A Grand Murder Read online

  “Officer Lawrence, anytime you want to work a crime scene with me you are welcome. In fact, I’m going to recommend you to the chief.”

  A blush stained his cheeks. “Her name means something to you?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “It means we’ve got a wife to interview.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Philip and Annabeth Carter’s house was cold and sterile. No family photos, no art on the walls, just clean, white, with crystal accents pieces strewn around on tables. Like a pale, on a budget, carbon copy of Belinda Stanley’s home.

  In the center of the frosty atmosphere sat the worn out, disheveled, gray figure of Annabeth Carter. Unlike Belinda she wore colorful clothes. The room wasn’t Annabeth, it was a sad attempt to keep her husband—to become the object of his desire.

  She gnawed on her thumbnail, and stared at us with wide, tired eyes.

  “Why do you want to see me? I—I told you ev—everything I know yesterday morning.” She stuttered. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You lied,” Louise said.

  The overstuffed, oversized chair Louise sat in looked like a giant marshmallow.

  “I wasn’t under oath or anything.” She looked between the two of us. “Lying is not a crime unless it’s under oath, is it?”

  “It is when it impedes a murder investigation.”

  I opened the button of my favorite gray blazer and stretched my arms across the back of the sterile, white couch.

  “Not to mention, lying looks damned suspicious,” I said. “Like you’re trying to hide something.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  She dropped her head to her hands and wept quiet sobs.

  Annabeth’s crying was a sharp contrast from the drama—queen incident Belinda Stanley had given us when we questioned her. The two women’s homes might have an eerie similarity, but they themselves couldn’t be more different.

  Annabeth being married to that jackass Philip Carter fit very well. I imagined that she was easy for him to dominate.

  “Then what were you doing at Stanley’s home, Mrs. Carter? Why did you lie to Officer Lawrence when he questioned you at the scene?”

  Louise moved to the loveseat next to Annabeth and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Because you would have thought I was the one who killed Nathan.” She hugged her arms around her waist and rocked like a child. “But I didn’t kill him. I really didn’t. You have to believe me.”

  Deep shuttering breaths shook her whole body. Annabeth was on the verge of hysterics. Tears trailed down her cheeks and onto her lap.

  “Okay.” I shot to my feet. “Give me a break with the water works already, will you.”

  Louise looked at me like I’d completely lost my mind. Maybe I had but we needed to do something. Annabeth was already halfway over the edge. Talking her back would have taken too much time.

  Anyway, I had a feeling that Annabeth was accustomed to being treated aggressively. My guess was that sympathy would never work. Sympathy would only feed into her self—serving tears.

  The shock of my abrupt change in attitude stopped Annabeth’s crying. Her spine stiffened and her mouth went slack.

  “You killed Stanley to frame his ex—wife because she’s screwing your husband.”

  To hell with being delicate, it was time to get tough and get some answers. Twenty—four hours was too long to go without a decent lead to follow.

  Louise distanced herself from Annabeth by moving to the edge of the couch. I hoped that she sensed I was on the right track.

  “What I can’t figure out is why you killed Forster? Why did you need to go to Stanley’s office? What did you expect to find there?”

  I tilted my head and leaned toward her.

  “Or was that your husband trying to throw us off your trail?”

  “No!”

  She stood and balled her hands into fists on the ends of her stick—straight arms. Before our eyes, she morphed from a weak, frail figure, to a passionate feral creature.

  “I didn’t know that Mr. Forster was killed until Phil told me.”

  “So your husband killed him.”

  My retort was as aggressive as hers, caught up in the exhilaration of the moment. There was nothing I liked better than a good argument.

  “Why did you kill Stanley?”

  “He was dead when I found him.”

  Annabeth registered shock at her own words. Almost like this was the first time she realized what she had seen on the steps of Stanley’s home.

  “He was dead.” Her voice went soft.

