All Mortal Flesh

FORTY-SIX

Debbie burst into tears. She covered her mouth with one hand and groped toward Linda with the other, shaking so hard from her sobs she could hardly walk.

Russ couldn’t move. Couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take his eyes off his wife, off her confused, red-cheeked, alive face.

“Debbie, what’s wrong?” Linda dropped her suitcase and hurried toward her sister. “What are you doing here? Is it one of the boys?” She opened her arms and Debbie fell into her embrace, still unable to speak.

“We thought you were dead,” Russ said hoarsely.

Linda looked up at him, strands of her sister’s hair clinging to her jaw. “What are you talking about?”

He found he could move again, and he was on her in two strides, wrapping his arms around both sisters, squeezing them so tight Linda squeaked. “We thought you were dead,” he repeated, and Debbie nodded her head, smearing tears and snowmelt over Linda’s shoulder.

“If you had bothered to stop by and check, the house sitter I hired could have told you where I’d gone.” Linda’s voice was amused.

Russ reared back enough to look her in the face. “Audrey Keane was murdered in our kitchen. Her throat was cut, and her face was so disfigured we couldn’t tell it wasn’t you.”

Linda’s big blue eyes got wide and her perfectly shaped mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding me.”

“We thought it was you!” Debbie wailed. “Until last night, we thought it was you! I had to go to your house and pick out an outfit for you-for you-for the-” Her tears got the best of her again.

“But… my God, that’s horrible!”

“Where. Were. You?”

Linda flinched at the anger in his voice. She glanced away from him to where the Algonquin’s owner was stripping off his coat and gloves. “John let me use his house on St. Croix.”

Once, as a kid, Russ had spent the afternoon wading through the swift shallow waters of the upper Hudson, amusing himself by sending stick canoes over the edge of the nearby waterfall. He came home slimy from falling between the slick stones, and his mother had screamed at him and shaken him and swore if he ever did that again he’d be grounded for a month, and he didn’t understand why until later, when he found out two kids had drowned after they lost their footing and swept over the falls into the boiling rapids below. His mother told him she was furious because she loved him, but he didn’t understand why, if that was so, she didn’t cry and hug him and treat him especially nice, instead of sending him to bed early with no dessert and no TV.

Now he knew. He gripped Linda’s shoulders hard, so hard he could feel her sinew and bones beneath the heavy wool of her coat. “You were on a beach in the Caribbean while I was listening to your goddamn autopsy report?”

“I’m sorry! Next time I’ll take out an ad in the paper!” She twisted, but he held on fast, fingers digging in. Hurting her, the way she had hurt him.

“How the hell did you get there, anyway? Your passport was at home! All your makeup and stuff was at home!”

“You don’t need a passport. It’s a U.S. territory. And if you don’t know by now that I have a travel kit of makeup and toiletries…” She let out a puff of air that said, You’re hopeless. “Please let go of me.”

He released her, clenching his hands into fists against his thighs. Debbie relaxed her grip on Linda’s other side and began patting her pockets for a tissue.

Linda looked across the lobby. “John gave me a lift to New York, and then he let me use his private jet.”

Opperman made a deprecating gesture. “Not mine. The company leases it.”

“That’s pretty damn generous,” Russ said. “Don’t those things cost something like a thousand dollars an hour? What did you get in exchange? Free consultation on your curtains?” He knew he was being an asshole, but he couldn’t stop himself. Linda drew in an outraged breath.

Opperman looked at him coolly. “I’m sure given Linda’s skills, it would have been worth it. As it happens, we were flying several potential investors to BWI’s St. Thomas resort, so it was easy to drop your wife off on the way.”

“That’s why I did it,” Linda said. “I had been talking about how badly I needed to get away, and John told me about the investors’ junket. One of the men who works for him had a girlfriend who was a pet sitter-” She caught her breath and touched her fingers to her lips. “Anyway, it all came together in a rush.”

Debbie’s search for a tissue had come to the attention of Barbara LeBlanc. The manager retrieved a box from beneath the reception desk and handed them to the wet-faced woman. Debbie blew her nose. “I can understand why you didn’t tell him what you were doing”-a jerk of her head toward Russ-“but why didn’t you let me know?”

Linda looked down at the toes of her boots. Through her blond curls, Russ could see her face coloring. “I knew if I told you you’d want to come along. And I wanted this treat to be just for me.”

“That’s why I suggested she stay at my vacation home instead of the resort,” Opperman said. “Complete privacy.”

“And no access to international phone calls?” Russ snapped.

“Chief Van Alstyne.” Opperman stepped toward him. “It’s not my responsibility to see that Linda maintains contact with you. Maybe next time you can take your wife to the Caribbean.”

