Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights (20 page)

“Did you come here in hopes of finding something more incriminating than fan fiction?” he asked as we entered the kitchen.

“That was the plan, but I haven’t found anything yet. How did things go at the police station?”

Anatoly pulled some glasses out of one of the cabinets. “Why don’t we start by pouring ourselves a drink?”

I slumped against the counter. “That bad, huh?”

“It wasn’t good.”

“Give me a second to raid Bob’s wine collection.” I went to the walk-in pantry that Bob had converted into a makeshift wine storage facility and scanned the various cases before settling on a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem. By the time I got back to the kitchen Anatoly had already located the corkscrew.

I handed him the wine and he studied the label. “I don’t think I’m familiar with this vineyard.”

“It’s not very well known,” I explained. “In fact Bob was the only person I’ve ever known to keep it in stock, but for some reason the name has been floating around in my head lately.”

Anatoly smirked. “The names of alcoholic beverages float around in your head, and yet you still don’t think you have a drinking problem.”

“Anatoly, open the damn bottle and tell me something useful.”

He nodded and uncorked the wine. “I met with Lorenzo and relayed the information given to me by Cheryl’s coworkers,” he said as he poured the wine into two glasses, “but I’m not sure he believed me. I’m too closely connected to you.”

I pounded my hand against the counter. “He can’t just dismiss all the evidence that you dig up because you’re my friend. That’s got to be criminal negligence or something!”

Anatoly chuckled. “Not even close. The police have to consider the source of any information that comes their way, otherwise they’d spend all their time chasing false leads. I think they’ll check it out, but I doubt it will sway their investigation away from your sister.”

“Well, something has to!” I took a sip of the sweet wine. “She’s innocent, Anatoly, which means that the real murderer is sitting back and enjoying a life free of the threat of conviction.”

Anatoly studied the contents of his glass. “You’re a good sister, Sophie. I admire that.”

My mouth dropped open. In the past, Anatoly had expressed his anger with me, his fear of me, his amusement at my expense, and on a good day, his physical attraction to me, but this was the first time he had ever told me he admired me for anything. My eyes traveled down to his beautifully masculine hands. Why did I keep forgetting that I wasn’t attracted to him anymore?

I forced myself to redirect my gaze to the half-empty bottle of wine. “Do you think the police would take our claims more seriously if I told them that I may have met Bob’s Hotel Gatsby mistress?”

Anatoly’s eyebrows shot up.

“I stopped by Chalet today to pick up some of Bob’s things, and I got to meet the former CFO, a woman named Taylor Blake. She’s tall with auburn hair, very striking, and, according to Erika, she had Bob wrapped around her little finger.”

“Really.” Anatoly’s voice was heavy with appreciation for my expert sleuthing skills.

“Really. I gotta say, I wouldn’t have pegged her as Bob’s type. She comes across as being very forceful and strong. Not at all the little feminine flower that Bianca is, and I seriously doubt that she’s the slave to Martha Stewart protocol that Leah is.”

“Maybe his taste varied.”

“I guess. I just always felt that Bob was the kind of guy who liked his women to be kind of girly and on the subservient side. I could totally see him with someone like Erika….”

Both Anatoly and I froze, the same thought crossing our minds.

I looked at the wine bottle again. “Oh my God, I know why this winery has been in my thoughts lately.”

“Why?”

“Because there was a cork from this same winery in Erika’s purse.”

Anatoly straightened. “How long did Erika work for Bob?”

“A few years,” I whispered. “And you know, when I met Taylor today she was with Erika, and it was clear that the two did not like each other. Taylor wouldn’t even look at Erika—it’s like she didn’t want to deal with her.”

“And Erika?”

“Erika seemed jealous.”

“Erika was wearing a tennis bracelet,” Anatoly said quietly. “It must be worth at least six thousand dollars.”

“Oh, my God. We all just assumed that the receipt for a six-thousand-dollar bracelet that Leah found was for something Bob gave Bianca but that wasn’t the case at all.”

Anatoly lowered his wineglass to the counter. “It was clear right from the beginning that her attachment to Bob was extreme. How could we miss something so obvious?”

