The Cruel Ever After (3 page)

Jane and Chess had lived together for three months after the wedding in a small apartment near the university. Chess was a sweet, generous guy, easy to talk to and full of enthusiasm for the recipes she was developing. Many of those recipes would become the Lyme House’s first signature dishes. Chess loved to eat, and Jane loved to feed him. She wasn’t sorry when he moved out and Christine moved back in, but she missed him—missed his humor, his belief in her abilities, and his encouragement. When he left Minnesota, he said he’d keep in touch, but he never had.

Folding his arms over his chest, Chess turned his attention to Cordelia. “And you. Still working in the theater?”

“You don’t know?” She was aghast, quickly filling him in on her illustrious career, underlining her current theatrical glitterati status in the Twin Cities.

“The Allen Grimby,” he repeated. “Isn’t that the one with the Byzantine interior? The one that looks like it came straight out of a 1920s Hollywood movie set?”

“We call it the AGRT.”

“To differentiate yourself from the Tyrone Guthrie Theater?”

“The what? Those are not words I recognize.”

Chess laughed. “Same old Cordelia.”

The waiter placed Jane’s and Cordelia’s sandwiches down in front of them.

“Order something,” said Cordelia, gazing hungrily at her croque-monsieur. “The food’s terrific.”

He seemed unsure.

“It’s on your ex,” said Cordelia. She flashed them both an impish smile. “When you’re done eating, I’ll drive you over to the theater, show you around. How’s that sound?”

He looked up at the waiter, then at his watch. “I’m not sure.”

“Of what?” asked Cordelia.

“I might have to be somewhere this afternoon.”

“Like where?”

When he didn’t answer, Jane said, “Give the guy a break. He doesn’t need to tell us his itinerary.”

Cordelia grumbled. “Fabulous. Chester Garrity. Man of mystery.”

“It’s not like that.”

“No?”

Glancing at Jane, he added, “Well, maybe a little.”

3

That night, Irina waited for her husband to fall asleep. He drank a third beer while he watched the end of a movie, then dithered for a while in the kitchen, standing in front of the open refrigerator. After downing half a roasted chicken and three slices of buttered toast while reading a gun magazine, he drifted off to bed. When he began to snore, Irina took it as her signal to tiptoe down the hall and slip out the back door.

It was going on one in the morning when she pulled up to the curb next to a large elm, where Chess was standing, smoking a cigarette.

“I thought you’d never get here,” he said, flipping the cigarette into the street. He pulled her toward him and kissed her fiercely.

“Are you okay?” she asked, breathing in his familiar aftershave.

“Better now that you’re here.”

Irina had met Chess on a working trip she’d taken to Istanbul last August. She’d flown to Turkey in order to meet with dealers in international antiquities. A mutual friend had introduced them at a cocktail party. Maybe it was being away from home, or drinking one too many martinis, or maybe she just needed the assurance that she was still an attractive, desirable woman. It had been far too long since she’d felt the way Chess made her feel that night. Over the next week, she came to understand how badly her emotions had atrophied while being married to Steve.

“Are you ready?” whispered Chess.

“If you are.”

She opened her trunk and removed a sack of cleaning supplies.

“Did you get everything on the list?” he asked.

“Everything.”

“I’ll pull your car into the back driveway when it’s time to carry out the body. I’ve thought about this and nothing else all day. The only way out of this mess is to make Dial disappear. The blood should be dried by now. We’ll wrap garbage sacks around him just in case. Then we’ll drive to the river.”

The idea of putting Melvin Dial’s body into a garbage sack was almost more than she could handle. She felt Chess’s strong arms encircle her.

“I’m sorry I had to ask for your help, but the old guy’s too heavy for me to handle alone.”

“No, I understand.”

“Do you?” When he kissed her this time, it made her shiver.

They walked down the street toward the house, hand in hand, Irina steeling herself for what she would need to do. The night had turned chilly, which made her wish she’d worn something more substantial than twill slacks and a light cotton sweater. Chess seemed to sense when she needed his reassurance. Without being asked, he slipped his arm around her waist.

“Look,” said Irina, pointing. “There are lights on.”