Russ wanted to plow his fist into Opperman’s smooth, rich face. Having no reason or excuse only made the urge stronger. Instead he strode across the floor to where Linda had dropped her suitcase and picked it up. “Let’s go.”

Linda looked at her sister. Debbie paused from blotting her face. “Do you want me to drive you? I have a rental.”

“If it’s all right with you, I think Russ and I need some time alone right now.” Linda shot him a look, half warning, half disappointment.

“Okay. I’ll follow right behind you.”

Linda stepped toward Opperman and held out her hands. He took both of them and smiled at her.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “For everything. And I apologize for-” She cut her eyes toward Russ.

“No apologies needed, dear lady. Shall I see you on Monday?”

“Fabric swatches in hand.” Linda smiled brilliantly at him, then hooked her arm through her sister’s and walked to the door. Russ followed, like an ungainly bellboy.

“Thanks for your help, Ms. LeBlanc,” he said over his shoulder.

“My pleasure,” she said. “I’m glad it all ended, um, happily.”

Russ paused. The gust of wind from the door closing behind Linda and Debbie ruffled his hair and sent snowflakes shivering down his neck. “Would you do me a favor and call the Millers Kill Police Department? Let them know my wife’s been…” Restored? Returned? “Found.”

“I’m right on it,” LeBlanc assured him, heading for her office.

Russ cast one more malevolent glance at Opperman, who smiled and waved good-bye.

Outside, the wind and snow buffeted him. He tucked his chin into the collar of his coat and trudged toward his truck. Linda, he saw, already sat inside, waiting for him. Debbie, parked next to the pickup, was trying to clear her windshield with her wipers. He rapped on her window.

“They’re frozen in place,” he yelled over the wind. “Hold on and I’ll knock the snow off for you.”

He jumped into the cab, fired up the truck, and got his brush out. He scraped and brushed his sister-in-law’s rental car first, then got the snow off his own windows and head-and taillights.

He rapped on Debbie’s window again. She cracked it open. “Stay a good three, four lengths behind me,” he said. “Go light on your brakes. These kinds of conditions, you’ll skid if you brake too hard.” He looked up and down her car. “Are you sure you don’t want to ride with us?”

“On that little Band-Aid of a backseat? No, thanks. Where are we headed?”

Good question. His house was still an unheated crime scene. “My mother’s,” he decided. Debbie made a face. “She’s got two guest rooms, and she’s a lot closer than the motel you’re staying at. We’re going to go down the mountain onto Sacandaga Road, then left onto Old Route 100. Follow it along the river, over the bridge, up a few miles into the mountains again, and there you are.”

“Over the river and through the woods?”

“Something like that. If you get stuck or anything, flash your lights. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

She nodded. He climbed into the truck’s cabin, now toasty warm, and stripped off his coat.

“What was that all about?” Linda said.

He put the truck in gear and backed it up. “I told Debbie to follow us to Mom’s.” He watched out his side window, making sure his sister-in-law didn’t get stuck. Getting out of where you were parked was often the most difficult part of driving in the snow.

“Why your mother’s? Why not go home?”

“I could ask you the same question. How come Mr. Sandman there was checking you into the hotel instead of taking you to our house?”

“Because he wasn’t sure if his sports car would make it all the way to our place and back here. At the hotel”-she glared at him-“we could each have separate rooms without crowding together like we would’ve if he had to stay at our house.”

Russ grunted. The Algonquin’s unplowed driveway was indistinguishable from the gardens on either side, and he edged forward, waiting for the thump that would tell him he’d misjudged and driven over one of their low stone walls.

“And what do you mean, Mr. Sandman? Were you reading my e-mails?”

“We were investigating a homicide. The whole department’s seen your e-mails by now. Not to mention all of our bills, financial records, and phone calls.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. Debbie was right behind him.

“You really thought I had been murdered?” Linda’s voice was so low, he could barely hear her over the hot air blasting from the defroster.

“I really did. We all did.”

She rested her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry.”

The pines lining the private road swallowed them. There was less snow on the pavement, and he could see farther despite the gloom of the forest.

“Did you have any suspects? In my, um, murder?”

“Me, for one.” He risked a glance at her. “There’s a state investigator come in to run the case. I’ve been relieved of duty. The staties and the aldermen thought either I had done it or I was fouling the investigation to protect whoever did do it.”

“That’s ridiculous. Who would want to murder me that you’d protect? Your mother?” She laughed, then fell silent. “No. Not your mother.” Linda turned to him. “Clare Fergusson. They thought your lover did it.”