Honeymoon

Chapter 116

SOMEONE HAD CALLED in a mysterious message to the Briarcliff Manor police: “I caught Connor Brown’s murderer for you. She’s at his house now. Come and get her.”

The police contacted me in New York City, and I got up to Westchester in record time, about forty minutes of daredevil driving through the city, then the Saw Mill Parkway, and finally treacherous Route 9A.

There were half a dozen local police and state trooper cars parked in the circular driveway at the Brown house. Also an EMS van from the Westchester Medical Center. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then hurried inside. Man, I was shaking like a leaf.

I had to show my badge to a patrolman in the foyer. “They’re in the kitchen. It’s straight—”

“I know where it is,” I said.

I realized that I wasn’t ready for this as I walked past the living room and formal dining area on the way to the kitchen. Everything in the room was familiar to me, and maybe that made it harder, I don’t really know. I was there but I kind of wasn’t, like watching yourself in a bad, bad dream.

The forensic technicians were already at work, which meant that the investigators were finished. I recognized Stringer and Shaw from the White Plains field office. I’d worked with them briefly when we set up the insurance scam to get Nora.

Her body was still there, lying beside the kitchen counter. A broken water bottle was near it, shards of glass all over the floor. A police photographer was starting to take pictures, and the flashes seemed like explosions to me.

“Well, somebody got to her.” Shaw came up and stood next to me. “She was poisoned. Have any bright ideas?”

I shook my head. I didn’t have anything close to a bright idea. “I don’t. But somehow I don’t think we’ll look too hard to try and solve this one.”

“Got what she deserved, eh?”

“Something like that. Bad way to go, though.”

I walked away from Shaw because I was feeling a need to shove him, or maybe punch out his lights, which he didn’t really deserve.

Then I went to see Nora.

I waved off the photographer. “Give me a minute here.”

I crouched down, readied myself as best I could, and looked at her face. She had suffered at the end, that much was clear, but she was still beautiful, still Nora. I even recognized the white linen blouse she was wearing, and a favorite diamond bracelet on her wrist.

I don’t know what I was supposed to feel, but I was incredibly sad for her and I was starting to choke up. I was also a little sad for myself, and for Susan, and our kids. How the hell had all of this happened? I don’t know how long I stared down at Nora’s body, but when I finally stood up again I saw that the kitchen had gone quiet, and everybody was watching me.

Inappropriate, I knew. Ought to be my middle name.