THE DEEP END (5 page)

I hate roller coasters. I hate the grinding terror as the cars climb ever higher. I hate the stomach-in-my-throat feeling of the world collapsing as I hurtle toward the earth. I hate worrying that the kid in front of me is going to vomit and that I will be covered in cotton candy-pink sick. Looking at the matchbook, I felt that way—as if the world was disintegrating, as if I was flying toward an unknown landing that was sure to be painful. Hell, I might even be the one to vomit.

I’d seen a matchbook like it before. Once. That Henry would have brought another one home and left it where Grace might find it...I blinked to clear my vision of a deep shade—perylene red.

“May I see those?” Detective Jones held out his palm.

I nodded.

He waited for me to hand them to him. He could wait forever. I wasn’t touching them. My arms remained firmly crossed.

When he realized I wasn’t moving, he picked them up, raised a brow.

“My husband’s.”

“What are those?” Hunter demanded.

“Matches.” Detective Jones and I spoke in unison.

Hunter tilted his silver head. “From where?”

“Club K,” I admitted.

“Where?” God bless a man who slept with half the women in the city without the aid of a riding crop or cuffs.

“Club Kink.” My voice was so soft I don’t know how he heard me.

Hunter looked properly appalled. “How did they get here?”

I glanced at Detective Jones. His eyes actually looked nice, as if he knew what this conversation was costing me. I straightened my shoulders. “Henry.”

The detective turned them in his fingers, opened them, then dropped them in his pocket.

Madeline was dead. Henry was missing. There was a kinky matchbook in the junk drawer in my kitchen.

What I needed was to paint. I needed to mix colors and feel their weight on my brushes—the lightness of cadmium yellow, the heft of cobalt blue, the almost burdensome ballast of raw umber. I needed to take a blank canvas and transform it with light and dark, sunshine and shadow. There’s no hiding behind a polite smile on canvas. No biting your tongue. No pretending. There’s only color and truth and form.

I wanted them all out of my house. I wanted it more than I wanted chocolate or another glass of wine or the end of the worst day ever. I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at the ceiling.

Hunter got the hint. “Shall I count on seeing you tomorrow?” Somehow he moved both Powers and Detective Jones toward the front hallway by simply shifting that way himself.

The police detective paused mid-step. “You’ll let me know if you hear from Mr. Russell?”

“The créperie, darling. I absolutely insist.” Powers pinned me with his green gaze. “Later this week? Promise?”

“I promise.”

Three unconvinced men stared at me. “I promise all of you.”

How was I to know I’d regret every one of those promises?

Five

The thing about having the worst day ever is that you’re pretty much guaranteed that the next one will be better.

The thing about glass half-full thinking is that it will bite you in the ass every time. Or it will stick out its leg, trip you, then laugh when you land on your aforementioned ass.

I tripped. Then again, who expects to find a body on their front stoop? At least this one wasn’t dead. It moaned when I fell on it. Maybe because my knee landed in the near vicinity of the place men least like to feel knees. The body belonged to Roger Harper, Madeline’s husband.

The smell of gin wafting from Roger’s body was enough to make my eyes water. The sight of his car parked on my hostas was enough to make me cry.

I nudged him with the tip of my shoe, and I wasn’t gentle about it.

He groaned.

I nudged again. “Get up.”

He groaned again.

His wife was dead. Murdered. He was upset. That didn’t give him leave to sleep on my front steps—or crush my hostas.

I stepped over Roger’s gin-soaked carcass and peered through the open window of his Jag. The keys were still in the ignition. The car stank of gin and cigarettes and grief. I got in, backed the car off my flattened shrubbery and parked it at the curb.

When I climbed my front steps, Roger was still groaning and still not moving.

A drunk man was draped across my front stoop. The homes association would disapprove—to put it mildly. My neighbors would have coronaries. They were probably calling to complain even now.

I prodded again then tried a bribe. “If you get up, I’ll make you coffee.” I’d even make him my super-secret hangover cure. Although, if I told Roger what was in it, he might opt to spend the day heaped in front of my door. “Coffee,” I crooned.

