Straight Silver

“Claims he must’ve fallen asleep because next thing he remembers is waking up on Ms. Devine’s divan.”

A cop who could be cute. Serras was getting under my skin.

“He doesn’t remember anything else.”

Since my husband’s idea of sobriety is adding lime to his tequila shooters, for once he could be telling the truth. Blackouts can do that to you. I knew.

“He has a lawyer?” Ex or not, the man had rights—just not in my bed anymore.

“He hasn’t been charged with anything yet.”

Police lingo for “no evidence.” “You’ve got nothing to hold him?”

“He’s got no alibi.”

“And no motive.”

“He’s nervous. He put in a call to Michael Kingsley’s office. They sent an associate down to hold his hand.”

I raised an eyebrow. Michael Kingsley was a high-priced mouthpiece to white-collar criminals. Not washed-up golf semipros.

“So, maybe Della’s murder is more than an unfortunate incident?”

“Let’s just say, your ex-husband has already phoned for a ride home.”

“Can I see him?”

“Why?”

Cops. Always a question. “Catch up on old times.”

Five foot eleven ex-strippers. Always an answer.

Serras cocked his head toward the benches in the hall on either side of the front desk. “You can wait, but he might be a while.”

“Not if Michael Kingsley has his back and you guys have nothing on him but a sleepover.”

Serras assessed me with a lean gaze and looking as good as an underwear ad. “What’s your stake in this, LeGrande?”

I tried to decide if behind that hooded gaze I was a suspect. “You mean besides the fact my ex-husband was sleeping with a friend of mine who was murdered last night?”

He added another weapon. Silence.

Suddenly I felt truly tired. “Maybe it’s just a small, small world after all, Serras.”

A door opened. A group of men came into the hall. I saw Paul before he saw me. He was tan, fit, looking like a vote for the charmed life except for the puffiness around his eyes and a viciousness in his gaze that only a hangover and being held by the police could cause.

“Somebody else here to give you a ride, Chumsky.” Serras said as the group approached.

“Popular fellow,” one of the cops in the group remarked.

Paul turned, gave me the good smile that told me I’d already given him a ride. I didn’t smile back. Being reminded what a chump I’d been makes me testy.

My ex-husband dismissed his hotshot lawyer and came toward me. He stood too close. The viciousness left his face. “Hey.” His voice was low and for a moment, I forgave myself for falling in love with him once. I turned my head as he leaned toward me. His mouth fell onto my hair instead of my flesh with its still-intact nerve endings. I can be suckered by dogs, children and fools—but at least I know it.

“Good to see you still care, Silver,” he murmured into my hair.

“Don’t go getting all sloppy on me, Paul. What do you know about Della’s death?” I whispered.

“Nothing.”

I pulled away.

“Heard you got a new gig, Silver.”

Yeah. Emergency contact. I glanced at Serras and the others watching us.

Paul turned to them. “Am I done here, gentlemen?”

“Make sure you stay where we can find you, Chumsky,” a cop built like a side of beef said.

Paul raked his gaze over the cop, stopping at the skinny red scratches on his forearms. “She must have been a hellcat.”

The cop took a step. Serras put a halting hand on the man’s arm, across the scratches.

“Take your ex-husband home, LeGrande,” Serras advised.

I pushed Paul toward the door. We reached the exit, stepped out into the moist heat.

“Still the charmer.” I gave him that much.

“It’s a gift.”

“Pretty impressive legal counsel.”

“Kingsley plays at the club. I cut ten strokes off his game. He’s grateful.” Paul smiled. If an actor, he would have been cast as a gigolo or a second-rate hood. “You look good, Silver.”

“I didn’t come here for compliments.”

“Why did you come here?”

Good question.

“Feeling guilty?”

That’s the problem with marriage. People get to know you.

“You’re not responsible for Della’s death, Silver.”

“Then who is?”

“The police are trying to find out.”

“Della was a stripper who snorted in her off hours. The only family that has come up was run over by a train several months ago. They won’t even have her buried before the case comes off the role call, and you know it.”

“Listen, all I can tell you is Della and I used to get together, have a few laughs. Yesterday afternoon, we’d gotten together. She said she was going to try and get off early at the club. Why not stick around? I waited. When she didn’t call, I fell asleep.”

I stopped short. “Della didn’t call you?”

Paul gave me the same patient look he’d given me the first time I’d told him I wanted a divorce.

