Suzzanna had been eyeing me the whole time and shook her head. ‘Cleaning person, hah.’ That was all I heard before one of the officers escorted me back to the entrance hall and sat me on a bench looking out on the front porch.

  As I sat there looking out the window, and saw the paramedics loading an empty gurney back into their rig, I realized Maeve was dead.

  NINE

  The man in the suit was clearly trying to place me as he approached, but I recognized him right away. Detective Jankowski and I had met several times before. It was late in the day, but I suspected he always had that worn look about him. His eyes lit with recognition after he looked at the clipboard that one of the officers had handed him. Instinctively I stood, wanting to be on the same level he was. It was a power thing.

  ‘Veronica Blackstone,’ he said with a tired smile. ‘So, we meet again.’ I waited for him to add a comment about my mystery writing, but he said nothing more.

  ‘We need to talk.’ He looked around the entrance hall and through to the dining room and kitchen beyond. ‘Where shall it be?’ He offered his car or the precinct, neither of which sounded appealing.

  ‘Or there’s my place,’ I said. I reminded him I lived nearby and I watched his expression dim.

  ‘Right, the third-floor walk-up with no elevator,’ he said with a weary sigh.

  He looked like he needed a jolt of java, I thought, chuckling at the phrase. It sounded like something out of a 1940s movie. ‘I’ve got some fresh ground French roast and cream,’ I said, noting to myself that what I’d just said would never have been in one of those old films, where the coffee was probably described as strong and bitter.

  ‘OK,’ he said finally.

  He drove the short distance and parked in the spot in front of the no parking sign that it seemed was always parked up with cops going to the corner coffee shop.

  I was glad the vestibule was empty because I wasn’t thrilled at having all my neighbors knowing I was once again being questioned by a detective. That relief ended when we got to the second floor. Ben was standing outside his sister’s door. He covered any awkwardness he felt with a flat cop expression. His gaze went from me to my escort, recognizing him from before. Jankowski gave him a cursory glance and then pushed on across the landing.

  As we went upstairs, I heard Sara’s voice as she opened the door and brought her brother inside.

  I let the detective in my place and he stopped in the entrance hall, looking around. ‘I remember this place now. They don’t make buildings like this anymore. The new apartments are like boxes.’ He sounded appreciative and I agreed. He looked down the hall. ‘I suppose there’s a dining room and then the kitchen with a small bedroom.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were into local architecture,’ I said.

  ‘I see a lot of interiors,’ he said. ‘Not always under the best of circumstances, but it helps me to have an idea of the layout. So I know where someone might be hiding.’

  I considered offering him a tour, but it seemed like a better idea not to offer up anything I didn’t have to.

  ‘As I remember from before, you said you inherited it and you live here alone,’ he said. Was this small talk or was he looking for information?

  ‘Except for him,’ I said, gesturing toward Rocky, who had just walked into the living room.

  ‘Right. It’s just you and the cat,’ he said. I knew what he was thinking – single woman of a certain age with a cat as a companion. I had thought as much myself. It had a whole connotation that went along with it – implying I was fussy, a control freak and probably love-starved. I wondered if any of it was true.

  ‘All right if I sit on the couch?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, go right ahead,’ I said a little too quickly. It was probably a little too desperate of a move to show that I wasn’t some sort of tense singleton. While he made himself comfortable, I went to make the coffee. I carried it in on a tray along with a small pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar. He used both generously. He even repeated the excuse he’d offered the first time he’d had the highly adulterated coffee – that it was the afternoon slump.

  ‘I see you’re still old school,’ I said as he took out a notebook and pen.

  ‘More dependable than trying to type on screen. Everything slips around and that presumptive type changes stuff.’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘Now then …’

  It started with what I expected: asking why I was there, what I’d seen, etc. Since it seemed like this was a formality and that her death would be chalked up to an accident, I wasn’t worried about being a suspect, or person of interest, which it turned out was another way of saying suspect.