  She staggered back, dropped onto the sofa, and gripped the arm as if she might slide to the floor if she didn’t.

  “Mrs. Carter,” I said. “Why did you go to Stanley’s home?”

  There was a long pause, then she swallowed hard. She glanced between Louise and me as if trying to decide what to tell us. After sizing us up, she looked at the floor and we finally heard the truth.

  “I went there to have sex with him, like I have for the last year and a half. Every morning.”

  Oh, Christ. Here we go again.

  I was going to need a scorecard or a map to figure out who was sleeping with who later. Hadn’t these people ever heard of monogamy? Or sexually transmitted diseases? Had I been dropped into some afternoon soap opera without my knowledge?

  “Every morning?” Louise raised her eyebrows at me.

  I settled back in my seat and rubbed my temples. A dull ache throbbed behind my eyes. When we were finished here I’d need to suck down some ibuprofen.

  “That’s some track record,” I said. “His wife gave us the impression he wasn’t all that great in bed.”

  “He wasn’t. He was a terrible lover.”

  She gripped her thumbnail between her teeth and started chewing again.

  “But then our encounters were not about the sex.”

  She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. “Oh God.”

  “So what were your encounters about?” Louise said. “Were you in love with Nathan Stanley?”

  It was my turn to give her the disgusted look. She shrugged.

  Annabeth let out a sharp, “ha,” then smirked at Louise.

  “I doubt Nathan knew what the word love meant. Anyway I doubt anyone could love someone as evil as he was. Believe me, there aren’t many people who really knew him who will miss him.”

  “Then what was it?” Louise asked.

  She dropped her head to her hands and rocked back and forth.

  “I needed the money.”

  “What?”

  I’d never considered myself puritanical but this was my week to be shocked.

  “He paid you to have sex with him?”

  Annabeth raised her head, her bottom lip firmly clenched between her teeth, and nodded.

  “He started asking me to sleep with him right after . . .” she stopped.

  “Well it was—”

  She hugged herself and tears sprang to her eyes again.

  “After we—”

  Louise waved off her statement. “We know about the swapping.”

  “You do?” she said.

  I nodded. “It came up when we were interviewing Mrs. Stanley.”

  “Oh, well, after that he asked if I was interested in sleeping with him again.”

  Her eyes fixed on nothing.

  “I said no but he wouldn’t let up. Every time I saw him at an office party, dinner out, wherever, he would corner me alone somewhere and ask me again. The way he’d say it, and touch me, made me feel creepy.”

  The whole thing made me feel creepy just hearing about it. Nowhere in my mind could I even contemplate participating.

  “How do you go from feeling creepy, to having sex with him daily?” I asked.

  Annabeth sprang to her feet.

  “I need to get something to drink. Can I get either of you anything?” She crossed to an alcove filled with liquor and glasses. “It doesn’t have to be hard, I have soft drinks too,
or I could make coffee.”

  Louise cleared her throat. “I’ll have bottled water if you have it.”

  She opened the cabinet below the alcove that hid a mini—fridge, took out a small bottle of Evian, and poured it into an oversized wine glass.

  I would have drunk the water right from the bottle. Hell, I would have served bottle water to a guest that way, too. I guess Martha Stewart had nothing to fear from Catherine O’Brien.

  “What about you?”

  She didn’t address the comment directly to me but I assumed she meant me.

  “Do you have a Coke?”

  “Diet, regular, caffeine free, cherry, vanilla or diet vanilla?”

  “Diet, thanks.”

  She opened the little refrigerator, then pulled out the familiar red and silver can—my second favorite drink after coffee.

  Annabeth balanced the drinks and glasses on a silver tray, including a full bottle of red wine. She managed to make it to the coffee table without spilling the works on her white carpet. She set the tray on the table, and then handed the water to Louise, and the Diet Coke can to me.

  “Do you feel up to continuing?” I asked, and took the can from her.