“How?” My heart was pounding against my chest as I put the pieces together. “Maybe I was too riled up after hearing Cheryl’s comments to the media. Maybe you were too distracted by your overwhelming feelings of lust for me. Who the hell cares
how
we missed this? The point is we figured it out, and now we have to tell the police.”

Anatoly put his hand up to slow me down. “I am perfectly capable of doing my job while coping with unrequited lust.”

For a split second I forgot that Anatoly wasn’t the reason for my current state of excitement. My eyes fell to his perfectly sculpted shoulders. Good thing I wasn’t attracted to him anymore, otherwise I’d be in trouble.

“And,” Anatoly continued, “we don’t know anything. We just suspect.”

Oh, right, right, right. We were talking about Erika’s affair with Bob. I had to make a prioritized to-do list for myself: Find brother-in-law’s killer, then have sex. I managed to suppress my raging hormones and turned Anatoly’s last statement over in my head.

“What do you mean, we don’t know?” I asked slowly. “She gets misty every time his name is mentioned, her jewelry has a market value that is well beyond her own purchasing power, and she carries around a cork to a wine that only Bob and, like, five other people in San Francisco drink.”

“None of that is proof,” Anatoly said, “and, considering the lack of faith the police have in us, we really need to back up any leads we feed them with a hefty amount of hard evidence.”

“We don’t have time to collect evidence,” I shouted. “Erika had an affair with my sister’s husband. She may even have killed him! She’s probably at home as we speak packing her bags in preparation for her one-way trip to Barbados!”

“Sophie, think this through. If Erika
is
the killer, the smartest thing she could do is stay put and play it cool while the cops go after Leah.”

“Yeah? Well, what if she isn’t smart?”

“That’s the problem.” Anatoly drummed his fingers against the counter. “I’m not at all convinced that she has the cunning necessary to pull off this kind of crime.”

“Why would she need cunning?” I started pacing the room as a hypothetical scene unfolded in my mind. “Leah went to see Erika the night of Bob’s murder, but she wasn’t home. So, what if she was here? She could have come over to confront Bob about Bianca. They start arguing, Erika throws a few wedding pictures around, Bob gets pissed and storms out of the room. Then Erika, who has been to this house umpteen times before and undoubtedly knows where Leah and Bob keep the safe and their one and only security code, which they use for
everything,
goes to get the gun. Bob comes downstairs again, pours himself a glass of much-needed scotch and then
bang—
” I made a pistol out of my fingers “—Erika shoots him in the head. She then leaves, locks up the place with her spare set of keys that Bob gave her to use during the times Leah’s off getting her semiannual Calistoga mud bath, and
voilà!
—Erika has committed the perfect crime. No cunning required.”

“Unless, of course, it was one of Bob’s many other mistresses,” Anatoly said.

“I don’t understand.” I wrinkled my nose. “Who are you thinking of? Bianca or Taylor?”

“Perhaps neither. My guess is that there were lots of women in Bob’s life. We just have the names of a select few.”

I stuck a thumbnail in my mouth and thought about that. “I don’t know…I mean, there’s only so many hours in a day and the man
did
have a job.”

“So did Wilt Chamberlain, and apparently he slept with twenty thousand women in his lifetime.”

“First of all, being a basketball star isn’t so much a job as it is a lifestyle and secondly, Bob’s no Wilt Chamberlain. On a good day he was about as interesting as a statistics professor.”

“Apparently he was interesting enough to attract the attention of a debutante, a female CFO, a pretty admin and your sister.” Anatoly stepped forward and picked up the wine bottle and studied it absently. “There may be hundreds of women in this city who had motive and opportunity to kill Bob. That’s bad news for anyone trying to pinpoint an individual murderess, but very good news for someone trying to prove reasonable doubt.”

I tapped the toe of my shoe on the tile floor and tried to digest this new development. Bob was a lout, but he hadn’t deserved his fate. That, in addition to the fact that the real murderer was apparently content to allow my sister to be prosecuted for a crime she didn’t commit, was enough to make me want to see the guilty party locked up for life. But I had to keep my eye on the real prize, and that was ensuring that Leah wasn’t charged with anything.

“All right,” I said quietly. “What do we need to do to convince the police of all this?”

“We start by talking to your sister. If you point out the possibility of these affairs to her, she might begin to remember things she once thought to be irrelevant. Phone calls from Erika or Taylor…maybe she walked in on a late-night business meeting that seemed a little too intimate…who knows? But we need to pick her brain.”