“It’s been a long day, Silver. C’mon, we’ll pick up my car, and I’ll buy you some dinner.”

“One of the girls that worked at the Oyster overheard Della make a phone call last night from the club to meet someone after work.”

“She probably did call me. I fell asleep and didn’t hear the phone.”

“Was there a message on her answering machine this morning?”

“Now that you mention it, it was beeping.”

He was lying. That marriage-getting-to-know-someone deal is a two-way street.

“C’mon.” He smiled. “You can interrogate me over Italian.”

Translation: pasta for me, a bottle of burgundy for Paul. But he was hiding something and I wanted to know what. I stretched out my rubber band to the point of breaking, let it go.

“Dino’s is still good,” I suggested.

“Fine,” Paul agreed. Food wasn’t his primary concern anyway.

We headed to my car. Paul folded himself into the compact. “How’s Aunt Peggilee?” He put on the country club charm.

“She’s at Margarita Mania at the Elks.”

Paul went all teeth. “She’s a live one, your aunt Peggilee.”

I had to agree.

“I thought Della was yanking my chain when she told me you left Billie’s for higher education.”

His sidelong gaze told me he was picturing me in a short plaid pleated skirt and loafers with ankle socks. Paul liked fantasy in and out of the bedroom.

“She might have been yanking some things of yours, but that was the truth. When you’d two get together anyway?”

“Met up with her one night at Silky’s downtown about six months ago. She was finishing her night. I was just starting mine.” He looked out over the dash. “Two old friends, that’s all. She’d call me every now and then. If I was free, we’d get together, have a few drinks, a few laughs.” He looked at me. “When’s the last you’d seen her?”

I steered into a one-way street. “A while.”

“She’d mention you now and then. She was all gung-ho on getting out herself.”

“Leaving Billie’s to go to the Oyster wasn’t exactly the direct route.”

We picked up his car. I insisted on separate cars. He followed me to the restaurant. Inside, the dim lights and the candles flicking in Chianti bottles made all the waiters look soulful. We were ushered to a round table for two. I ordered eggplant; Paul ordered a bottle of burgundy. I began another bruise on my wrist.

“After her brother’s death…” Paul shook his head. “Della wasn’t having an easy time with it.”

“Billie told me about it. Said police ruled it an accident.”

Paul said nothing, watched for the wine.

“Auntie says there is no such thing as an accident.”

The wine came with the bread.

“Is that what you think?” Paul tasted the wine. Satisfaction smoothed out his face.

I shrugged. “All I know is Della’s dead, and a few months earlier her brother dies also.”

Paul took another large swallow. “Coincidence.”

“Auntie doesn’t believe in coincidence, either.”

Paul smiled closemouthed, raised his glass. “To Auntie.”

“How was Della really, Paul?”

“You know Della. She always liked a good time, but when I caught up with her, after her brother’s death…” he stopped, drank. “Sometimes it stops being fun.”

Been there. Paul had never left. Della had. The hard way.

“Did she talk about it? Her brother’s death?”

“No.” He poured another glass of wine, drank half of it. I pushed the basket of bread toward him. He ignored it.

“She never said anything about it?”

I met his gaze hard. His pupils dilated. Could be the booze. Or he could be lying. Both, I decided.

“Maybe, once in awhile. After a night of it, when the speed was wearing off but the shakes hadn’t set in yet. Problem with junkies. If they don’t cut it with booze, they get high-strung.”

My ex-husband, lifestyle coach.

“What’d she say?”

He waved his glass. “The usual.”

“What would that be?”

“How unfair it was, what a good kid he was, how it should have been her,” Paul singsonged.

Last night it was, I thought. The waiter set my antipasto before me. I popped a cherry tomato, chewed a hot pepper until tears blurred my gaze. My ex-husband drank. Things were beginning to blur for him, too.

“Why do you think she wanted to see you last night?”

I received the choice smile that put him in the good graces of the country club’s male members and in the firm beds of their wives. “The usual.”

This time I didn’t have to ask him for a definition. Our meals came. Paul ordered another bottle of wine, pushed the pasta around his plate. I hadn’t eaten all day. I finished my salad, entree and several more bread-sticks, heartened by the return of my normal, lusty appetite. Obsessions seem to revolve around three main categories—drugs, sex or food—and presently the last one was the safest for me. Fortunately, at thirty-one, my five-foot-eleven frame with one-eighty curves could handle it for now although I knew it was only a matter of time before things would spread and soften and I’d be left with cats and cross-stitch and the weekly tabloids for relief.

