Love You to Death (4 page)

“W
ho could have done it?” my friend Jolie asked, handing me a cup of tea. She sat down next to me on my couch and settled my mohair throw around my shoulders.

I shrugged, my new response to everything. I sipped the tea, vaguely appreciating that Jolie had remembered the Sweet’n Low and overtly appreciating that my friends were here. Jolie, a paralegal, whom I’d known forever—since first grade. Rebecca, a pastry chef, whom I’d met in college (she and Jolie had become good friends through me). Shelley,
Maine Life
’s fact-checker and my cubicle neighbor since I started there three years ago. And Roger,
Maine Life
’s copy editor, whom I rarely spent time with out of the office, but who I considered an office friend.

Shelley and Roger sat on floor pillows against the wall facing the sofa, both picking at their take-out lunches that were balanced on hardcover books on their laps. The smell of Shelley’s tuna hoagie was making me a little sick. Roger was on his second hamburger. Jolie, who ate three bites of food per day, nibbled baby carrots, the least offensive smelling food there was. Rebecca sat at my tiny dining-room table, eating a salad from a plastic container. They’d each brought me two kinds of lunches—comfort food and a decadent treat. The counter between my mini kitchen and my mini living room was covered with everything from grilled cheese and fries to a turkey club to an entire chocolate cake. It was good to have good friends.

When they’d arrived soon after noon, they’d all been as dumbfounded by the news as I was. I’d talked so much about Ted during our three-month relationship that they felt they knew him, too. They’d all met him.

“I can’t believe he’s dead,” each one of them had said at least twice since arriving. It had been my refrain from the moment the detectives had left me alone in the conference room two hours ago. I’d sat there, unable to move, even when the nosiest of my coworkers (most of them) had rushed in and bombarded me with questions, thanks to Fargo’s indiscretion in the hallway about my catching Ted cheating at the party.

Do they think you did it?

But you’re so petite!

I’ll bet he had a long line of girlfriends he cheated on—it could have been any of them!

How was he killed? Shot? Stabbed? Bludgeoned? Pushed into the bay?

It occurred to me that I had no idea how Ted had died.
I hope it didn’t hurt
went strangely through my mind.

“Did you do it?”
a coworker—Marcella, of course—had dared ask.

“Of course she didn’t do it!” Shelley had snapped as she’d rushed into the conference room, elbowing staffers out of the way, with Roger lumbering behind as usual. “Give the girl some air!” she’d muttered as my coworkers continued to stare at me. She’d taken me by the hand and led me to my cubicle. Roger had followed, biting his lip, also as usual.

Shelley had sat me down in my guest chair, disappeared for two seconds and returned with her pink wool hat, an umbrella and her pink-and-red wool scarf. She put the hat on me and pulled it down over my ears, then stood me up, slid my arms through the sleeves of my puffy down coat, zipped me up and wrapped the scarf around my neck. Then she slid my tote bag on my shoulder.

“Go home,” she said. “I’ll tell Finch that someone you know was killed and that you need the day off—tomorrow, too, probably. Don’t worry about a thing or think about a thing. I’ll handle whatever f low of yours is necessary here. Will you be okay getting home? I can walk you if you want.”

I shook my head. “The air will do me good,” I said. “I just need to process.”

My coworkers were hovering outside my cubicle. Shelley and Roger shooed them away much the way Jolie and Rebecca had shooed away my party guests after the Ted debacle.

“Roger and I will be over the minute the clock strikes twelve,” Shelley said. “That’s just two and a half hours. Call me if you need anything, okay, hon?”

I nodded. Finch had a thing about lunch being one hour between the hours of noon and two only. You couldn’t leave before twelve or return after two without having your Christmas bonus negatively affected.

The moment I’d hit the air I’d started running. It had been drizzling, and I’d stopped under an awning to catch my breath and call Jolie and Rebecca with the news. I’d also left messages for Opal and Olivia.

On the way to my apartment I’d stopped at a kiosk to look at the newspapers. No headlines about Ted’s death. I was sure it would be on the news, though.

