Kyra Davis - Passion, Betrayal And Killer Highlights

“What kind of child doesn’t call her mother when her sister’s schlemiel husband has come to a schwartzen sof?”

The more excited Mama got, the more Yiddish she used. I wasn’t exactly fluent in the language but I knew that to come to a schwartzen sof was to come to a bad end and that schlemiel was a polite way of calling Bob a prick. I cleared my throat.

“Mama, it really wasn’t my place to call you—Leah should have done that.” I winced as soon as I said it. It was an unfortunate force of habit to transfer my mother’s wrath onto my younger sister. I mouthed the word sorry to Leah. She in turn gave me what I had come to know as the “I’m going to get you for that” look.

“So where’s your sister and the lobbus? Are they all right?”

“Leah and Jack are fine. Jack slept over at a friend’s house and Leah’s…” Leah began to shake her head furiously at me. “Leah’s here, but she’s asleep.”

“At ten in the morning she sleeps?”

“Well, she didn’t sleep much last night. As you pointed out, her husband was killed.”

“So who shot him? Was he some kind of criminal? If I find out that he got my Leah mixed up in any kind of monkey business I’ll…I’ll give him the Einhoreh, that’s what I’ll do.”

“What good—or bad—is the evil eye going to do now that he’s already dead?” I heard Leah choke back another sob and I mentally slapped myself.

Mama muttered some more Yiddish before coming back to English. “Enough with the sleeping—put Leah on the phone.”

It was tempting to think that Mama was just being insensitive to my sister’s need for rest, but it was more likely that she knew I was lying, which was impressive because I’m a pretty good liar.

I took a moment to weigh my loyalty to my sister against my desperate desire to get off the phone. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make the choice because Leah, in what I assume was an unexpected attack of altruism, took the phone from me.

“I’m here, Mama. Yes, I’m okay…Jack’s okay…No, I haven’t eaten anything today…”

I left the room to allow Leah some privacy and to avoid being stuck with the phone again.

Alicia let out an exasperated sigh. “Dead people are always so much more likable than the rest of us.”

—Words To Die By

Leah and I were only fifteen minutes late in meeting Anatoly at her house. This was a new record for Leah, but for some reason Anatoly didn’t look like he was in the mood for handing out gold stars.

“Can we go in now?” he asked.

“Hello?” I suggested. “When you greet someone you’re supposed to say hello. Otherwise people accuse you of having Asperger’s.”

Leah looked around the front yard and then stared at the still closed front door. “Where’s the police tape?”

“What’s the point of having police tape if there are no police here to enforce the restriction?” Anatoly asked. “Unless the goal is to entice troublemaking teenagers to mess with the crime scene.”

Leah threw him a confused look. “But in the movies…”

“Hollywood has a very different approach to crime fighting than the police.” Anatoly looked at his watch impatiently. “The police may or may not come back to look for more clues, but they have to accept the fact that by that time things will have been altered.”

“Okay, so let’s go in and alter them.” I looked expectantly at Leah, who was examining the doorknob as if it were attached to the gates of hell.

Anatoly cleared his throat. “Leah, if you want to wait out here I’ll understand. Just give me the keys and I’ll come get you if I have any questions.”

Leah shook her head. “I’ve got to go in eventually.” She pulled out her keys at a speed that underscored the meaning of the word eventually, and after several deep breaths (each one resulting in the further extension of Anatoly’s chin) she opened the door. She stood in the entryway for a full two minutes before Anatoly and I gently pushed past her.

Our first stop was the living room. Things looked eerily normal. If there had been broken picture frames on the floor, they were gone now, with the exception of a few neglected slivers of glass. Anatoly sighed and looked around the room.

“I’m sure they confiscated everything that could possibly qualify as evidence. I doubt we’ll find much.”

“You mean they took my wedding pictures?”

We turned to see Leah standing behind us.

“Can they really do that without asking me?” she asked.

“As long as they have a warrant,” I said. I walked over to the middle of the room and tapped my foot against the bloodstained floor. If I didn’t know better I would have assumed it was spilled burgundy.

Anatoly was now walking slowly around the room, taking it all in. “Show me where the gun was kept.”

Leah led him to the safe, which was tucked into the cabinet below her showcase of Waterford collectibles. It was such a stupid place to put a safe. Like a burglar wasn’t going to search the furniture piece holding thousands of dollars’ worth of crystal. Leah twisted the combination lock a few times until it released. Inside were some insurance papers, a will, a rather extravagant-looking diamond necklace and a few bond certificates that added up to an amount that was considerably less impressive than the value of the necklace. No gun.

Anatoly examined the insurance records. “No life insurance?”

“Bob thought accidental death and disability insurance was enough. After all, both of us were in perfectly good health.”

“So Bob decided to wait until his health failed before approaching the insurance companies for life insurance?” I asked. “Or is it possible he just couldn’t be bothered spending money on a policy that he would never be able to benefit from personally?”

Leah winced and I immediately felt guilty. I was going to have to work on holding back my reflexive insulting observations about her husband now that his previously vacant head contained a bullet.

Anatoly coughed a few times in an obvious attempt to suppress a laugh. “Let’s be grateful he didn’t have an insurance policy—one less reason for the police to suspect you.” He stuffed the papers back in the safe. “Did you have a lot in savings?”

“Just over a hundred thousand,” Leah said softly. “It’s not enough. Our house payments alone are ten thousand dollars a month.”

Anatoly did a quick double take.

“Well, we put down a small down payment!” Leah said defensively. “It’s important to have a nice house to bring business associates to. Besides, Bob was making over four hundred thousand dollars a year and he was getting a promotion, so we knew we’d be fine…or at least we thought we would.” Leah’s eyes misted over. “Oh God, I’m going to have to go back to work, aren’t I.”

“There are worse fates,” I said. “So, other than the savings account, your house and your cars, are there any other assets worth mentioning?”

Leah’s face brightened. “There are the Chalet stocks! Of course, I can’t cash them out yet, since they just went public and the shares are in lockdown….”

“Lockup,” Anatoly corrected. “When a company goes public the employees’ shares go into lockup for the first six months or so.”

Leah dismissed Anatoly’s comment with an impatient wave of her hand. “Lockdown, lockup, who cares what it’s called? The important thing is that Jack and I aren’t going to lose our house and I won’t have to work!”

I creased my forehead. “How much are Bob’s shares worth?”

“I don’t know the exact figure, but it’s well over a million.”

I bit my lip and Anatoly let out a heavy sigh. “So much for eliminating money as a motive.”