“I’m sure they’ve been on since last night. Nobody’s been around to turn them off.”

Irina had been in Dial’s home several times, so she knew the layout. The first-floor light came from the living room.

“This way,” whispered Chess. He led her through a neighbor’s yard, where they paused at the edge of Dial’s privacy fence for a quick reconnoiter. Everything appeared to be quiet. The only illumination came from a security light high up on a pole about thirty feet down the alley.

Just as they were about to move through the the gate, a rabbit scurried into the driveway and stopped, raising its head and sniffing the air. At the same moment, the sound of tires grinding on pavement warned them to stay put. An old Chevy van tore down the alley not five feet away from where they hid.

Chess squeezed her hand after it was gone. “Let’s go.”

He opened the gate, and they crept inside.

“God, but I hate the smell of lilacs,” he whispered, digging a key out of his jacket pocket and fitting it into the lock.

Irina wasn’t sure how anyone could hate lilacs, although she had to admit that the scent was pretty strong.

Once inside the kitchen, Chess took a flashlight out of his back pocket and switched it on.

“Where’s the mess?” asked Irina.

He stood still for a few seconds, looking confused. “Someone must have cleaned it up.” He set the sack of cleaning supplies on the kitchen counter and rushed through the pantry into the living room.

Irina followed at a slower pace. She found him standing by the couch with his hand messaging his forehead. “The body’s gone. And the bijar rug, the one he bled all over, it’s gone, too.” His gaze swept the room. “Everything’s been put back in its place. What the hell is going on?”

“What’s that?” asked Irina, pointing at a small white sack on top of the card table.

He lunged for it, held it upside down. A cell phone, a piece of folded yellow legal paper, and a bunch of snapshots fell out. Backing toward the lamp, he held the piece of legal paper under the light and read the contents out loud.

I took care of the body for you and

all the cleanup. For my effort I expect

to be paid. Keep the prepaid cell

with you. I’ll call and give you

instructions. The photos are part of

what will go to the police if you try

to stiff me. I’ve got more pictures

to show them—and the knife. I want

$50,000. Small bills.

Your Pal, Ed

“Jesus,” said Chess. “This guy must have thought that whoever killed Dial would come back to clean up the mess. But how did he get in here?” He walked over and checked the door. “Nobody’s forced it. The back door wasn’t jimmied either. I suppose he could have broken a window.”

They spent the next few minutes looking around, trying to figure out how Ed had entered, but in the end, they came up empty.

“He must have had a key,” said Chess.

“Who would have a key to Dial’s house?”

“How the hell would I know?”

Irina stepped over to take a look at the snapshots. The first one showed Dial’s body behind the couch. The next was a picture of Chess’s passport propped up next to one of Dial’s tassel loafers.

“Is this really your passport?”

Chess pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m afraid so. I usually keep it in the inner pocket of my jacket. When I looked for it this afternoon, it was gone. I didn’t worry because I figured I’d left it back at the hotel.”

“How did it get here?”

He walked a few paces away. “I always keep a couple of extra hundred-dollar bills in it. Maybe, when Dial and I were playing poker last night, I took the money out. I must have dropped the passport or set it somewhere. God knows, I was pretty smashed. I have no memory of any of it, but I’ll bet I’m right. This Ed person, he must’ve found it, jumped to a conclusion, and here we are. I’m on the hook, at least in his mind, for Dial’s death.”

Irina reread the note as Chess stuffed the contents of the sack into his jacket pockets.

“I don’t get it,” she said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “The fact that this guy has your passport and that he placed it next to the body doesn’t prove anything.”

“Let’s get out of the light.” He motioned for her to follow him back to the kitchen.

Standing in the semidarkness, he whispered, “You’re right. It doesn’t prove I did it. But if this guy sent the photos to the police, at the very least they’d want to question me. That’s the last thing we need. We’ve got to keep everything under wraps until we can find another buyer. I mean, we can’t exactly sell the Winged Bull of Nimrud on eBay.”

“You’d be surprised at what you can buy on eBay. Lots of the Baghdad Museum’s ancient cylinder seals are there. Coins. Cuneiform tablets.”

