TWELVE

  Between the call with the publisher and then meeting with Michael Angel, I felt overwhelmed with figuring out how I was going to extract a book from the sheaf of pages that Maeve had left me. Added to that was the realization I’d come to after my research. If my conjecture was true, it changed everything. Ben was the only source I could think of to discuss it with, but I didn’t want to call or text him about it as I thought he might take it just as a silly excuse for me to contact him.

  If he showed up for the writers’ group, I could ask him then.

  As it neared seven, I started to pace, knowing I’d have my answer soon. The doorbell went off, sounding more like the croak of a frog than a bell, startling me. I knew it wasn’t Ben since he would be coming up from dinner at his sister’s and always knocked. I hit the button that unlocked the downstairs security door and opened the upstairs one in anticipation. Tizzy stepped onto the third-floor landing, slipping the shawl off her colorful kimono top. She looked like she was busting to tell me something.

  ‘Did you hear what happened on Harper?’ she said in an animated tone. She gave me a hug as she came through the door. Of course, I should have known that she would have heard. Tizzy was like a magnet for gossip and news. Thanks to all the committees she was on, she knew everybody, and her work at the university put her in the middle of things there. And her boss had been the one to give us tickets to the reception.

  But this was one time that I had more news than she did. She was bubbling over with details that the artist’s wife had fallen down the back stairs. ‘We have a set of those in our place,’ she said. ‘Theo is always saying that we should do something to make ours less treacherous. They’re so steep they’re almost like a chute. I don’t know if carpeting would help. I guess when they built the Rosalie Villas, they figured the servants would figure out how to navigate those stairs without taking a tumble.’

  ‘I know all about those stairs from experience,’ I said.

  ‘You do?’ Tizzy said in surprise. ‘Tell me everything.’ The doorbell interrupted and I went to push the button to unlock the downstairs door.

  ‘We’ll have to talk about it later,’ I said, as I heard someone coming up the stairs. I knew that once I started telling Tizzy about it, it would take over and pull the whole group into the conversation. It wasn’t fair to them to take up their workshop time with neighborhood news.

  The door was still open as Ed reached the top landing and came inside. He looked from Tizzy to me. ‘I’ve got some great pages tonight,’ he began. ‘I hope Ben’s up for reading them. They’re so hot, the pages practically sizzle.’

  He missed our eye rolls and went on back to the dining room. I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t cleared the table for the group and rushed after him. Tizzy offered to man the door for Daryl and Ben.

  I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t sure if Ben would show. It would open a discussion about what was going on with him, and I wasn’t about to share his situation and how it had disrupted our relationship.

  Ed took his usual chair and looked over his pages again, smiling as he mouthed the words to himself. I deliberately didn’t try to read his lips as I moved the placemat and fruit bowl off the table. I had all the stuff on the sideboard when Tizzy came back with Daryl and Ben. I swallowed the surprise at seeing him and nodded a hello to both of them. Whatever he was feeling was hidden behind the neutral cop face.

  I got their pages from the previous week with my comments and handed them out while everyone settled in. Tizzy was practically twitching in her seat and I knew it was all about wanting to hear the rest of the story that I’d teased.

  Ed noticed that Daryl had a tattoo of a butterfly on her wrist and seemed fascinated by it. ‘I think I’ll give one to my character,’ he said. ‘Something that starts someplace visible and continues on someplace private.’ He took a sip from his commuter mug and his mouth slid into a lascivious grin and asked her if she had anymore that didn’t show.

  His comment was just enough to pop the cork on Daryl’s emotions. She literally sputtered air as she glared at him. ‘This is it,’ she said with distaste. ‘I got it under pressure from work.’ As the manager of a downtown clothing store that catered to twenty-somethings, she had to dress the part.

  ‘Your boss can’t force you to do that,’ Tizzy said, getting indignant.

  ‘No, but peer pressure can. I couldn’t take them all showing off their tattoos anymore and then looking at me like I was some kind of outsider, so I got the butterfly.’

  ‘Time to read,’ Ed said, holding up his pages and handing them to Ben. There was the slightest raise of Ben’s eyebrows as he glanced down at the first words and began to read. Ben kept to the flat police report sort of tone, but he still had trouble. Ed’s romance novel was turning into one explicit sex scene after the other. His attempt at making the characters seem more developed was hearing their inner thoughts as they were going at it.

  Ben set down the pages, letting out a breath of relief.

  ‘Well?’ Ed said expectantly. We all looked at each other and I suggested we just be concerned with the grammar.

  Ben had brought some work, though only a few pages. I was disappointed to see that he’d gone back to the bare-bones style he had started with. Tizzy had brought a rewritten scene and everyone agreed it was improved. The fuss about the tattoo had only increased Daryl’s tension, and she was biting her lip as Tizzy read her pages. She had written a love scene with no details other than something like her heart swelled with love as they made contact.

  ‘You call that a love scene?’ Ed said. ‘What about the rest of their body parts?’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You need some throbbing, heaving, pumping stuff going on.’

