The Monet Murders (16 page)

“Hello,” I called again, just to be sure. “Jesus, are you here? Jesus!” I half expected him to suddenly respond in that gracious, courteous manner of his, but he didn’t. Maybe he had gone to Central America after all.

Oh, well.
I gave a mental shrug and headed for the kitchen wing. I needed to scout out the garage for a place to stash the party supplies. As I passed the corridor leading to Trevor’s study, I spied the glow of yellow lamplight. Maybe Jesus was working in there and hadn’t heard me. Though he should have. I’d made as much noise as a Patriots cheerleader.

Led by curiosity, I started down the corridor to the study. When I caught myself tiptoeing along like there was something to fear, I forced my feet to step normally. Heel, toe. Heel, toe.

Still my heart pounded as I reached the open study door and peeked in. Empty. No Jesus. So why were the lights on over the desk? Ilona once told me that of the entire household, only Jesus, who had been trained not to touch Trevor’s documents or move his papers, was allowed into the study. But I walked in anyway and strode to the desk. Might as well turn off the light. I leaned over and reached for the lamp switch then froze, an arm in midair, as a sheet of paper atop a pile caught my eye. A bank statement, it showed a massive withdrawal. Was I reading that correctly?

Leaving the lamp on, I picked up the statement. The account had been closed over a week ago. A Morgan-Stanley logo embellished the next sheet. I glanced at that as well. Another deep withdrawal, and underneath that statement a personal letter from the local Morgan-Stanley office urging Mr. Alexander not to sell at this point in the market.

The next sheet and the next, all stacked in that same neat pile, were much the same. Hmm. Stunned, I sank onto Trevor’s leather swivel chair and rode it for a while. What was going on? Had Trevor found a more lucrative investment opportunity? One that required large sums of money? Or did the withdrawals signify trouble?

None of my business, of course, except that Deva Dunne Interiors couldn’t survive a nonpaying client. Not with Ilona’s demands accelerating as they were. And come to think of it, most of her payments to me had been in cash from her secret stash of mad money.

Tense as a wound watch, I swiveled like mad. Only one thing to do. As I’d done with Morgan Jones, before ordering anything more I’d ask for payment of my out-of-pocket costs up front. The downside meant that might delay the party plans. Well, either that or take a chance. The Kravatz fabric alone was seventy dollars a yard and for five tables, we’d need—

The phone rang suddenly, and I nearly jumped out of my skin, the paper in my fingers fluttering to the floor. As I bent over, heart thumping, to retrieve it, a familiar deep voice came through the line. I sat up, placed the paper back on the pile and listened.

“Trevor, this is Simon Yaeger. Want you to know I took care of that little matter. George wasn’t happy about it, but I let him know where you stand. It’s your money he’s playing with, not his own. Don’t think he’ll retaliate, but you know George. I told him what he has in mind is definitely out of the question. You don’t need any legal entanglements with the IRS, not on top of everything else.”

Simon cleared his throat. I waited. Was there more?
Yes.
“One other thing, you know how women like to talk. You might ask Ilona to be discreet.” A pause. “I heard the Dunne woman is in and out of the house a lot, so I’d make sure she doesn’t get a hold of this. The fewer people who are in on it the better. I’ll be in touch again soon.”

A click and the phone went dead. I rode the swivel hard for a few moments then reached across the desk, turned off the lamp and slowly got to my feet.
The Dunne woman.
Is that how Simon thought of me? In that clinical, detached manner? So underneath that suave façade, Mr. Hot Lips was a man of ice. Nevertheless, he had just done me a valuable service. I would definitely ask Trevor for a serious retainer before ordering another thing. And I would definitely reassess my so-called friendship with Simon.

The urge to get out of this musty, silent tomb seized me. I walked out of the study, grabbed the box of party supplies from the great room and hurried down the hall to the kitchen. I didn’t want to leave party paraphernalia lying around, sullying the hushed elegance of Chez Alexander. The workbench in the garage would do. Everything would be safely out of the way there.