I ordered espresso, Paul a double brandy. Paul was a drunk but he wasn’t a sloppy drunk. I’d never seen him get abusive or belligerent. He just sat up straighter, and I could tell by that gleam in his eyes he believed himself somebody significant. Paul couldn’t have murdered Della Devine.

I finished my espresso, caught the waiter’s eye.

“Another, ma’am?”

“You can bring the check.”

“No rush.” My ex-husband handed his glass to the waiter.

“Another double, sir?”

Paul nodded. “Have another espresso, Silver. It’s not often we get together.”

“That would be because we’re divorced.” I shook my head at the waiter. He left to get Paul’s drink.

“Not by my choice.”

I pushed my chair from the table. “I’ve got an early class tomorrow.”

“And I’ve got an early tee time. One more drink and then we’ll go.”

It was an old refrain, one I’d sung often before, too. Still Della was dead, my ex-husband was a drunk and my dreams were as tenuous as the rubber band on my wrist.

The waiter returned. “Give me another espresso,” I ordered. “Make it a double,” I decided, sounding cavalier, feeling crazed.

Paul’s smile said, “That’s my girl.”

Old husbands like old habits are hard to break.

An hour and a half later, careening on caffeine and Paul unsteady when he stood, we walked to our cars. He’d set his keys on the table when he’d taken out his wallet to pay the bill. I’d lifted them when he’d gone to the men’s room. He was patting his pockets now.

“C’mon, Paul, I’ll give you a ride home. You can pick up your car in the morning.”

He opened his mouth to protest.

“I’ll swing by before class, give you a ride.”

“No need. Just sleep over.”

A drunk is bad enough. A leering drunk was pure sorrow. I might never need another rubber band again. “Let’s get you home.”

“The night’s young, Silver.”

He was right. Eleven forty-five was when the fun began in the clubs. I continued to my car. I looked back. Paul wasn’t following me.

He shrugged, gave me a thin smile. “An empty house. An empty bed.”

An empty bottle, I thought.

“I’m going to hang out a little longer. Give me my keys.”

“You’re in no shape to drive.”

“Sweet that you care, honey, but you aren’t responsible for me any longer.”

“That doesn’t mean I won’t feel guilty if something happens to you.” I unlocked my car and got in. I rolled down the window.

“Admit it. You still care, Sterling.” He used my favorite nickname.

“One funeral per week is my limit.” I started the car. “Last chance.”

He came toward the car, although I knew he wasn’t coming with me. He was beyond persuasion. He leaned down. “Give me a kiss goodbye.”

I took it on the mouth this time. I felt he deserved that much. I watched him walk away, the man I’d once legally vowed to love. He headed toward a neon martini glass with a winking olive.

I WOKE WITH a caffeine headache. Auntie was sitting at the kitchen table with her soy milk and muttering to herself over the day’s stock market report. I poured a cup of black coffee. In for a penny, in for a pound. She let me take a sip before she asked with a skinny gaze, “Where were you last night?”

“Not shimmying to salsa.” Caffeine headache or not, I was mean in the morning. I sat down, instantly contrite. “Sorry.”

“Honey, you think I pay any mind to you in the morning? I know you’re ornerier than a gut-shot she-boar. It don’t faze me none, because you get it from me. Carl burped at the breakfast table one morning over fried eggs, and I stuck my fork in his arm. It stood right up on its own. Had to change his Sunday shirt and we were late for ten-o’clock service. Had to tiptoe and squeeze in next to Loretta Knolls with her big behind and her husband who smelled of pork fat. Carl didn’t burp at the breakfast table ever again.”

Carl was Aunt Peggilee’s third husband. Matrimonial mistakes are another thing I inherited from the Le-Grande women. Except Momma, who said she loved men too much to marry one. As I get older, Momma gets wiser to me.

“You’ll mellow with the years, Silver.”

I rubbed my forehead.

“Rough night?” Aunt Peggilee’s gaze was on my black-and-blue wrist.

“Paul was seen leaving Della’s apartment yesterday morning. The police picked him up for questioning. I went down to the precinct. We had dinner.”

Aunt Peggilee shook her head, her beehive wobbling and threatening to give way. “Silver, Silver,” was all she said, but she looked at me like I was a calf being led to slaughter.

