Murder on the First Day of Christmas (Chloe Carstairs Mysteries) (15 page)

    
Nancy refilled my glass and her own, then topped off Mom’s from which only two sips had been taken. We were in.

    
“Fifteen years, you say? That’s like forever,” I prompted.

    
“I guess he thought I’d be content to dry up and wither away.”

    
Detective stuff is not for the squeamish.

    
“You’re still a vibrant woman,” I pointed out.

    
And she was, really, with the well-maintained look of a woman of a certain age - hair still a honey blond with enough highlights to look luminous, enough lowlights to look natural. Plumpness worked in her favor, the effect girlish and pretty. Her skin was smooth and clear, only its structural underpinnings - the telltale softness about the chin and hollowness around the eyes - giving any hint of her age. Maintenance had become a full time job.

    
I glanced at my mother, whose face was so familiar, but I couldn’t look at it as objectively. Still, she looked damned good.

    
Nancy remained on the subject of her husband’s indifference. “What did he think I was doing for the last decade and a half? Crossing my legs and waiting for death? Hardly.”

    
Too much. I grabbed the empty pitcher. “Are we ready for another?”

    
Without waiting for an answer, I headed for the kitchen. The Peke flashed me a look on the way that said, “Coward.”

    
Nancy’s huge, Spanish-style kitchen gleamed with mahogany cabinetry, limestone counters and more stained cork floors. Over an old porcelain farm sink, a gorgeous leaded glass window turned the blue of the pool and the green of the grass into a watery fresco.

    
We had offered to break down her Christmas décor. One the services Mom offered with her designs was the packing away of ornaments and trim in neatly labeled boxes, so they would all be within easy reach next year, but Nancy had said the trappings of Christmas gave her comfort.

    
As a result, thousands of Santas smiled at us from every surface. Now I don’t know about you, but if my husband had been zipped into a body bag wearing a red flannel Santa suit, I wouldn’t want reminders of the fact staring me in the face. Call me crazy.

    
But back on the subject of infidelity.

    
Through the screen door, I could hear Mom taking advantage of my absence to get to the good stuff. I hid a shudder as I mixed another batch of mimosas in the Waterford pitcher. From where I was standing, I had a clear view of the action.

    
“What woman can live without passion?” Mom asked.

    
Not that Nancy needed much prompting. “Not this woman. Oscar wasn’t the only one who got a little on the side among other places.”

    
She took a gulp from her glass and looked disapprovingly at Mom’s full one. Mom took another sip.

    
“How did you manage it?” Mom morphed into the picture of innocence. “I would’ve been terrified of getting caught.”

    
“It’s not so hard.” Nancy laughed and took an extra-large sip of her drink.

    
“Not so easy, either. You would have to keep your wits about you. Any close calls?”

    
Nancy remained quiet, clinking the ice in her glass. They sat for a moment, listening to the pool pump out back, a far-off lawn mower and the Peke worrying wetly at an itch on his back leg.

    
Damn. Just like that, we’d lost her. One moment it’s sentimental musings, the next inappropriate sharing and now moody silence. I was having a hard time keeping up.

    
Mom sent me a questioning look through the screen door. I could only think of one way to get Nancy moving again and tilted an imaginary glass up to my lips. All the way up.

    
The Peke’s glance said this was not my best work. Mom made a face, but I gave her a stern look. She took a deep breath and drained her glass.

    
“Any more where that came from?” Mom asked, meaning information as much as alcohol. I took that as my cue and headed back out.

    
Mom gave Nancy a ‘not in front of the children’ look, for which I was grateful, so after refilling their glasses I made a big show of clearing away the bagels and returned to the kitchen.

    
“What were we talking about?” Mom wondered aloud. “Oh, yes, trying not to get caught.”

    
“As a matter of fact, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been.” Nancy was back in dish-the-dirt mode.

    
“Oscar caught on?”

    
From where I was standing, I could see that the Santa we had found by the pool the night of the murder was gone. Had the police taken him? Was he in an evidence locker at the police station?  Weird.

    
“Are you kidding?” Nancy said. “I’m still walking around.  Oscar was king of the double standard.”

    
“Let me guess, someone else got wind of it and couldn’t wait to lord it over you.” Mom met my eyes over the rim of her glass.

    
“You got that right.”

    
“Probably one of those catty wenches at the club, I bet.”

    
“I wish.”

    
“Who then? Not your…gentleman friend.”

    
I rolled my eyes. Did she have to sound like such a goody-goody?

    
“Don’t be silly. I chose them carefully. No, this was one of our friends. One of Oscar’s friends, really, a college buddy with too much time on his hands.” She stopped short of admitting it was Saul.

    
Liar, liar pants on fire, I wanted to sing. But didn’t.

    
“Did he try to get in on the action?”

    
“Certainly not.” Nancy grimaced. “He just wanted to taunt me with what he knew. He didn’t care about Oscar. He wasn’t looking out for his best friend. He liked secrets.”

    
“Sounds like our dearly departed friend, Saul Taylor.”

    
Up went Nancy’s defenses. “I didn’t know Saul all that well. I couldn’t say.”

    
“You weren’t missing much,” Mom said. “To know him was to dislike him.”

    
“I thought y’all were friends.” Nancy again took Mom’s measure.