The musty odor was stronger in the kitchen. How long had Jesus been gone, anyway? I rested the box on the island and opened the side door leading from the kitchen wing to the four-car garage. The instant I did, a strange odor smacked me in the face. I sniffed the air and wished I hadn’t. My stomach clenched. What was that
smell?
Like an animal had found its way inside and been trapped.

I snapped on the garage lights. Their glare revealed the Mercedes SUV Jesus used for errands, Ilona’s silver Boxster and Trevor’s Cadillac Seville. The fourth stall held a rack of bikes and Trevor’s prized toy, a glittering Honda Goldwing. All the household vehicles were here, so Jesus must have driven the Alexanders to the airport, returned the car, then gotten a ride from someone so he could catch his own flight. A trickle of perspiration slid down my back as I stood in the doorway sniffing the foul air, not knowing whether to go in any farther or not.

Well, I couldn’t leave the boxes cluttering the house, so I picked up the one I’d carried in and stepped into the garage. Whatever had caused the odor must be dead. I hoped it was a squirrel trapped under the roof…or even, God forbid, a rat. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. Anyway, whatever had died in here couldn’t hurt me, and the box was getting heavier by the minute.

I dumped it on top of the workbench next to a hammer and an open box of scattered tacks. The clutter surprised me. Jesus usually kept his workstation as impeccably neat as Maria had kept her kitchen. But not this time. He must have been interrupted in the middle of a task. As I turned to go back for another box, a dark stain on the concrete floor caught my eye. The trickle of sweat on my back chilled.

I bent over for a closer look. If the stain had once been wet, it was dry now. Mesmerized, I followed where its trail led—between the Cadillac and the Boxster.

And then I saw him. Not a squirrel. Not a rat. Jesus. Crumpled in death and glued to the floor with his own blood.

I grabbed the Cadillac’s door handle to steady myself and stared, transfixed, at the corpse. First Maria, now her husband. It couldn’t be, my mind shrieked. It is, my eyes insisted. Another death. Another murder.

I had to get to a phone, call 911, but afraid I’d pitch forward in a dead faint and join Jesus on the floor, I just stood there gripping the handle, staring at the horror of what lay before me…the gunshot wound in Jesus’s chest, his wide, unseeing eyes, and, strangely, a handful of tacks in his open palm.

I kept inhaling, gulping, filling my lungs with the noisome air, but the gulping did little good. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs weren’t functioning. I’d pass out after all and fall to the blood-covered floor.

Before I could, the garage doors went into a noisy ascent, and my gaze switched from Jesus’s corpse straight into Trevor and Ilona’s shocked faces.

Chapter Eighteen

“Christ! It’s Jesus,” Trevor said, stepping into the garage for a closer look.

Ilona gasped and clutched his arm, tugging him back from the body. “No, Trev.
Nem.
”

He shook off her hand and edged farther in, stopping just short of the bloodstain.

In unison, we both stared down at Jesus, at his startled, unseeing eyes, at his mouth wide open, gaping at what? His murderer?

“Why did you kill him?” Trevor asked, glancing up from the corpse, pinning me with an accusing look.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t kill him. I just found him. He looks like he’s been dead awhile.” I didn’t mention the way he smelled. Trevor had a nose of his own.

He grunted something unintelligible and, eyes once again riveted on the gruesome sight, yelled over a shoulder. “Call the police, Ilona.”

Rooted to her spot by the open overheads, she didn’t move, her face so pale under her golden tan, I thought she’d be the one who’d join Jesus on the floor.

“The phone, Ilona. The phone.” Trevor snapped his fingers. “Hurry up.” At his second barked order, she obeyed, sidling around the other side of the SUV and disappearing through the side door into the house.

“So why did you do it?” Trevor asked again.

“Don’t be an ass.” I was too irritated to be scared. Or polite. “Do I have a weapon in my hand?” I pointed to the remains. “Is that a fresh corpse?”