  I explained what I’d been hired for and that I’d only met her a few times. ‘We were really going to get started when we met today,’ I said. Figuring that was it, I sat back and waited for him to gather up his things, but he looked at his empty cup instead. ‘Is there any left in the pot?’

  Then we weren’t finished, I thought, wondering what else there was to say. I got him a refill and watched him fix it up and drink off some before he spoke. ‘What exactly was her condition when you found her?’ he asked.

  I explained that I had not realized it was a person at first. ‘I thought it might be a blanket. Then I assumed she’d knocked herself out in the fall and called for help. I didn’t check her pulse if that’s what you mean. I thought she was still alive.’

  He didn’t ask me why I’d thought that, but I began to wonder myself why I’d expected her to come to and be OK. I didn’t get very far with my thoughts before he asked me a jarring question. ‘Do you know of anyone who would want to harm her?’ He watched my expression change. ‘The cause and manner of death hasn’t been determined. We just ask for more than we need.’ He’d made quick work of the second cup.

  ‘I barely knew her,’ I said.

  ‘How did you get into the house? It’s just a little strange that you were there and her husband thought you were part of a cleaning crew.’

  I explained going to the front door and that the wind had blown it open.

  ‘And you just walked inside a stranger’s house?’ He leveled his gaze at me, waiting for my response.

  ‘What we were working on was supposed to be a surprise for her family. She didn’t want him to know why I was there,’ I said.

  ‘A good surprise, or a bad one?’ he asked, trying to appear casual, but I could tell his attention was heightened.

  There was no secret about who her husband was or that he was nominated for a big award, so I told Jankowski what Maeve was creating with my help. Jankowski didn’t know about the Scotty dog paintings, at first anyway, but as I described them more, he nodded with recognition. ‘So that’s who he is. One of my kids got one of the posters.’

  It was the first time he’d mentioned anything about his life outside of being a detective. ‘How old?’ I asked and he gave me an odd look.

  ‘Grown,’ was his answer. He flipped the notebook closed and stood.

  Got it. He wasn’t about to start giving details of his family. Seeing that he was ready to leave was a relief anyway. I wasn’t so sure that he believed I wasn’t there when she fell.

  He thanked me for the coffee. ‘I may want to talk to you again.’

  After he left, I filled my mug with the last of the coffee and dumped in the rest of the cream from the pitcher and threw in some sugar. I too was in an afternoon slump, to put it mildly.

  I wanted to zone out for a while and let everything that had happened settle, but Caleb called. I’d forgotten that I’d told him I had an idea for him to make the cards he was sending to his wife. I hadn’t mentioned there was artwork involved for fear of scaring him off. I still had the paper full of flowers, pumpkins and everything else. It had been exactly as Maeve had said. Fun, easy and the end result nice. The thought of her brought back the last image I had of her sprawled on the stairs. Something seemed off. Caleb kept talking and I couldn’t pursue the thought. He wanted to set up a time to see what I was talking about … Actually, he wanted to come right over and get started. The coffee had helped a little, but the events of the day had left me drained, and under the circumstances I wasn’t up for doing an art project. We agreed to a time in a few days, and I scribbled it down on my calendar, glad to have gotten off the phone.

  I needed something to pull myself together. I didn’t have it in me to work on any complicated crochet stitches and started one that was the plainest of the plain. Just rows of single crochet in a wheat-colored yarn. I had to make two of them before I could function. It was simply too much to think about.

  It was dark by now and the wind was rattling the windows. I could feel swirls of chilly air that snuck around the edge of the balcony door and came inside. Leaves were flying off the tree out front and landing on the balcony. I shivered both from the cold and from all I’d been through. The best I could do was wrap myself in an old shawl I kept around the back of my office chair before I went back to the kitchen to survey my options for dinner.