    
“Let’s just say I knew him well enough to be careful around him.”

    
Nancy glared out over the pool. “If you knew him at all, you knew that. Sneaking around with his notebooks and his innuendoes and making threats. My marriage wasn’t perfect, but I sure as hell didn’t want it to end.” Her slip of admitting Saul was making threats didn’t even seem to register.

    
“I wouldn’t be surprised if someone found a way to silence those innuendoes for good,” Mom coaxed.

    
“I wouldn’t be surprised or upset.”

    
“Do you know of anyone else Saul was holding something over?”

    
“I’d sure like to get a hold of his computer discs to find out.”

    
Now this was good, and Mom must’ve thought so, too. “You think he kept more on those discs than book research?” she pressed on.

    
“Oscar thought he did. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if Oscar had them, and they’re now gone for good.”

    
“Why Oscar?” Mom sounded as incredulous as I was.

    
“He didn’t seem stressed that they were missing, and he would have been if he ad thought he could find something out about Tony Trianos from those discs.”

    
“He really had it in for Trianos, didn’t he?”

    
“It was tearing him up inside.”

    
“And when Saul started hanging around him?”

    
“Oscar was furious, but Saul liked his little games.” Nancy’s tone was bitter, her glass empty.

    
“Did Saul say why he was spending so much time with Trianos?”

    
“A book, of course, the subject of which he only hinted at. Whether the book was about Trianos or he was just a source, I couldn’t tell you.”

    
“If Oscar did have the discs, wouldn’t he at least have told Jack Lassiter?”

    
Ooh, good one, Mom.

    
“Probably not. Oscar thought Jack was a mama’s boy.”

    
I pictured the tall, broad shouldered Jack Lassiter. A mama’s boy? Say it ain’t so.

    
“You must have been going crazy, thinking Oscar had the discs.” Mom plodded along like the trooper she is.

    
Nancy sent her a slow catlike smile. “Depends on how he got them in the first place.”

    
“You’re losing me.”

    
“If Oscar wasn’t supposed to have the discs, he couldn’t admit what he knew except about Trianos, which he wouldn’t be able to sit on because it was his life’s mission to bring that man down. If he revealed something about me, then I’d know he had the discs, which would’ve given me leverage. At the very least, Oscar would’ve tampered with evidence. At worst, he had murdered Saul.”

    
“You really think he would’ve done something to Saul?”

    
Shocker.

    
“Not really, but who knows? Not that any of it matters at this point.” Nancy’s tone had become philosophical.

    
“Meaning?”

    
“Saul was trying to hurt me with his little games. I lived in fear of my husband finding out about my…hobbies. Now Oscar’s gone, and it all seems so meaningless. No one can hurt me any more than they already have.”

    
I had to wonder if she had personally seen to that.

CHAPTER 16

    
Late afternoon found me finishing up sketches for our next large project in Arbor Falls - Monica Dupree’s all-white installation. Mom was letting me take the lead on this one and I was determined to dazzle her. After all, this job was perfect for me.

    
Monica appreciated understated drama, pristine white with bold shots of color, gleaming silver and glittering beadwork. Her outrageous budget let me be completely indulgent mixing fabrics and textures, and I had snapped up bolts of burnt-out velvets and cascades of the softest silks. This was our last house of the year, and I couldn’t wait to see it completed.

    
Truth be told, I couldn’t wait to put this entire season behind me. It’s hard to keep the Christmas spirit and work so hard around the holidays, especially with bodies turning up in houses you’re decorating. I know I sound like a brat, but really. I can’t work like this, people.

    
I was just completing another fruitless eBay search for Mom’s Waterford Hope for Healing ornament, when she came by my loft to check on my questioning of Jack Lassiter. My friend Dana had set up a lunch for the three of us - on the sly, of course, so he wouldn’t know we were trying to pump him for information.

    
“That’s not what you wore?” Mom asked without even a hello as she gave my chocolate brown cords, striped tee and clogs a worried glance. “Cute, but hardly appropriate for sleuthing.”

    
“Uh, no.” My eye roll implied, but not executed.

    
Like I don’t know any better. We’re a pale people, we Carstairs women, and must rely on every artifice we can get our hands on to reach our cuteness potential. I would never go near Jack Lassiter in clogs.

    
My mother must’ve known she was overplaying the Mom card, because she didn’t point out that the lenses of my glasses were so smudged they looked like I’d fallen face-first into a plate of mashed potatoes. For some reason this drives her crazy. And for some reason, that makes me happy. Typical mother-daughter stuff.

 
   I fixed us some tea - hot for her, iced for me, and we headed to the settee. Two weeks before Christmas and still open window weather. You had to love Birmingham.

    
“Dana’s still being cagey about the bridesmaid dress she expects me to wear, which does not bode well,” I started conversation flowing.

    
“You still haven’t seen it? I thought the wedding was next month.”

    
I nodded. “She’s got my measurements. I go for a fitting in a few days. As for lunch, I barely spoke to Lassiter. He was going to eat with us, but got a last minute call he had to take.”

    She wrinkled her nose. “Too bad. Now it’ll be twice as hard to arrange a ‘convenient’ meeting.”

    
“Not so hard,” I smirked. “We’re going out tomorrow night.”