His eyes flickered at my tone. “How the hell should I know?”

“The blood’s dried on the floor, Trevor. Use your head.” Screw the Mr. Alexander shit.

“You could have killed him and come back. Returned to the scene of the crime.”

This guy had made millions in the stock market? Unbelievable.

“We’re not moving until the cops get here,” he said.

Egads. He must have seen every Eliot Ness film ever made.

Ilona returned and stood gripping the kitchen doorframe for support. As if I didn’t exist, she avoided making eye contact with me, focusing solely on Trevor. “I call,” she said in a dull monotone.

“Good girl. Now let’s see how fast Naples’s finest can get here.” Then, as a sudden thought struck him, he glared at me. “Hey! How’d you get in? The code’s been changed.”

I shot a quick glance Ilona’s way. She shook her head, the movement barely perceptible, but I caught it, nonetheless. Still leaning on the Porsche, I shifted my attention to Trevor. “I’ll do my talking to the police.”

A few minutes later, an NPD squad car pulled up in front of the open garage door. “Well, here’s your chance to spill what you know,” Trevor said as my shadow, Officer Batano, stepped out with his sidekick, petite Officer Hughes, close behind him. As usual, like a secretary in battle gear, she brandished a clipboard.

Before the cops could get in a word, Trevor announced, “I’m Trevor Drexel Alexander. My wife and I have been out of town. We can prove it.” He waved an arm at the body. “This was our welcome home present. My butler, Jesus Cardoza. Or what’s left of him.” Trevor pointed an index finger at me. “She was standing over the corpse when we got here.”

Batano pierced me with a keen glance as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Are you Mrs. Devalera Dunne, age thirty-two? Address Surfside Arms, Gulf Shore Boulevard, condominium unit 104? Proprietor of Deva Dunne Interiors, Fern Alley, Naples, Florida?”

A flawless performance by Batano and I hadn’t said a thing. “Yes.”

Batano shook his head, either in disbelief or disgust, I couldn’t be sure which, and shouldering his way in between the vehicles, he crouched over Jesus. “He’s dead,” he pronounced. The man had a gift for the obvious. Heaving his bulk to his feet, he turned to Officer Hughes. “Call Homicide,” he instructed her. “Then stay with the remains. We’ll be inside.” He reached for her clipboard. “I’ll take that.”

The three of us trooped back into the house after Batano.

“This will do,” he said when we reached the kitchen. It was then that the impact of what I’d seen hit me with the force of a sledgehammer blow. Only a month earlier, I’d entered this same room with its Smallbone cabinets and perched on this same wrought iron stool while Rossi interrogated me.

What would he think when he saw me here again? What would anybody think? Within a span of weeks, I’d found two murder victims. I’d stumbled on them, the poor things, only stumbled on them, but who would believe that? Who would continue to think I had nothing to do with their deaths? That I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

No one, that was who. I glanced across at Ilona leaning against the center island looking positively ashen. I’d never seen her so upset, so moved, not even when Maria died. The sight caught me up short. So who was the selfish bitch now?
I was.
Thinking only of myself. Of my own welfare. What of the two victims? Earnest, hardworking people away from their families and their homeland, most days on duty around the clock, trying to please, trying to live…then murdered without mercy. But why?

There could only be one answer. For what they had seen. For what they knew. But what
had
they seen? What
did
they know?

My hands trembled. I couldn’t control them and clenched them together in my lap. It didn’t help. The cell phone suspended from Batano’s hip holster shrilled, and I flinched. He answered the caller with a series of yes and no then stashed the phone back in its holster. “The lieutenant’s on his way,” he said.

The lieutenant.
I prayed he meant Rossi.

“High time.” Trevor upped his chin at his wife. “Make some coffee, Ilona.”

“Me?” Ilona pointed a French-manicured fingertip at her chest. “I no make coffee. You want coffee, darling, you make.”

“I don’t know where the hell the pot is.”

Ilona shrugged. “Nobody does,” she said. “Not now.”