“Not the Nimrud gold. Nobody’s that stupid. We’ve got to find some way to pay this guy off, make him go away.”

Her resolve was beginning to crumble. “This is so much more than I bargained for.”

“We talked about the dangers.”

“I never expected someone to be murdered.”

Hearing a noise, they both ducked down.

“What was that?” whispered Irina.

He put a finger to his lips, waited a few seconds, and then said, “Let’s get out of here.”

They left the cleaning supplies on the counter, cracked open the door, and ran back through the moonlit streets to her car. Irina unlocked the doors, and they both climbed in. “What do you know about Dial?” asked Chess, breathing hard.

“He’s been buying from the gallery for years. I knew he wasn’t averse to crossing the legal line if he could get his hands on something really special. That’s why I approached him.”

“Does he resell what he buys?”

“Sometimes. He keeps a pretty low profile.”

“Does he always pay in cash?”

“Always.”

“But your mom would never deal in anything illegal.”

“Are you kidding? If she knew what we were doing, she’d turn us in.”

“The old guy probably had enemies. We can’t say for sure why he was murdered.”

She sat looking at the deserted street, wondering how everything had gone so wrong. One more day and they would have been home free. “What if his death
was
connected,” she said. “You and I both know there are people out there tracking down the looters from the Baghdad Museum.”

“Don’t go there.”

“But you’ve heard the stories, right? Dealers and buyers murdered in their sleep, drowned in swimming pools, knifed in back alleys. You don’t sell antiquities and not hear what’s going on.”

“I didn’t do the looting.”

“That’s a technicality.”

Chess rolled down the window to get some air. “So what do we do? Hide under a rock? We
need
the money from that sale.”

“Are you going to pay this guy off?”

“First I have to find the fifty thousand.” He looked over at her with a question in his eyes.

“I don’t have it.”

“Maybe I should start making arrangements to move the bull back to Istanbul.”

“You can’t leave.” She said it too fast, sounded too desperate. She feared that she cared more about him than he did about her. “I’ve still got a bunch of connections I never approached. I’ll start working them tomorrow.”

“If you think you can sell it—”

“I know I can.”

“But this time, we’ve got to be even more careful.”

She had a sudden thought. “Don’t go back to your hotel.”

“Where am I supposed to sleep?”

“Don’t use your credit cards, either. I’ll get you some cash.”

He kissed her again, this time more tenderly. “We’ll figure out a way to make this work for us.”

She couldn’t help herself. She twisted the words around inside her mind, made them mean what she wanted them to mean. What they were doing, dangerous as it was, would make their future together possible. That’s what he’d said.

For
us
.

4

Jane sat on the wicker couch on her screened back porch, nursing her third brandy and feeling like an insect working its way out of a web. At times, she puzzled so long and hard about life in general, and hers in particular, that her brain hurt. Her dog, a chocolate Lab named Mouse, stretched out next to her, his head in her lap. It was going on two in the morning. If she was smart, which apparently she wasn’t, she would already be in bed. She had a full day tomorrow and needed to get some sleep, but she was too restless, too caught in the sticky filaments of thought.

It had been a rough year. She’d broken up with her girlfriend last fall. She’d been estranged from her brother even longer than that. Her emotions had been on overdrive for so long that all she wanted was to kick back and relax. A quiet life was the new goal. A few drinks made the world stop, or at least made it seem manageable, although she’d gone down that road before and knew it led nowhere. She might just take a few weeks off, spend it up at her parents’ lodge on Blackberry Lake. She’d barely taken a full day off since March, buried as she was under the daily grind of running two restaurants in an economic recession.

Summer at the lodge was Jane’s first memory of Minnesota. She could still call up the image of her mother sitting at the end of the dock, feet dangling in the water, a heavy August sun dipping behind the distant trees. The scene had been repeated often that first summer, the year they all moved back to Minnesota from the southwestern coast of England. Jane’s father would walk out to check on her, bending over, touching her back, never staying long because he must have sensed that she needed time to adjust, to grieve the loss of her old home and get used to her new one. Her mother found solace in those sunsets, and perhaps a few answers to the riddle of life. Jane felt the need for a few of those sunsets now, too.