Holmes & Moriarty 02 - All She Wrote (MM) (21 page)

Her heart perhaps. I don’t know. It seems unlikely. She was always in excellent health. In fact, she was a health nut.”

“Where did the wine come from?” I asked.

Anna shook her head. “We used two bottles of red last night. One bottle came from the wine cellar. I have no idea of its provenance. I don’t really keep track of things like that.

Besides…I was distracted last night, not really paying much attention. The second bottle…” She hesitated.

We waited. I made an effort not to look at J.X.

“The second bottle was a gift from Victoria Sherwell.” Anna added roughly, “Before you say it, Christopher, I don’t believe for one moment that Victoria poisoned that wine.”

“Was it homemade wine?” That was J.X.

“No. It was an ordinary bottle of medium-priced wine. The kind of thing you can pick up anywhere really.”

“Did the bottle appear to have been tampered with at all?”

Anna gave him a fierce look. “The police asked the same question, and my answer to them is the same as it is to you. Do you
really
think I’d have served that wine to you all if I had
any
suspicion that it had been tampered with? Especially with the previous attempts on my life?”

“Hey, the question has to be asked.” J.X. was cool in the face of her heated response.

Anna ignored him and turned to me. “What I really came here to tell you, Christopher, is I can’t put you in danger any longer. I should never have sent for you. If I’d realized there was any danger to anyone else, I wouldn’t have. I hope you believe that.”

I waved that away impatiently. “It goes without saying, Anna.”

“I want you to change your plane reservations again. I want you to leave as soon as possible. I simply couldn’t bear it if something else happened.”

“We’re not going to leave you in the middle of this.” I glanced at J.X. for confirmation. It wasn’t coming anytime soon. He looked back without expression. I frowned at him and the line of his mouth thinned, but that was it. He remained otherwise unmoved.

“I’m serious,” Anna said. “It’s too much to ask. Besides, my own stepson can’t leave the sinking ship fast enough. Why on earth should you have to stay to hold my hand?”

“Ricky’s leaving?”

“Yes. He lives in New Milford, though. It’s not as though he were fleeing the country.”

“We’re not going to leave you, Anna.” I glanced at J.X. again. His eyes would have had to be onyx for his gaze to be any stonier. I said slowly, “At least, I’m not.”

She looked from me to J.X. “Well, perhaps you’d better talk it over. In the meantime…I confess I still don’t feel very well. I’m going to have something on a tray in my room and make it an early night. I can have the cook do the same for you. Or perhaps you’d like to go out to dinner.

I fully understand why you might not want to dine in this house again if you don’t have to.”

I opened my mouth, caught J.X.’s eye, and closed it again.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

When J.X. had safely closed the door behind her, I went on the attack. “What the hell was that about?”

“What?”

“Your attitude. You were one step from openly rude.” And it was a baby step at that.

“So’s she.”

“No she wasn’t. She was just…being Anna. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

He slipped out of my robe and tossed it over the back of the chair she’d been sitting on.

Stalking over to the dresser, he pulled out clean jeans and a sweater. “You want the shower first?”

Apparently we weren’t going to talk about it. Maybe that was as well. I didn’t want to get into a big fight with him. Especially while I was still basking in the afterglow of some of the best sex of my life.

I asked instead, “Are we going out to eat?”

“Sure. If that’s what you’d like.”

“What did you want to do?”

He glanced over his shoulder and wriggled his eyebrows at me. I shook my head regretfully.

“In that case I could go for some Italian.”

“Will a middle-aged WASP do instead?”

His cheek creased in a smile. “Don’t flirt with me if you’re serious about leaving this room.”

“I’m serious about finding somewhere to eat where the only thing I have to worry about is MSG. Neither of us have had anything to eat since breakfast. And you didn’t have breakfast.”

“Okay. Dinner in town it is.”

That seemed easy enough. Too easy?

I had a shower with J.X.’s help, and then J.X. had a shower. I was shaving, watching his reflection—a dark, lean blur—moving behind the patterned glass of the shower door.

I turned off my razor, said over the beat of water against tiles and his tuneless humming,

“Listen, J.X., I can’t leave. But it’s okay if you want to go home. I understand.”