Trevor grunted, a sound so deep he must have dredged it up from his belly. “As soon as Homicide gets here, they’ll question the ass off us, and I’ve been up all night. I need some goddamn coffee. Find the pot. Make yourself useful.”

Stiff-backed, Ilona began a fruitless rattling of the cypress wood drawers and cupboards. Pen poised above the clipboard, Batano looked over at Trevor. “While we wait, I’ll take some information. Your full name, sir.”

“I thought I told you that already,” Trevor said.

“Ah, I find!” Ilona announced. Triumphant, she held up a gleaming stainless steel Cuisinart Coffeemaker. “It has another piece.” She put the pot on the counter and lifted out the heating element. “There. That is all of it.”

“Well?” Trevor asked.

“Well what, darling?” Ilona gazed at him, a puzzled expression on her lovely face. She was dumb as a fox, but Trevor bought it.

“Jeez, you really don’t know, do you? Give me a minute here, officer.”

Trevor elbowed Ilona out of the way, marched over to the Sub-Zero refrigerator and yanked it open. He removed a bag of Starbucks Medium Blend, plunked it on the shelf and untwisted the tie.

“Shit. Whole beans. Where’s the grinder, Ilona?”

“I want to leave,” she said to Batano. “To sit in living room.”

“We’ll wait here until Homicide arrives. Have a seat, Mrs. Alexander.” He gestured to a stool.

As Batano questioned Trevor, Ilona glided to the stool beside me, sat and crossed her legs. Not an ounce of her admirable derriere oozed over the seat cushion. I gave myself a mental slap on the knuckles. As if, at a time like this, the shape of her ass was important. Trained to notice details…like the tacks in Jesus’s dead hand…I couldn’t turn off the habit when it didn’t matter. An occupational hazard.

Maybe doing something helpful would calm my nerves. “I’ll make coffee, Trevor. I remember seeing where Maria kept the grinder.”

He shot me a look—half gratitude, half exasperation.

My knees wobbled when I stood, but they held, and while Batano jotted down the Alexanders’ answers to his questions, I went through the motions—grinding the beans, measuring the water, turning on the coffeemaker.

With every move, I was conscious I had stepped into Maria’s shoes, carrying out the wishes of a demanding man. And when I found the mugs and silverware and arranged them on the island with sugar and cream, and, finally, poured Trevor his coffee, I became Jesus in that moment…silently serving…I only hoped to God I wouldn’t end up sharing his fate. Or Maria’s.

Voices from the garage broke into the kitchen’s moody atmosphere. “Stay here everybody,” Batano said. “I’ll be right back.” He left for the garage, leaving the kitchen door open. The smell of death wafted in, competing with the Medium Blend. Or was it my imagination? The Alexanders said nothing about it, appeared not to notice.

I went back to the stool, wrapping my legs around it so I wouldn’t fall off, and took shallow breaths. Ilona sat sipping coffee, examining her perfect manicure, still refusing to make eye contact. Why couldn’t she bear to look at me? Did she think I was the killer? And would everybody else in town think the same? Even Rossi? I’d know in a minute. His gravelly voice poured in through the open door. And then he was there in the kitchen, a cell phone pressed to an ear, issuing orders that sounded all too familiar.

“Yeah, the forensic team, ASAP, and notify the ME. You got the address? I’ll be here for a while.”

He ended the call and strode into the center of the kitchen as if he, not Trevor, owned it. But my heart, which had leaped up at the sound of his voice, sank to my wobbly knees. Like Ilona, he didn’t make eye contact with me, merely inclined his head. I was a stranger, a witness to murder, nothing more. My disappointment told me I had expected something other than an official interrogation from him—something warmer and more personal. Far more personal. I forced down my dismay to concentrate on what he was saying.

“Mr. and Mrs. Alexander. Mrs. Dunne. We meet again under unfortunate circumstances.” With his thumb and forefinger, Rossi reached into the pocket of his shirt—yellow plumeria blossoms on a navy background today—and extracted a notepad and pencil stub. “We’ll start at the beginning.” He spread his legs wide in what I had come to recognize as his note-taking stance. “Who found the victim?”