I took a swallow of coffee. “He drank to you.”

“The man would toast Beelzebub himself if it meant a good gulp.”

Must have been the fact I’d been foolish enough to marry him that made me feel compelled to defend him. “A lot of gals have done a lot worse.” It was a weak argument, but it was all I had.

“Silver, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the man myself. I just mind him with you.”

“He’s not with me. We had pasta together.”

Auntie raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, I had pasta. He had several bottles of red. He and Della had been running into each other—”

“Like Mack trucks, I imagine.” Auntie took a delicate sip of soy milk.

“And I wanted to talk to him about her.”

Auntie eyed me over her glass. “Did you learn anything?”

I shrugged. “Pretty much what I expected. She was really shook up by her brother’s death and in a bad way.”

Aunt Peggilee studied me. “It’s not your fault, Silver.”

“I know. I just don’t know why…” I shook my head, too much caffeine and too little sleep making me sappy. “I wish I’d called her. Or she’d gotten in touch with me.”

Auntie Peggilee put her hand on mine, squeezed. “She did, honey.”

I DRANK ANOTHER CUP of coffee while I dressed. I went to my underwear drawer, opened a small box next to a dried-out honeysuckle sachet and took out an elastic. A new day, a new rubber band. I closed the drawer, picked up Paul’s keys from my dresser top. I jangled them. Besides his car keys, there were others, house keys, office keys, a smaller one that probably opened a locker. I dropped the keys into my purse on the kitchen counter and grabbed two Tootsie Pops out of the cupboard. I locked up, Auntie having left for breakfast bingo and Adrienne knocking off a despised but required phys ed credit with an early-morning fencing class. I started the car, got the air conditioner blasting. I unwrapped one pop, stuck it in my mouth and headed out.

By the time I’d gotten to my second candy-coated chewy center, I’d called Paul on my cell phone twice to tell him I was on my way but there was no answer. If I couldn’t rouse him before Macro, I’d leave the keys, and he could call a cab.

Paul lived in a small but well-designed modern home on the edge of one of the tony neighborhoods. Tips on the greens had gotten good.

I went to the back door, didn’t even bother to knock, twisted the doorknob before pawing through my purse for the keys. The door clicked open. The house had a security system, but the alarm hadn’t been activated. Liquor might make the old pathetic but it gave the young a sense of invincibility. Paul, at thirty-five, was on the cusp.

I called out hello, not expecting an answer. “Paul?”

The back door opened into a kitchen with stainless steel appliances whose constant reflection would make a woman past forty take a sharp object to their surface, but was a perfect panorama for a premiddle-age country-club pro. The room was arranged for a House Beautiful spread, the uneven trio of chairs around the table instead of the expected four the only touch of whimsy. Paul was a fastidious housekeeper. I’d watched him cotton swab a heating grate once for twenty minutes and still didn’t understand. Funny the things that endear a person to you.

As I walked into a spacious, open living room with a vaulted ceiling, I saw the bleached white briefs first. Directly eye level, Fruit of the Loom, waist size thirty-two. Paul always wore Fruit of the Loom, waist size thirty-two. Mundane details such as these allowed me to step toward the body in the white briefs hanging from the ceiling rafters.

“Damn.” I fumbled for my phone in my purse as I ran into the kitchen. I grabbed a knife from the end of the built-in butcher-block cutting board, found my phone as I ran back into the living room, dialed 911. “Damn,” I told the woman’s voice as I righted the missing kitchen chair under Paul’s dangling body in the spotless white underwear. I climbed onto the chair.

“Ma’am, do you need…”

As I reached high for the rope, I saw the red garter necktie with the gold double D around Paul’s throat. I sawed at the rope with the knife.

“Ma’am…”

The body spun full circle. I looked down from the rope, directly into Paul’s dead eyes, sputtered the only other recent savior I’d met. “Serras.”

I sawed harder, my weight pushing against the body. The body swung back. I lost my balance. The chair tipped. The phone dropped from the tuck in my shoulder. I clutched Paul’s red-gartered neck with the gold double D charm, wrapping my legs around his hips in a position that we’d actually both been quite fond of in our past. We twirled Cirque du Soleil for several seconds, then our weight ripped us loose. We went down, me clinging to my dead ex-husband as if climaxing. My head struck something hard, sharp. Until death do us part. Hell, like I’d ever meant that literally. Down I went into darkness.

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