His voice echoed from inside the shower. There wasn’t even a pause. “You don’t understand anything if you think I’m leaving you here.”

I was sort of touched and sort of irked. “You know, I’ve been taking care of myself quite effectively for…a number of years. I’m the one who
didn’t
get poisoned last night.”

He turned off the shower taps. Popped opened the shower door. Water made shining rivulets in the sable etchings of his body hair. His hair was black and glossy as a raven’s wing.

“Kit, she told you to go home. There isn’t any point sticking around.”

“You know why she said that. She’s feeling guilty.”

“She said it because that’s exactly what she wants. She wants you to go home.”

I said slowly, “You really
don’t
like Anna, do you?”

“No. I don’t. For one thing, I don’t like the way she talks to you.”

I saw my bruised, half-shaved, startled expression in the remaining circle of mirror before the steam from the shower swallowed it.

“She doesn’t mean anything by that. It’s just her way.”

“She’s a bitch.”

It was so succinct and matter-of-fact I couldn’t seem to come up with an answer.

“You don’t see it,” J.X. said. “You’re fond of her and you feel like you owe her something. Maybe you do, but my impression of Anna is that she doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. And I’ll tell you something else, I’m tired of those digs she makes at you.”

“What digs…?” My voice dropped out. I realized I didn’t—did
not
—want to hear this.

“Never mind.”

“Like last night at dinner. Those little jabs about Miss Butterwith. And you having writer’s block.”

“I
said
never mind. I don’t have writer’s block. Anyway, it’s pretty ironic hearing you objecting to someone giving me a hard time over my writing.”

He was busily toweling himself off, pastel plush towel mopping shining, brown skin. He spared me a look. “Look, in case I’ve failed to make it clear, I think you’re a fine writer. I think you’re wasting your time and talent on the Butterwith books, but if they make you happy, fine.

Anna talks to you like—”

“Okay.” I cut him off. “Enough. That’s not true. You two got off to a bad start. Don’t drag me into it.”

He continued to briskly saw the towel against his shoulder blades. His expression was closed.

“And I’m staying on for a couple of days,” I added. “Just to make sure she’s really all right.”

His mouth curled up derisively. He refrained from comment.

For once.

I’d conveniently forgotten that driving into Nitchfield for dinner entailed getting into a car again.

It was stupid to be nervous—especially since I had so little actual memory of the accident—and yet as we walked out to J.X.’s rental car, I could feel my palms dampening, my heart starting to race.

“Would it be easier if you drove?” J.X. asked suddenly over the crunch of our boots in the snow.

“What?” I threw him a quick look.

“You’re still edgy about riding in a car. Would you prefer to drive?”

How the hell could he know that? Was it a cop thing or was it because he was paying me the kind of attention Miss Butterwith generally reserved for the rare
cypripedium calceolus
orchid? “I don’t know. What I do know is this is ridiculous. I need to get over it.”

“It’s not ridiculous. I saw that car.”

I would have swallowed, but my mouth was so dry there wasn’t enough saliva. “Yeah, but I can’t even remember the crash. Not really.”

“Maybe if you’re driving, you’ll feel more in control.”

I hesitated. I did much prefer to drive, but I needed to consider his welfare as much as my own comfort. “I don’t think it’s a good idea with my shoulder.”

“Okay.” He accepted the logic of that immediately, so I knew it had been the right choice.

“If it helps, I’m a very good driver.”

“I know.”

“And on top of that I’ve had police driver training.”

“I know.”

We reached the silver sedan. He unlocked the passenger side and I slid in. The interior smelled of artificial new car scent and, very faintly, hospital antiseptic. My stomach gave a queasy roll.

To distract myself I pulled out my glasses and unfolded the list of names Victoria had given us of those who had taken part in the Santa Pal gift exchange.

J.X. came around to his side, climbed in, started the engine. The windows began to slowly defrost. We could see the lights of the mansion twinkling through the ice-limned trees.

I said, “So here’s the info on these two gift exchanges of Victoria’s…one was for the Nitchfield Book Club. The other was for the Woolsey Olivier Library.”