“I did,” I answered, my voice breaking like a brittle twig. I’d used those same words before and for the exact same reason. The trembling returned, sweeping through my body, shaking me like a palm frond in the wind.

“Grab her,” Rossi shouted to Trevor who stood beside me. Startled, Trevor dropped his mug so fast the Medium Blend sloshed onto the island’s marble top. His arm shot out and held me in place.

Hazily, through a fog of emotion, I saw Rossi rush to the garage door. “Hughes,” he called. A hand on her holster, she hurried to the kitchen. “Accompany Mrs. Dunne into the living room and stay with her. She needs to lie down.”

“But I also wish—” Ilona protested.

“We’ll begin questioning with you, Mrs. Alexander,” Rossi said, his eyes swiveling away from me to Ilona. “Describe what you saw when you first arrived home.”

“But—”

That was all I heard as I left the room with Officer Hughes’s surprisingly hard-muscled arm wrapped around my waist.

* * *

Like an artist’s model—but fully clothed—I lay on Ilona’s yellow brocade sofa. Rossi had pulled up a delicate French bergère and sat facing me. The interrogation had gone on for quite a while. I had related everything I could recall about what I’d found in the garage and what I had seen and heard in Trevor’s study.

“Will this take much longer, Lieutenant?” I finally asked. “I’ve told you all I know.”

His voice noncommittal, his attitude still all cop, he said, “One last question, Mrs. D. How much time would you say elapsed between when you saw the body and when the Alexanders came in?”

“Several seconds. A minute at the most.”

“Anything else you want to add to your story? Any detail, however small, that you can recall?”

“Nothing.” My skirt had slid up my thighs. I smoothed it down with a damp palm. “May I remind you, Lieutenant, that noting details is part of my business.”

Rossi nodded, flicked a glance at my legs and put his notepad back in his shirt pocket. Ditto for the pencil stub. “That’s it, then, Mrs. D.”

I sat up straight. “There is one more thing.”

Instantly alert, he said, “Yes?”

“I didn’t do it.”

He exhaled as if he’d just heard stale news. “I have no reason not to believe you, Mrs. D. But you do have an uncanny knack—”

“—for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Exactly.”

He stood, moved the bergère back to its original position on the pastel Hebriz, his face as impassive and noncommittal as stone. I swung my legs over the side of the sofa and got to my feet. The room tilted for an instant then righted. I slipped into my Jimmy’s, tugged my white silk skirt into position and settled the taupe sweater over my hips. Rossi did his best not to let on that he noticed, but as I said, details are my stock in trade. I saw how his hooded eyes followed my every move. I suppressed a smile. So he wasn’t all cop, after all.

We were alone in the Alexanders’ living room, the house eerily quiet, just as it had been earlier when I coded my way in.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Forensics is in the garage. The Alexanders have gone to bed.”

Was that a smile lifting his lips? It looked like one, but with Rossi, it was hard to tell.

“If you’ve recovered from your shock, I’ll have Officer Hughes drive you home,” he said.

Something in his tone irritated me. Okay, seeing Jesus lying in a pool of dried blood had unnerved me. I’ll admit that. Still, I wasn’t some damned basket case who needed to be hand-driven to her front door.

“I’m perfectly capable of driving myself, Lieutenant. Don’t worry about providing me with an escort service. Worry about solving the crime.”

At my sarcasm, Rossi’s dark eyes took on a glitter that I couldn’t read. But I’ve never been good at body language. Paint, furniture and fabric is what I really understand.

I glanced around the room. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember where I’d left my bag. “All I need are my keys.”

“I think you need more than that, Mrs. D. Come on. Come.” He waggled his hand, beckoning me. Though he was no Pied Piper, I followed him out of the living room into the kitchen anyway. My bag awaited me on the marble-topped island. One of the cops must have put it there.