“You mean
I
need to pick her brain.” This was not going to be a fun conversation.

“Just try to keep her calm and remind her that the silver lining to all this is that Bob’s infidelities may be her ticket to freedom,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m sure she’ll be very rational about the whole thing.”

Anatoly laughed quietly. “Just one more thing.” He stepped closer and looked directly into my eyes. “No matter how angry Leah gets, neither of you are to contact either Taylor or Erika. We cannot afford to tip our hand.”

I took a deep breath. “Got it. No tipping.” I looked at the bottle in Anatoly’s hand. “I think we’ll go for tipsy instead.”

When I got home I found Leah in front of the television in her new outfit watching an old
Sex and the City
episode on TBS with Mr. Katz curled around her feet. The shoe box I had picked up earlier was in front of her on the coffee table. She looked up as I entered the room and eyed the overnight bag I had brought back with me.

“That’s mine, isn’t it?”

“I stopped by your house and picked up some more clothes for you and Jack since we were a little rushed last time we were there.” I dropped the bag on the floor and sat down next to her. “I’ve never seen this episode.”

“I’ve never seen any of the episodes,” Leah said. “I read that this show was nothing but a portrayal of gauche, desperate single women complaining about their love lives.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s gauche, but the rest sounds pretty accurate.”

Leah sighed. “If I had just stayed single I wouldn’t be in this mess. Of course, then I wouldn’t have Jack.”

I nodded and kept my eyes glued to the set. I did love my nephew, despite all his eccentricities. I just wished that I could love him from afar.

Leah pointed her finger at the shoe box. “Where did that come from?”

“Bob’s office. Erika called and asked me to pick it up.” I could hear the contempt in my voice as I pronounced Erika’s name, but if Leah noticed it she didn’t say anything.

“What about that awful picture in that hideous frame?” Leah asked. “That didn’t come from his office, did it?”

“Erika said it was one of his most cherished possessions. She said, and I quote, ‘He could gaze at it all day long.’”

“Ew.” Leah made a face. “We don’t have that many photos of the three of us, but that one is by far the worst. What person in his right mind would even want to
look
at it, let alone
gaze
at it?”

“Yeah, well, that’s just what Erika told me. But I don’t think that she’s a slave to honesty.”

Leah leaned forward and poked at the frame. “I bet Cheryl gave him this frame. It’s certainly tacky enough. It must have been for a birthday or something before Bob and I were together because if I had been there when she gave it to him I would have thrown it out.”

My shoulders slumped. I had been hoping that my disparaging remarks about Erika would serve as a natural segue into the conversation about her betrayal, but Leah wasn’t taking my lead. My eyes traveled back to the television. “Why don’t I make us some popcorn and martinis?”

“No thanks.” Leah sighed and turned the TV off with a light tap of the remote. “I don’t think I’m in the mood for this anymore.”

“In that case let’s skip the popcorn and just go straight for the cocktails.”

Leah eyed me warily. “What is it?”

I leaned over and freed my swollen feet from my heeled boots. “What is what?”

“There’s something you want to talk to me about but you’re afraid to bring it up. I can always tell, you know. It’s like that time when we were kids and you had to tell me that you’d accidentally blown up my Barbie Dream House while working out the kinks in your science fair project.”

“Oh, Leah,” I sighed. “That wasn’t an accident.”

“That was on purpose?” She gasped. “I had to save my allowance for over a year to buy that thing!”

“I have some good news and some bad news,” I said quickly. “Which do you want first?”

“Does Mama know you meant to blow it up?” Leah demanded. “I swear—”

“Okay, we’ll start with the good.” I smiled a little too broadly. “I figured something out tonight that might help you. If my deductions are correct, your days as a prime suspect may soon be over.”

Leah’s anger dissipated, and I could see the spark of cautious hope in her eyes.

“You’ve found a way to clear me? How?”

“Well, that’s the bad news. I didn’t exactly find a way to clear you. I just identified a few other people who had equal motives, and at least two of them might have had equal opportunity. That means the police will have to broaden the scope of their investigation, and with a lot of luck they’ll catch the bad guy, or at least be unable to arrest you.”