  She poured herself a full glass of wine, then guzzled it down faster than one of Gavin’s drinking buddies guzzling beer.

  “I’m ready,” she said and filled her glass again.

  “How did you go from no to a daily . . .”

  I couldn’t think of a word that would fit except “screw”. After a few seconds I finally settled on “visit.” It was the best I could come up with and not sound completely crass.

  “Nathan came to me one day with photos. Pictures of Philip and Belinda together.”

  She took another gulp of wine. “So I slept with him out of spite—vengeance sex. What I didn’t know was he had videotaped us.”

  “He blackmailed you?” Louise took a dainty sip of water. She even drank water with class.

  I let the pressure hiss out of the soda can before cracking the lid open all the way.

  “And if he was blackmailing you, how did you get to the money part of the deal?” I asked.

  Again, she gulped a mouthful of wine. A small drip dribbled down her chin. She stuck her tongue out and dragged it across her chin to remove the drip.

  “I cried,” she said.

  “Sorry?”

  She looked up, already showing the bleary—eyed stare of a wine drunk.

  “I cried.” She shrugged. “Every time we had sex. I guess he felt sorry for me, or something, and he gave me money. Told me I should buy something pretty.”

  She made rabbit ears with her fingers.

  “Like some bad movie. The fucking bastard.”

  A cuckoo clock went off somewhere in another room. One, two, three, four, five, six times. We’d been here an hour.

  For a moment, I tried to picture a cuckoo clock in the stark white house, but couldn’t conjure up the image. A cuckoo clock didn’t fit. It was wrong. Maybe it was part of the real Annabeth Carter.

  “But you took the money he gave you?” Louise asked. “Why wouldn’t you give it back to him?”

  “He’d put a wad of bills in my purse. After what we’d done, I just wanted to get as far away from him as I could. I didn’t think about the right and wrong of what I should do at that point.

  I wanted to get home and take a shower. I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed crying. That was one of the nights I wished Philip had come home. If he had come home, I would have told him everything. But he didn’t.”

  Annabeth gripped the wine glass so hard I thought the stem would pop off.

  “I forgot about the money until the next time. He put more money in my purse. That time when I got home, I took the money out and counted it. He’d given me nearly two thousand dollars.”

  I choked on my soda. Coughs racked my body as I tried to catch my breath. Talk about an indecent proposal. My eyes swept the length of her. Not exactly a supermodel. She wasn’t what I considered a great beauty. Short, thin, but nothing memorable.

  “That’s higher than your normal price for that sort of thing.” I said.

  Hell, vice had picked up high—priced hookers who frequented four and five star hotels who charged less than two grand.

  “You must be good.”

  “I just laid there. It was about control, not about the sex. Maybe by giving me the money he felt like we were both getting something from the deal.” Her speech slurred at the end.

  The way the wine affected her so quickly, it was a good bet she hadn’t eaten at all today.

  “After awhile, I had quite a bank roll. I’ve been saving all the money Nathan gave me. When I had enough, I planned to leave my cheating, fucking bastard of a husband.”

  Oh, yeah. She was lit. No doubt about it.

  “When did you think you would have enough money?” Louise asked.

  “I have enough—had enough quite awhile ago. But the more I got, the more I wanted.” She blinked at Louise several times, then smiled. “I’m a capitalist.”

  “How much money do you have right now?” I asked.

  A wicked grin crossed her lips.

  “Oh, about five hundred thousand. Two thousand dollars, a little more or a little less, every morning for almost an entire year—prudently invested in a money market account, earning five percent compounded daily.”

  “That’s enough to make a new start, I’d say.”

  Or at least it would be for me, but Annabeth is accustomed to a much fancier lifestyle than I am. Hell, with half a mill I would be quite happy for a long time.

  “Just don’t plan on making your new start until we’re done with our investigation,” Louise said. “We might have a few more questions for you.”

  Annabeth began to giggle uncontrollably, with tiny snorts here and there.

