LITMIR.BIZ

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Beneath it all was the garage. The house was worth millions, and he wondered who would end up with it now that Eugenia was dead. He walked to the sitting room off the foyer, glanced around. “Anyone see a dog?”

      “What? A dog?” Jefferson asked.

      “A little white dog. It was the victim’s. According to her granddaughter, Eugenia never went anywhere without the damned thing.” He remembered the little white mutt, a terrier mix of some kind. The dog had been a pain in the ass the last time he’d visited here, and he figured it hadn’t improved with age. What was amazing was that the scrappy thing was still alive.

      Or had been.

      Jefferson walked up the stairs to the landing. “No dog, white or otherwise.”

      “Let me know if you come across it.”

      Jefferson flashed him a smile, showing off slightly flared teeth against her mocha-colored complexion. “Does it bite?”

      “Probably,” Paterno said. “It’s a Cahill.”

      She snorted, already back at the railing above and studying the balusters positioned directly over the body. Meanwhile, the techs had spread out, dusting for prints, collecting debris, and continually snapping pictures in their painstaking search for evidence.

      Quinn joined Paterno. “I’ll start with the phone records, the computer, and her date book. They’re all up in the library.”

      “She’s got a computer?” Paterno asked.

      Quinn nodded.

      “The granddaughter said she didn’t like them.”

      “I’ll check it out.”

      “See if you can find any legal records,” he added. “Insurance policies and a will.” Frowning, he stared at the interior of this immense house with its original art and expensive, if worn, furnishings. “A place like this might have a wall safe.”

      “Already checking,” Quinn assured him as she headed up the stairs to the library.

      Paterno glanced down at the victim again, a last look before she would be zipped into a body bag and placed on a stretcher. His gut clenched as he stared at the dead woman’s tiny body, dressed in its expensive pants, suit jacket, blouse, and scarf. As if she’d planned to play bridge or have tea with her friends. Her hair was messed and bloody now, but he guessed it had been recently done—smooth apricot curls were still teased and sprayed into position.

      Damn it all.

      He had a bad feeling about this.

      Real bad.

      At least the beer was cold, Cissy thought, though considering the outside temperature, she and Jack should have been sipping hot chocolate laced with whiskey or Bailey’s, the kind of drinks they’d loved on the few trips they’d taken, skiing at Tahoe and Heavenly Valley. Back in the days when everything had felt magical. She recalled coming into the lodge exhilarated from the ski runs, snow melting in Jack’s hair, his face red with cold. Clunking in ski boots, they had ordered drinks, then sat outside to stare at the clear, incredibly blue waters of the lake, and later, after soaking in a hot tub outside, they’d spent hours in their room making love.

      A lifetime ago.

      Cissy took a swallow from her bottle and pushed those particular thoughts back into the locked closet where they belonged. No sense getting maudlin or nostalgic. So she had loved Jack with all of her heart; so it didn’t work out. No big deal. It happened all the time.

      But you never thought it would happen to you, did you?

      Cissy had believed that when she married, it would be for life, to a man who loved her unconditionally. She craved love like an addict—an emotional need any two-bit shrink would say lay in the debris of her broken childhood. And they would be right. Cissy had never experienced that kind of love, not from her grandmother, and certainly not from her egomaniacal mother or narcissistic father. She’d thought with Jack and B.J.—her own little nuclear family—that life would be different.

      Oh, how wrong she’d been.

      Now, sitting at the table they’d bought at a secondhand store and refinished together, their first of countless “projects,” she and Jack shared what they could salvage of the pizza and tried not to let the silence grow too uncomfortable.

      She leaned back in “her” chair—the one positioned next to the French doors leading to the backyard. Cissy wouldn’t allow herself to think about their search for this house and how excited they’d been when they found it. It had been run-down, in need of “TLC,” the real estate ad had said, a “fixer-upper,” a “handyman’s dream.” This hundred-year-old Victorian had been all those things and more, but they’d both fallen in love with it the minute they stepped over its rotting threshold. They’d bought it, hired a contractor, and spent the next year working every night and weekend, ripping up thin, filthy thirty-year-old carpeting then stripping the hardwood floors and refinishing them to a lustrous sheen. They’d replaced or regrouted tile and peeled off layers of the ugliest wallpaper she’d ever seen. They’d worked to exhaustion, loving every minute of it.

      And Cissy was certain she had conceived B.J. the very first night they’d moved in. Probably while testing out the durability of the living room floor. Now her eyes strayed to that room and the shining patina of the oak floorboards. Just around the corner was the fireplace, and there, on a sleeping bag that they’d used for camping, they’d created their first and only child. She’d thought she’d love Jack Holt forever.

      Pushing that uncomfortable thought aside, she took another swallow of beer, then righted Beej’s sippy cup before he sprinkled milk all over himself, the high chair, and the surrounding walls and floor. Her son wrinkled his nose and showed off his new teeth. “Get down?”

      “In a sec, honey.”

      “I know this isn’t a good time,” Jack said, “but I want you to rethink the divorce.”

      “Rethink,” Cissy repeated. Like she hadn’t thought and thought and thought about it already.

      “We need to give it another shot, Ciss. Hell, we’ve hardly been married long enough to have a rough patch, much less survive one.”

      She studied this man she’d married. Was he a raving lunatic? “You had an affair, Jack. With Larissa. End of story.”

      “I did not—”

      “Sure you did,” she cut him off. “We’ve been through this before, so let’s not do it again. You brought me home, and now you can go. You don’t live here anymore.”

      “Not my choice, Ciss.”

      “Doesn’t matter. It’s best.”

      “I miss you.”

      “Should have thought of that when you were sleeping around.”

      “For the millionth time, I wasn’t. You know it too. You’re just looking for an excuse.”

      “Fortunately for me, you gave me a damned good one.” She stood, unstrapped B.J., and plucked him out of the high chair. Wiping a spot of milk from his cheek, she balanced him on her hip, then set him on the floor. As he loped to his toy box in the living room, Cissy squared off with her husband. “I caught you coming out of Larissa’s house, Jack. Please don’t insult me with the old ‘but nothing happened’ story. Just leave, Jack. This is pointless.” Beej wandered back into the room, a beat-up stuffed frog hanging from one hand, and Cissy said, “Say good-bye to Daddy, honey.”

      “You just won’t listen. You’re as pigheaded as ever.”

      “Pig-headed,” Beej repeated on a giggle as Jack lifted him. He patted his father hard on the shoulder and chortled, “Dad-dee! Dad-dee!” so many times that Cissy thought she might puke. Pigheaded? She would have liked to argue the point, but Jack and Beej were doing their male-bonding thing, laughing and playing with each other, so she

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