  There was a rap at my front door and my first thought was that it was Sara. I didn’t know how much she’d seen of Jankowski, but I was sure she’d wonder who he was. I was hoping she might have a plate of food, too. As I pulled open the door, I sniffed for food smells, but only caught a whiff of lemon hand soap. Instead of Sara, Ben stood back from the door frame.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I said. After what Sara had told me and the way Ben had acted at the last meeting of the writers’ group, I hadn’t even considered that it might be him and, judging by the way he was standing halfway across the landing, he wasn’t sure about being there either. I was surprised, glad to see him and confused all at the same time. ‘I think that came out different than I meant it,’ I said, referring to my greeting. ‘I just didn’t expect it to be you.’

  He seemed to be trying to keep an inscrutable expression, but there was a hint of concern. ‘I saw that detective. I wanted to check if everything was OK.’

  ‘No leftovers,’ I said, looking at his empty hands. It was an effort to lighten the moment and cover the hodgepodge of emotions I felt.

  His expression stayed serious and he dropped his voice. ‘I didn’t want Sara to know I was coming up. She thinks I went home.’

  I opened the door wider and stepped aside. ‘C’mon in anyway.’

  He stepped into the entrance hall. ‘So why was a Chicago PD homicide detective escorting you home?’ he asked.

  ‘Before we get to that,’ I began – this was my chance to say my piece to him in person, ‘I know there’s been a change in your status. But you should stay with the writing group. You have really been making progress and, besides, we need you to read Ed’s copy.’

  He seemed relieved that I was keeping things light. ‘I don’t know about that. Ed seems to have toned things down,’ he said, almost cracking a smile. ‘You were going to tell me about the detective.’

  ‘I recognize the cop trick,’ I said. He was trying to keep the conversation going in the direction he wanted it and off anything personal. ‘And I don’t want to keep you from whatever.’ I knew there was an edge in my tone. I really needed to learn how he managed that unemotional cop tone.

  ‘I understand how you might be angry,’ he said. His shell was beginning to crack. ‘Tell me about the cop, and then I’ll try to explain.’

  ‘Are you staying by the door so you can make a fast escape?’ I said, noting that he hadn’t made a move to sit.

  ‘The idea did cross my mind.’ The shell was dissolving and his expression was turning him into the person I knew. It had taken a long time for him to let his personality show through. He even looked different when he had the cop persona. It was as if the lights were off inside.

  ‘Would you like to sit?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s kind of late and Mikey wore me out with piggyback rides, so sitting would be good.’ I gestured to the living room and he took his usual seat on the couch. It had gotten that we’d shared the couch, but it felt wrong now, so I went back to the armchair where I’d originally sat.

  There were a few moments of awkward silence and then I began. Since I’d told the group nothing about the possible job with Maeve, I had to backtrack and tell him who she was and that I’d been doing some work for her. The whole episode from earlier came tumbling out with all the pent-up feelings. It was the first time I’d seen a dead body. Despite my best efforts, I began to cry. I hated to cry in front of anyone; not so much because I felt uncomfortable, but because it made the viewer feel awkward and like they had to do something, or talk me out of crying.

  As a cop, he must have had to deal with all kinds of emotional outbursts, and I wondered if there was special police training on how to deal with tears. He must have aced it if there was. He handled it perfectly. He got some tissues to hand me and didn’t seem uncomfortable as the tears continued to roll down my cheeks. If anything, his behavior seemed totally impersonal. I had to admit that a hug of comfort would have been nice. He listened as I gave him the details of finding Maeve.

  ‘It sounds like an unfortunate accident. You said yourself that you caught your foot on those stairs and they were steep.’

  ‘Or maybe not,’ I said, having contained my tears. Ben sat up straighter as I told him that something seemed off.

  ‘Can you be more specific?’ he said.

  ‘That’s just it. I can’t quite figure it out.’

  ‘Did you bring it up to the cop?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He hardly views me as a colleague and it’s just a vague feeling. Can you imagine how he’d react to that?’ I said. ‘Besides, I didn’t want to stir things up with him, since I was the one who found her and—’

  ‘He could tag you as somehow involved,’ Ben said, finishing my thought.