  “Oh I wouldn’t dream of leaving town now. Not now that Nathan’s dead.”

  Her shrill laughter filled the room.

  “He can’t blackmail me anymore and I have pictures of my own. When you leave I plan to call the best divorce lawyer in town and take my husband to the cleaners.”

  She filled her glass, which wasn’t empty, and toasted us, spilling red wine over the sides of the glass onto the white carpet. Annabeth made no move to try to clean up the mess. I had a feeling when Philip was out of the picture, this place would be like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

  “Here’s to the beginning of my new life. Free from the bonds of cruel men.” She took a long drink.

  Louise reached into her pocket, and pulled out the mittens. She laid the multi—colored, fuzzy things across her lap in a casual gesture.

  Annabeth swallowed hard and made a face like the wine had turned to vinegar.

  “Ugh, you have a pair of those ugly things too? Did Bel give you those mittens?”

  “No, I picked these up myself,” Louise lied. “You have a pair too?”

  “Yep, I hate them.”

  Another round of laughter shook her. She put her fingers to her lips and let out a “shh.”

  “Don’t tell my husband I don’t like them. I wear the mittens all the time, because he hates them so much more than I do, and I love doing things to irritate him these days.”

  “Can I see your mittens?” Louise asked.

  I realized where she was going with the mittens.

  “What in the world for?”

  She stuck her finger into her glass and sucked the droplets of wine from the tip of her fingernail.

  “Mine have a funny cut. The seam presses into the side of my fingers and it’s very uncomfortable. I wanted to see if yours are cut the same way or if this pair is defective. If they’re defective, I’d like to try to get my money back.”

  Nice cover.

  If Annabeth had stabbed Nathan Stanley, there would be blood on the mittens. If she was sober enough, she would never let us see them, or she would have destroyed them by now to cover her tracks.

  “If you ask me
you should get your money back anyway. The things are just ugly—no offense.”

  “None taken,” Louise said.

  Annabeth thought for a moment.

  “Mine don’t press into my fingers. But it doesn’t surprise me that Bel produced defective mittens. She probably hired some twelve—year—old in a third world country to produce them. You should have her investigated.”

  “I really like the alpaca wool. They’re very soft, and maybe I’ll get another pair instead of a refund but not if all the mittens are cut the same.” Louise smiled sweetly. “Please? I’d really appreciate it. You’d save me a trip to Frogtown.”

  Annabeth shrugged and staggered to her feet.

  “Sure, why not.”

  She careened down the hallway, finally using the wall to support herself. When she reached the foyer, she jerked the closet door open, then disappeared into the walk—in closet.

  Louise and I followed her to monitor what she was doing, to ensure we weren’t caught by surprise, just in case what she was really looking for was a weapon of some kind. She didn’t seem like the type, but the old maxim, better safe than sorry, was immutable in our line of work.

  Annabeth dropped to her knees and rummaged through a small round, pink laundry basket, crammed full of winter accessories. She threw hats, gloves, and scarves in every direction.

  “The mittens don’t seem to be in here.”

  She turned the basket out onto the floor, then sifted through the pile.

  Louise raised an eyebrow at me as if to ask, should we take her in?

  I held up a finger. In her condition, we should give her one more minute to make good. If she didn’t find them, we’d take her in, let her sober up for a few hours and grill her on where she’d left the mittens.

  Suddenly, Annabeth snapped her fingers, “Well, duh.”

  She rose onto her knees and scooted herself closer to the closet, grabbed the sleeve of one of the coats near the front, reached up through the armhole, and pulled out the mittens. She handed them to Louise, then sat back on her heels.

  “I almost forgot. I wore them to the store the other day when we had that cold snap.” She smiled. “Philip was home that afternoon and I made a point of wearing these.”

  Louise turned them over in her hands and examined them carefully. No blood. She made a show out of trying them on for Annabeth’s sake, then she took off the mittens and handed them back to her.