  Because she was so overly sensitive, no one wanted to make a comment, and it usually fell on me to say something. I was always careful to say something that wouldn’t set her off. Certainly nothing like what Ed had said. We all looked at her, expecting an outburst.

  She turned to Ed and surprised us all as she said, ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ I think we all let out our breath collectively, so shocked that she didn’t have a meltdown. And we all probably had the same thought. We couldn’t wait until next week to see what she brought in.

  There was a little small talk at the end and everyone headed to the door. Tizzy turned back to me and mouthed call me as she mimicked picking up a phone and dialing. She knew that Ben had been coming back after everyone left. I knew it was driving her crazy to have to wait, and nodded in agreement.

  Ben was taking up the rear. ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, coming up close behind him. I watched as his shoulders hunched. ‘It’s not personal,’ I quickly added, and his shoulders relaxed. He went out with the others, giving me a nod as he did. I left the door on the latch and went back to the dining room to gather up the pages they’d left for me to go over.

  ‘I’m back,’ Ben called out as he came in the door. I was on my way out of my office, having dropped off the group’s work.

  He showed off a plate of food covered in foil. ‘As long as I was coming up here, I brought this. It made my sister’s day when I told her I’d bring it to you.’ Even with the cover on the plate, I could smell the spices and garlic.

  ‘An added bonus,’ I said. ‘Thank you for bringing it and for coming back. I need to run something by you about my client who died.’

  ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Where shall we do this?’

  ‘Here’s fine,’ I said, gesturing toward the couch. It felt awkward, and I’d only turned to him because he was the sole resource I could think of who might help.

  ‘Would you like a beer?’ I offered. I’d been keeping it on hand for his visits and still had one left. He accepted my offer of it stiffly. Neither of us quite knew the parameters of our dialed-down relationship. I left him to sit down while I went to the kitchen.

  When I returned with the drinks, he was sitting on the couch, stroking his forehead as if he was upset. He sat up as I came in and resumed his non-expression expression.

  ‘I need your professional opinion on something,’ I said, hoping that hearing that would lessen the tension.

  He took the beer and flipped open the bottle and offered a thanks before taking a sip. ‘OK, shoot,’ he said, leaning back against the cushion.

  ‘It’s about the other day.’ I told him how something had bothered me about how Maeve had looked when I found her. ‘She had a gash on her head and my first thought was that she’d knocked herself out and would be OK. I was shocked when the paramedics weren’t able to revive her. I kept thinking back to when I first saw her and wondering why I’d thought that. After hearing that the medical examiner wouldn’t sign off on the cause of death as being accidental from the fall, I did some research. Head wounds cause a lot of blood because the scalp has blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. I remembered that while there was the gash on her head, there had been almost no blood. There was no way there would have been so little blood for the size of the gash on her head … unless—’

  ‘She was dead when she took the fall,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘It takes a beating heart to push all that blood out.’ I leveled my gaze at him. ‘It could mean that someone killed her and then pushed her down the stairs.’

  ‘You were right about it not being anything personal,’ he said with an almost chuckle. ‘But what do you want from me?’

  ‘Could you use a favor and find out if that’s what Jankowski thinks?’

  ‘I’d have to call in some favors and it might take a bit of time, but sure,’ he said. ‘Off the top of my head, your thinking sounds good.’ I reached for the covered plate and pulled off the foil. Tomato sauce with what looked like ground meat oozed over thick lasagna noodles and he made a face. ‘Sorry, I’m afraid my sister didn’t know what we’d be discussing. And if you’re worried, the crumbles are vegetarian. Some people have meatless Mondays. Sara has decided on meatless Tuesdays, even if it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.’

  True I’d been talking about blood, but I was also starving and that latter won out. I dug in. ‘Tell your sister a thousand times thank you for the food. It’s delicious.’ I cut another piece off and speared it with the fork.

  He cracked a smile. ‘I’m sure she’ll be glad to know.’ There was an awkward silence after that. He looked at the beer bottle in his hands and rolled it back and forth, seeming uncomfortable. ‘I owe you more of an explanation.’

  ‘No, I just want to know if they think it was murder,’ I said. ‘It makes a difference in how I look at the notes she gave me. I mean, will I be looking for a suspect?’

  ‘I didn’t mean about that, but I see your point,’ he said. ‘It’s about my wife.’ He let out a sigh. ‘She showed up without warning, and I’m confused, to put it mildly. For a moment I fell for her saying how wrong she was for walking out and that she wanted to make another start. I think it’s human nature to want something like that. But, well, I’d moved on.’ His voice faltered. ‘With you.’ He rushed to say that he knew that it was just being each other’s plus ones and spending some time together, and was casual. ‘The problem is …’ He stopped and blew out his breath. ‘I can’t just tell her to go. Since she didn’t sign the papers, she’s still my wife. I need to get this cleared up first.’