Roger muttered something unintelligible then choked on a sob.

He was crying. I considered leaving him there. It would be so easy to get in my car and drive away from Roger’s grief and the drama it promised. I fingered my keys, gazed longingly at my TR6, but opened the front door instead.

Somehow, with a combination of pushing, prodding, begging, and bribing, I got him inside.

Max stared at us from the top of the stairs, his doggy eyebrows raised as if to say,
Didn’t you just leave
?
What in blazes are you doing back so quickly? I was planning on taking a nap on your forbidden but fabulously comfortable bed
. Then his lips curled. He must have caught scent of Roger because with a snort of canine disgust he turned and disappeared down the hall.

I led Roger to a stool at my kitchen counter, then made coffee. When Mr. Coffee finished dripping, I poured him a huge mug and began assembling the ingredients for my hangover cure.

Roger took a sip of coffee, grimaced then dropped his head to his arms.

He didn’t move when I started the blender—spinach, carrots, apples, raw ginger, five aspirin, Sprite, and a raw egg—the recipe for relief.

When I put a glass of super-secret down next to him, he ignored it.

“Drink it,” I directed.

Roger lifted the glass to his nose and sniffed. “What is it?”

“A cure.”

A small sip passed his pale lips and he looked like he might vomit.

“It’s better to drink it quickly.”

He glared at me with blood-shot eyes but took another sip. His green-tinged skin transitioned from a delicate celadon to the approximate shade of over-cooked peas.

“Just do it,” I said.

He drank. Drained the glass. Gasped. “Water.”

I was ready with a glass.

He gulped it down.

I took the glass from his shaking hand, refilled it and gave it back to him.

“Thank you,” he croaked. “What was in that?”

“It’s better if you don’t know. More coffee?”

Roger shook his head then looked as if he regretted moving. “No, thank you.”

“You’ll feel better in thirty minutes or so.” Then I could send him on his way. The last thing I needed was Madeline’s husband convalescing in my kitchen.

He rolled his eyes then winced as if even that hurt.

I called and rescheduled my appointment with Hunter, emptied the dishwasher, and wrote the grocery list. Roger still looked like death warmed over, completely incapable of making it to the front door, much less pouring himself into his car and driving away, so I retrieved yesterday’s mail from the front hall and opened it over the trashcan.

Junk. The electric bill. More junk. Henry’s credit card statement. My fingers itched to open it. Instead, I tossed it onto the counter. I didn’t need to see his credit card bill to know my husband spent an unconscionable amount of money on his hobby.

Roger lifted his head. Slowly. As if his skull and the piddling brain inside weighed a hundred pounds. His mouth worked but no words came out.

“More coffee?” I asked.

He nodded and I served him a fresh mug.

He drank, stared at the brick wall, rubbed his temples. “I never thought a woman like Madeline would look at me. Then she married me and I felt like the luckiest man in the world.”

Or unluckiest. It’s all about perspective. From my perspective, discussing Madeline with me was a gaff exceeded only by parking on my hostas. I’d rather discuss Roger’s views on Nixon’s impeachment than talk about Madeline.

“I loved her.” His face crumpled. It deflated as if the man inside his body had departed and the remaining husk was in the first stages of collapse.

“I’m sorry.” Never were words more meaningless. I cringed as soon as they left my lips. This was why I should have left him rotting on my front steps. Unfettered grief. If
Thou shall not air dirty laundry in public
was the Walford family’s first commandment,
Thou shall not make a spectacle of thyself by displaying emotion
was the second. We didn’t do raw emotion or drama or storms of tears. I had no idea how to handle anguish. Still, I had to offer some comfort. I lifted my hand to pat his shoulder but couldn’t quite bring myself to touch him.

Fortunately, he didn’t notice my hand hovering over his shoulder like a confused UFO. “She’d been acting so strangely lately.”

Lately? In my opinion, the strange behavior dated back to when she started hopping into bed with other women’s husbands. It definitely began when she started letting my husband tie her up and flog her.

He gulped at his coffee. Coughed. Rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Do you know who might have killed her?”

