden floor in the hallway above as he dashed for the stairs and jumped down them two at a time.

“Have fun!” Vivian said, but she almost couldn’t leave it at that. Wanting to warn Vera about all the dangers of the lake—and to make sure she’d heard about Pat Stueben’s murder so that she’d be extra cautious—she nearly followed him out of the house. But that was precisely the sort of thing that upset Jake.

Vera was careful with the kids. She’d take good care of him.

“I can’t wait till it’s my turn.” Mia’s wistful comment broke the silence that had rolled over them like a fog in the wake of Jake’s rushed departure.

Vivian smoothed her daughter’s hair off her forehead. “Your turn will come soon enough, sweetheart,” she promised. If they were able to stick around…

Where would they go if they had to leave? And how would she manage another relocation? She’d been on a rent-to-own plan and had recently signed the contract to purchase her house. She no longer had the government’s help and, expecting the coming fall to be her best year yet, she’d invested what money she hadn’t put into the house in her business.

Just when she’d stopped looking behind her…

Eager to send her brother an email, to get some reassurance that he, Peyton and Rex were okay in upstate New York and to keep him apprised of what was happening in Montana, she quickly prepared Mia’s breakfast. Then, sitting at the desk in one corner of the living room, she went online—and that was when her throat closed as if someone had tightened a noose around it.

It was Tuesday, not Sunday. This wasn’t the day she and Virgil usually communicated. But there was a message from him. And it was marked Urgent.

Myles went straight to the vacation rental where the murder had taken place. Now that the initial shock was over, and the forensic techs and the coroner were gone, he wanted to examine the scene by himself. He planned to look at it from all angles to see if he could get some impression of the events that’d led up to Pat’s death. He also wanted to see if he could figure out a possible motive.

But, early though it was, he wasn’t the first person at the cabin. An old dented Porsche 911 sat parked off the narrow road on a thick layer of pine needles. Myles recognized it as belonging to Jared Davis, the investigator he’d put in charge of this case.

“Who’d want Pat dead?” Jared called out as soon as Myles stepped over the yellow crime-scene tape. But he was nowhere to be seen. He must’ve heard the cruiser and glanced out the open door before Myles came up the walk.

“No one I know,” Myles replied to the disembodied voice.

“There’s his wife.”

“Gertie? She wouldn’t have the upper-body strength.” He found Jared in the dining room, crouching not far from the blood on the kitchen tiles, notepad in hand. It was cool outside, about sixty degrees, but the temperature would soon climb to eighty. Why Jared would be wearing a trench coat and wing-tipped shoes, Myles had no idea, but the investigator reminded him of the character on the TV show Columbo, which his mother used to watch. He even acted like him—a little disheveled and disorganized, often absorbed and seemingly inattentive, although he rarely missed a thing.

“She could’ve hired someone to do it.”

Myles was just as skeptical of that, but Jared continued before he could respond.

“She stands to collect half a million in life insurance. I checked.”

Because most murders were committed by family or friends, Jared had classified her as a “person of interest.” That was standard procedure, to look close to heart and home. But Myles didn’t believe Pat’s killer could be Gertie. “You’ve got to eliminate every possibility, right?”

Jared stood but at five foot eight he barely came to Myles’s shoulder. “You don’t think it’s her.”

Myles had made that clear yesterday. “Not a chance. I saw her after she found her husband. She was destroyed. Grief like that can’t be faked. Besides, they were happy, always together.”

“Maybe she’s a hell of an actress. Maybe, when I dig a little deeper, I’ll find out she’s been embezzling from her husband’s real-estate company and he was about to audit the books.”

The interior of the house contrasted sharply with the beautiful day dawning outside. Birds sang in the towering trees that shaded the property and the lake lapped gently at the shore only fifteen yards or so from the front entrance. It was a rustic paradise. Pine and moist earth overpowered every other scent, and the forest behind the house created a deep and resounding quiet. Everything about this crime seemed incongruent with its surroundings.

Trying not to let the disturbing sight get to him the way it had yesterday, Myles ordered himself to maintain some emotional distance. He’d grown soft since coming here, had gotten caught up in the idyllic life of a “safe” community. “You’re jaded, you know that?”

“I’m just saying. It wouldn’t be the first time a wife decided to off her hubby to avoid detection. With humiliation and divorce on the one hand and the answer to all her financial problems on the other…” He let his words fade away.

“She didn’t need to embezzle. Pat would’ve given her any amount. They’d been married for forty years.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Myles arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re jaded, like I said.”

“Yeah, well. You spend twenty years working for the LAPD and that’s what you get.” He shrugged. “You can take the cop out of L.A., but you can’t take L.A. out of the cop, not after that long. I plan to check her bank accounts and telephone records, just in case.”

“You do that. I’m relying on you to be thorough. Don’t waste a lot of time, though. I want to catch this bastard. And the longer you dick around with Gertie, the less chance we’ll have.”