“She works part-time at the library.”

Nice to know he’d taken his responsibility seriously when I’d asked him to check out Poppy’s car. At this point he probably knew more about Victoria and the other members of the Asquith Circle than I did.

I continued to study the list as he slowly pulled away from the side of the road. “Hey.

Both Nella and Rowland Bride were part of this book-group gift exchange. And Poppy too.

Something she conveniently forgot to mention.”

“Poppy and Victoria are obviously good friends. They probably know who had whom for a Secret Santa.”

“Maybe.” I scrutinized the list more closely in the waning light. “We need to talk to Rowland. Maybe it had something to do with this book group they all belonged to.”

“Such as?”

“Who knows. Maybe someone snapped after being forced to read
Life of Pi
for the hundredth time.”

“Why don’t we leave it to the cops, Kit?”

“You really think the cops are going to look into this whole Secret Santa thing?”

“Yes. I do. If it’s connected to the poisoning. Of course.”

“I think it’s a lot more likely they’re going to notice Luke’s criminal record and stop there.”

There was an edge to J.X.’s voice as he said, “That’s not how cops operate.”

“It’s how some of them operate. I read the news. I watch TV.”

He refrained from comment, but I could tell he was annoyed. Well, maybe with good reason. One thing I’ve noticed in my research, even if I do write about an elderly botanist sleuth, is that being a cop is not like being an office worker. Cops have that band-of-brothers mentality like soldiers or firemen or other action heroes. Okay, in fairness maybe some office workers have that too. The minions at the DMV certainly seem to believe it’s them against the rest of us.

“I don’t mean you, obviously. I know you’d have been as conscientious as the rap sheets are long.”

He grunted. Not entirely assuaged, but mollified. He glanced over at me and his mouth twitched into a reluctant smile.

“What?” I realized what and put up a self-conscious hand to straighten my specs. “Hey, I’ve always worn reading glasses. This is not an age thing.”

“I know that. I remember you wore them to your panel at the conference where we first met. You looked very intellectual—and sexy as hell. I like ’em. They’re cute.”

Cute? My three-hundred-dollar Armani tortoiseshell glasses were
cute
? They were supposed to make me look erudite and distinguished.

He added with breathtaking honesty, “I want to fuck you in those glasses.”

“Uhhhh…” I made a sound generally only heard when police officers ask what you were doing three Friday nights ago at eight o’clock—and can anyone verify your alibi.

J.X. laughed, a low rasp of sound like warm, soft sand on bare skin. I tried to swallow whatever had lodged in my throat. “You know something else?”

“Er, no.” I sounded faint to my own ears.

“You have to stop with the age thing, Kit. You’re only five years older than me. We could have gone to school together.”

“Only if one of us jumped a year. Which, considering your sexual appetite, is only too possible.”

He laughed, but was serious when he said, “You’re using those five years to try and distance yourself from me.”

“I don’t think I am. It
is
a difference.”

“Kit, you’re forty. You look thirty. You act…well, never mind. You’re carrying on like you think you’re seventy.”

Was I? I guess it was no secret I’d been unpleasantly startled to find myself suddenly hitting the big 4-0. You’d have thought the previous thirty-nine years were sufficient warning. I glanced at his profile. “Okay. Maybe I’m a little hung up on the age thing. You have to admit gay culture is youth-oriented.”

“Oh hell.
American
culture is youth-oriented. No kidding. I’ve probably seen and done a hell of a lot more in my lifetime.”

“Well rub it in,” I said, offended.

“That didn’t come out right. I only meant I think we’re a good match in experiences and education. I don’t think about your age. There’s nothing to think about. Five years is nothing.”

“It’s the difference between being eligible for social security and not. It’s the difference between getting into porn flicks without your mother and not. It’s the difference between—”

“Okay, smart ass. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” I did. I thought it over. “You might have a point.”

“Age really is a state of mind.”

I groaned. “Please. Spare me the Quote.com pep talk. I agree that I might be preoccupied with my age. And…”

“And?”

Was I really going to share this? It appeared I was. “I guess that stems from the stuff going on in my career and from what happened with David.”