  ‘Yes. He was already implying that I might have been there when she fell.’ Crying had left me with a stuffy nose and I used some of the tissues he’d given me to blow it.

  ‘You sure know how to handle tears,’ I said. ‘It’s probably another of those things you learn in police school.’

  ‘It’s called an academy, and the closest they came was talking about how some people used tears to try to talk their way out of a traffic ticket.’

  And then there was a grand silence as he seemed to be collecting his thoughts. I probably should have left it alone, but I thought it might help if he knew he didn’t have to start from scratch.

  ‘Sara told me your ex is back,’ I said.

  His eyes flashed with upset. ‘Sara shouldn’t have said anything,’ he said. ‘Not without knowing the whole story.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She called me out of the blue.’ He shot a glance at me, knowing he’d used a cliché, but I withheld any reaction. It wasn’t the time to talk about word choices. ‘She came over and did a whole number on me.’ There was a pause and I wondered if he was going to go into detail. Thankfully, he didn’t. The last thing I wanted to hear was about some hot reunion between the two of them. ‘She had a whole story about what a mistake she’d made and then she dropped the real bomb.’ He shook his head with disbelief. ‘She’d never signed the divorce papers.’ I noticed that he was having a hard time making eye contact with me, which I could kind of understand. I wouldn’t have wanted to look at me either if I was telling that story. ‘I was careless and didn’t pay attention that I’d never gotten the final documents. It was a sore spot and I was glad to ignore it.’ I was trying to keep my calm, but in my mind I was going what? An ex-wife showing up was bad enough, but a still-wife was a whole other thing. I forced my voice to stay even. After everything I’d been through with finding Maeve and being interrogated, I was operating on fumes.

  ‘So then you got your happy ending. You were confused and devastated when she left, and now that she’s back, probably makes it all good.’

  He put his face in his hands. ‘You got it right, except for the happy ending part.’

  He looked up at me and his eyes were filled with emotion. ‘I didn’t know what to say to you or Sara and I took the easy way out, saying nothing. I hoped to sort things out first, but my sister never knows when to leave things alone. I hadn’t bargained on her talking directly to Ashleigh.’

  ‘This is what I worried about when we became friends,’ I said. ‘If things didn’t work out with us, you would feel too awkward staying in the writing group.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t feel uncomfortable?’

  ‘I’m a professional,’ I said. ‘And I know how to separate my personal feelings from my work.’

  ‘Really? You really wouldn’t suddenly look at my work in a new perspective? Suddenly make a federal case out of a misplaced comma.’ I appreciated that he was trying to inject some humor to keep it from being maudlin.

  ‘I just let a cliché slide,’ I said with a smile. I suddenly felt drained from the day, the crying, and now dealing with his news. He picked up on it and got up to leave. I walked him to the door. There was an awkward moment on how to say goodbye. It had always been with a hug, but it suddenly seemed inappropriate. He finally gave me a salute as he left. I noticed that he’d never answered about continuing with the workshops.

  By now, even the fumes were running out, and I was too exhausted to think about anything. I settled for a peanut butter sandwich and fell asleep on top of the covers with Rocky cuddled behind my head.

  TEN

  I tried to have my Sunday morning ritual of a nice breakfast and read the Sunday paper. I still read the print edition. A nice breakfast was not another peanut butter sandwich on bread that even a few minutes in a frying pan wouldn’t help. I usually had something like waffles or an omelet, but I didn’t have the fixings for either. The best I could do was the French press coffee and apple slices spread with peanut butter. There was already a piece about Maeve in the newspaper. A small article, which was mostly about Michael, stated that she’d been found at the bottom of their staircase and that the police were still investigating the details. I stared at the article, trying to read between the lines. Did that mean that the police were questioning if it was really an accident? Had something seemed off to them, too? I wished I’d been able to squeeze some information out of Detective Jankowski, but he’d been pretty clear that he was there to get information, not give it. He wouldn’t even offer any details about his kid, other than that he or she was grown.