  He left it hanging, but I understood what he was saying. It was confusing for him to suddenly have a wife again and a sort of girlfriend. ‘I don’t know what constitutes cheating in this situation. Am I cheating on you to be with her, or vice versa? Who’s the other woman?’ he said as he set the empty bottle on a coaster. ‘The only way I can deal with it is to keep a distance from everyone, including from my sister. She really tore into me, but I told her the only way I’d come over was if she let me work it out without her comments. And that’s without her knowing that we’re still married.’

  I had set down the fork. The blood talk might not have dented my appetite, but this sure did. When I turned back to look at him, I melted when I saw the look on his face. His eyes were dark and his mouth had settled into a sad expression. ‘I really appreciate that you made such an effort to keep me coming to the group. And that you’re not angry at me.’

  ‘Upset maybe, but not angry,’ I said. I debated how much to say. It was not my way to run after someone who was rejecting me, but he wasn’t exactly rejecting me. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, so I flat out asked him what he wanted.

  This time he smiled. ‘Well, I’d like to have my cake and eat it too,’ he said, watching me react to the cliché. ‘In non-cliché terms, continue to see you while I work things out with her.’

  I made a face. ‘That sounds like I get to be the other woman,’ I said. ‘Not my style.’

  ‘I said it poorly. Yes, when she first showed up, I did have that feeling that she realized she was wrong and wanted me back. Nobody likes to lose. But something happened when she left. I don’t really want her back. She says she wants to move in and resume like nothing happened. I told her I’d have to think about it. It was more of a stall while I sort things out.’

  I couldn’t fault him for not being honest, and now I had to think what I really wanted. No matter what he said about how he felt, they were still married, and whatever had brought them together in the first place could do it again. But much as I’d tried to be so controlled and rational, I missed his company.

  ‘I don’t usually do things like this,’ I said, with a smile to keep it light. ‘But I’m OK with us being friends while you sort this out.’

  ‘I was hoping for more,’ he said, looking a little dejected. ‘But I can work with that. Is a hug OK?’ he asked and held out his arms.

  ‘I guess even friends give hugs,’ I said.

  THIRTEEN

  By the time Ben left, it was too late to call Tizzy, so I sent her a text suggesting we meet for coffee in the morning. It might be too late to make a phone call, but still was early enough that I could do some work. There was a feeling of peace in the building, as if everyone had gone to bed, and it seemed like a good time to give the pages another look to see what I had to work with.

  I made myself a cup of tea and set up the stack of papers on the dining-room table. I’d seen the first few pages several times. I had the sinking feeling those few pages were the only ones that could be called a draft as I looked at some random pages beyond. On one, she had drawn an arc and had scribbles coming off it. I knew what a story arc was. There were seven points on it: inciting incident, rising action, crisis, climax, falling action and resolution. Her arc was a little different. She’d written the change, how life changed on the ascent of the arc and so good, award nomination on the top of the curve. Next to the portion of the arc that descended, she’d written I was a fool, Michael up to old tricks, not usually a vengeful person, but.

  I gathered from the arc that she planned the beginning of the book to be about Michael’s rise from a nobody artist to being in the running for a big award. The rest of the book sounded like it was going to include some unflattering observations about him, and it implied she was angry about something.

  The next page had a list. The wedding, Michael’s baggage, first gallery, Michael’s dream studio, third wheel. I let it all settle for a moment and realized that the pages weren’t going to be much help without Maeve to decipher what everything meant. I made a list of people to talk to, figuring I could get enough from them to create a story. I wasn’t going to worry about whatever Michael had done to upset her. The publisher just wanted a book about Michael, and she’d made it clear that I was free to create whatever was needed. I didn’t want to make it too saccharine, and would put in just enough controversy to make it interesting. I’d already decided to include more about Maeve and who she was. Michael had seemed a little hostile to me and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to talk to him again. While he probably knew the most about Maeve, I had sold him that the book was about him and his art. He seemed pretty full of himself, and I wondered how forthcoming he’d be about her part in his success anyway. I thought about the school where she taught. I would reach out to them.

  I started to go through the journal that was stuck in the middle of the papers. Most of the entries were notes about her day, reminding her to pick up the cleaning and such. There were a couple of short entries describing events they’d gone to and then I found something strange. It was in the middle of a page and said, He underestimates me. The power I have and when pushed will use. I had no idea what that meant and chalked it up to something to deal with later.

  I was anxious to have something to show for my time. I found something with the title D Day, That’s D for Dog. Under it were some notes about what was described as the day when everything changed. I’d heard enough about it from the reception, what Theo had told me and from what Maeve had said at our one meeting that I thought I could write it.

  I took the page and went to the computer and knocked out my first writing for the book. When I was done, I sat back and read it over.

  I can’t believe that I missed it. If only I hadn’t gone for the sandwiches, I would have been there when our world changed. Michael thought they were just another couple going through the art fair. After a day of too many people going by without giving the paintings a second look, he was happy someone had stopped. Even better, they really loved the painting of the Scottish terrier and the sleeping flowers, showing off that the dog they had with them seemed like the image of the one on the canvas.