Was he asking if I had? Perhaps he thought Henry had finally gone too far. “No idea.”

“She had a secret. She said things were going to change. I thought maybe she meant to break things off with Henry.”

The poor man. He should have just filed for divorce. It wasn’t like there were children to protect. Perhaps if he’d stood up for himself, Madeline would have respected him. He sniffled and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Perhaps respect was too strong a word.

“Did she say anything to Henry?”

His assumption that Henry and I spoke was almost funny. Aside from social obligations and the odd comment about needing to buy coffee or laundry detergent, we had nothing to say to each other. “No.”

“I went through her things.”

I swear Henry’s credit card statement fluttered its eyelashes. It winked. It smiled its best come-hither smile.

I forced my gaze to Roger’s red-rimmed watery blue eyes.

“I found this.”

For the second time in less than a day, a man tossed a book of Club K matches onto my kitchen counter.

“I went there last night.” He dropped his gaze. “I didn’t know...”

He didn’t know?

Roger shuddered. “I tried to talk to the owner. A woman. She was busy.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “She said I should come back this morning and she’d talk to me.”

My heart stuttered. Surely, he wouldn’t ask.

“Will you go with me? Please?”

I poured myself coffee I didn’t want or need so I could clutch the warmth of the mug. “Isn’t this a matter for the police?”

Roger raked his hand through long strands of thinning hair that barely covered his naked scalp. His throat worked its way around another swallow. “This isn’t about her death. It’s about why she...” His head dropped to his hands.

The poor man. He’d loved her and she’d cheated on him with my husband. At least Henry and I were well on our way to complete indifference when he first started cheating. I knew why Henry had strayed. He needed to dominate and I was unable to submit. Silly me. I wanted us to be equal in marriage. Equality goes out the window when one partner has a riding crop and cuffs and the other is on her knees.

I tried it. Once. In hopes of saving our marriage. I donned the black silk stockings and black lace garter and the high-heeled shoes and nothing else. I even let him blindfold me. Then I held out my wrists and let him bind me. I even knelt.

He’d turned on loud music. Blinded and half-deaf, I’d still sensed him walking circles around me and my body had tightened with anticipated dread.

When the riding crop slapped against my skin, I didn’t feel fear or desire or pain or pleasure. Instead, I’d balled my hands together and spit out the safe word as if it was poison.

“You said you’d try.” Henry sounded like a petulant child.

“And you said you’d love, honor, and cherish me.”

I struggled to get off the floor.

“I am.”

“By hitting me with a riding crop?”

I stumbled to my feet and thrust my cuffed wrists out so he could unlock me. I didn’t see the connection between love and hitting me with a riding crop.

“You said you’d obey.”

“When?”

“In our vows when we got married.”

“I did not. We took that part out.” But that was back when Henry didn’t feel threatened by a wife who made more money than he did, by the thinning of his hair or the thickening of his waist.

“Women want a man who takes charge.”

He wasn’t a man, he was a Neanderthal. “I want a partner.”

“I want you to do this, Ellison.” He tried to sound masterful and dominant and in-charge.

I didn’t need to
see
him to know he was a man afraid of his own mortality. A man who turned to kink as a way to convince himself he was still virile. Why couldn’t he just buy a damned Porsche? I shook my head. “I can’t.”

It meant the end. Not of our marriage. The marriage we kept going—for Grace’s sake. But it was the end of Ellison and Henry, of growing old together, of happily ever after.

After that, Henry embraced the idea of open marriage like water embraces wetness.

I painted more than ever. For a while, the hopeful pinks and greens and yellows on my canvases turned dark. Powers raised an eyebrow, made sympathetic noises, then sold the paintings for more money than ever.

I knew why Henry’s and my story ended the way it did. Money. Ego. Fear. The heartbroken man at my kitchen counter had no idea why Madeline had done what she’d done.

I could have told Roger my theory—that Madeline enjoyed being punished because she knew she’d left a trail of reprehensible acts behind her. I could have told him what I knew—that knowing why doesn’t make things better. It just makes them clearer. I kept my lips sealed and shook my head.

“Please? I can’t go alone.”