It was. The five of us stared at my thirteen-inch television as the noon news reported, “Police need your help in the investigation of the murder of Ted Puck, a young investment banker whose body was found by workers early this morning on the far end of the Wharf Pier…. Police don’t suspect robbery was the motive, as his Cartier watch and wallet full of cash and credit cards were not taken. Anyone with information is asked to call the Portland Police Department at 555-1444. More tonight…”

Jolie turned off the television and sat back down. “Did the detectives tell you they had any leads?” she asked me. As a paralegal, albeit a corporate paralegal, Jolie, in her crisp black suit with an ivory silk blouse peeking out from the jacket, was asking all the questions. No one else even knew where to begin, other than
He’s really dead? As in
dead
dead?

“Me,” I said. “I seem to be their lead. The humiliated ex-girlfriend!”

“That’s insane,” Shelley said, tuna sandwich midway to her mouth. “You won’t even step on bugs!”

“And the most insane part?” I said. “One of the cops is someone I knew in high school.” I turned to Jolie, who had listened to me moon about Ben for two years. “Ben Orr.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding! Is he still gorgeous, or fat and bald?”

“Still gorgeous,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Shelley said, putting down her sandwich. “If you know one of the cops, everything will be okay. I mean, he’s gotta know you’re not a murderer!”

“He didn’t seem to care one way or the other that we went to school together,” I said. “And he didn’t even remember me.”

“But you were madly in love with him for two years!” Jolie said. “How could he not remember you?”

“Because (a) it was ten years ago,” I said. “And (b) he didn’t know I was alive then.”

Jolie gnawed her lip. Rebecca was smushing chickpeas in her salad. Roger sat shaking his head. And Shelley seemed to be racking her brain.

“I’m sure Shelley’s right,” I said. “By tonight, they’ll have investigated other people, and they’ll have suspects and have gotten evidence back from the lab, or wherever evidence goes, and Ben will have confirmed that we went to high school together—not that that means anything.”

Rebecca took a sip of her Diet Coke. “You know, speaking of suspects, maybe Ted’s new fiancée caught him cheating with someone at
her
birthday party.” She cocked her thumb and ring finger together.
Pow,
she mouthed.

We all stared at her. Five foot two and teeny-tiny with pixie blond hair and round blue eyes, Rebecca Rhode, creator of cakes and pies, wasn’t the blast-’em type.

“Well, maybe,” she said. She’d recently discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend. It was a sore subject. When it had first happened, Jolie had marveled (privately to me) that Ted had done the reverse. Converse? Anyway, that he’d cheated on me with his
future
girlfriend.

Jolie squeezed my hand. “I’m sure the police will catch whoever did it. Especially because it wasn’t a random robbery. Someone killed him for a reason, and it was likely someone he knew and had pissed off.”

“Or whoever killed him didn’t have time to take his watch or rummage for his wallet,” I said.

“Did he have any enemies?” Roger asked, ketchup from a French fry dripping onto my hardwood floor. I stared at the tiny bloodred spot and felt queasy.

“Aside from you?” Shelley teased.

Roger blushed and nudged Shelley in the ribs. Roger had a crush on me. On my first day at work three years ago, he asked me out. He was nice, but so tall (six foot four) and lumbering and timid that I couldn’t be attracted to him. Also as a copy editor, he had a bad habit of correcting grammar in conversation. He kept asking me out and I kept telling him I didn’t mix business with pleasure. Finally I told him the truth, gently, that I just wasn’t attracted to him, but that I really valued him as a friend, which was true. He’d been beside himself when I’d come into work moping and dejected after the Ted debacle.
How could any guy cheat on you? What a jerk!
But then he’d say,
If you were my girlfriend, I’d cherish you,
and I’d want to leave his company immediately. I wanted to be cherished. Just not by Roger.

“Oh, God,” Rebecca said. “Is that blood?”

All eyes darted to where Rebecca was staring. Roger mopped up the spot with his napkin. “Sorry. Ketchup. You know what I think? I think that anyone who’d do what Ted Puck did to Abby on her birthday is the kind of person who’d have a lot of enemies. A jerk is a jerk is a jerk. I’m sure Ted treated everyone like shit.”

That was probably true. Ted didn’t seem to have many friends. I’d met a cousin once, who lived a few towns over. Ted’s parents had been killed in a car accident six years ago. And he had no brothers or sisters.

“Once we hear how he died, we’ll know if it was a man or a woman,” Jolie said. “Unless he was shot. Both women and men shoot. But women tend to stab, whereas men tend to strangle or use baseball bats.”

We all stared at her.

“I watch every cop show there is,” she explained.

And then it was nearing two o’clock, and they all had to get back to work. There were hugs and kisses and much encouragement to
call me if you’re freaking out.
Roger gave me the world’s most awkward hug, mostly because I was five foot three and he was six foot four. Shelley refused to take back her hat or umbrella.

I stared at the mountain of food on the counter between my kitchenette and the living room. I couldn’t imagine ever being hungry again. I wanted my friends to come back and stay with me until—until when?

I took a deep breath, grabbed my photo album and f lipped to the Ted page. There was just the one photo.

I am so in love with you,
he’d said a month into our relationship.
I don’t want to see anyone but you.
Granted, we’d been in bed and had been about to make love for the first time, but he wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t meant it, would he? I mean, we were already naked. He was already going to get what he wanted.

How did he go from
I am so in love with you
to falling for someone else two months later?

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” I whispered to the photograph. “But I assure you that no matter how much you hurt me, I didn’t do anything to hurt you.” Then again, he probably already knew that. Unless he was blindsided. Shot in the back.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the details.

The phone rang. Opal.

“Omigod, Abby,” she said. “The police are asking all sorts of questions about you!”

“Like what?” I asked, trying for nonchalance.

“Like exactly what time I spoke to you last night,” she said. “Exactly what time you left the bris. Exactly how you seemed after catching Ted cheating at your party. All I told him was that you were madly in love with Ted, that you wanted to marry him, even though you’d only been seeing each other for three months, and that you were
so
humiliated when you walked in on him getting a blow job from some Angelina Jolie type at your own birthday party. I mean, who wouldn’t be, right? When he asked if I thought you killed him, of course I said no—but I added that if you did, I’d totally understand why.”

This was my alibi?

“Omigod, Abby, my mom is flipping,” she said. “And so is Oliver. And Olivia is so worried about you. The cops have been at her house all morning.”

“At Olivia’s house? Why?” I asked, sitting up ramrod straight.

“She said they said you said you were at a party there yesterday. They’re looking for evidence, I guess.”

I got past the
they said you said she said
and focused on the word
evidence.
“Evidence of what, Opal?” And how did they go from checking my alibi to looking for evidence?

“If Oliver’s gun was taken!” she whispered.

I shot up. “Oliver has a
gun?
”

“So you didn’t know that?” she asked. “I’ll call back the detective and tell him that.”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “But I don’t think my saying so will make a bit of difference to the police.”

So Ted had been shot to death?

“Opal, did you tell the detectives that I knew Oliver had a gun?”

“Um, I don’t know,” she said. “I might have said that you probably knew. Oliver said he bought it when Olivia got pregnant. For protection,” she added. “And when the cops asked Oliver to check if it was still there, it was. Oliver said it was exactly as he’d left it the day he brought it home, locked in a secret drawer in his office desk. But the cops took it for evidence, anyway, and now Olivia and Oliver are freaking out.”

“Because Oliver killed Ted?” I asked, trying to make sense out of that one.

“No—because they think you might have taken the gun, killed Ted, then returned it in the middle of the night.”

Wait a minute. “
Who
thinks that, Opal? The police or Oliver and Olivia?”

Silence. “Um, the police and Oliver discussed that possibility.”

Oh. My. God.

My legs felt funny, and I dropped onto the sofa. “Well, there’s something called ballistics,” I said. “When the bullet that killed Ted doesn’t match the bullets in Oliver’s gun, the police will investigate someone else who supposedly had reason to want to kill Ted, and I’ll be cleared.”

“You sure know a lot of gun lingo,” Opal said.