Over His Dead Body

CHAPTER 31

CASSIE DROVE PAST THE BUICK, puzzled by the trunk wired closed. Maybe there was a body in it, maybe her files. Chewing on her lip, she crunched onto the only drive in the neighborhood whose asphalt was covered with gravel, a landscape feature that she'd always thought gave her home a nice little rural touch. She pushed the automatic garage door opener in the Mercedes, and the garage door rumbled up. Inside, the Porche was resting comfortably all alone, but something didn't feel right. A strange car was parked outside, and even her garage was giving her the willies. She didn't want to risk getting caught in a dark space by a burglar, so she backed slowly out again. It seemed that every action she took now was a reaction to a threat. She had to plan every move like a strategist in a war. It was all new and frightening. After twenty-six years of playing everything in her life so safe, she was now teetering on a tightrope over a chasm.

Shivering, she stopped the car just outside the garage, turned off the engine, and got out. The Mercedes door was heavy. Solid steel. She had to push hard for it to close with a solid thunk. More creepy feelings prevented her from entering the house through the front door. Everything was a potential threat. Everything. Heart beating, she went around to the gate. There she let out her breath. The owner of the shabby black Buick was Charles Schwab, back in her yard again. More precisely, he was in her greenhouse. She recognized his shape and crew cut through the glass.

Shaking her head, a little angry now, she entered her Eden. She strode across the patch of lawn that was surrounded by borders planted thickly with dwarf lilies, half of which were ambrosially in bloom. She moved quickly past the patio, where the pool sparkled and the geraniums had yet to be potted. She walked under the arbor, heavily weighted with leaf and rosebudded vines that any day would burst open in a riot of color.

Mr. Schwab was turned away from her, leaning on the bench, apparently in deep contemplation of a particularly showy double spray of monarch butterfly-sized, yellow phalaenopsis. She turned the handle of the greenhouse and startled him.

"Wow, what a specimen!" he exclaimed without missing a beat as he turned his head and saw her in the doorway in her nubbly tweed suit with the short skirt and pink blouse, her sun hat and glasses.

"Hello Mr. J. P. Morgan," she said, "fancy meeting you here."

"Very funny," he replied. "It's Charles Schwab."

"Oh yeah, Schwab. I knew the name had something to do with money. What can I do for you, Mr. Schwab?" All of Cassie's own code buttons were flashing. She was scared of this guy Schwab, and at the same time she was not scared of him at all. It was funny. She was aware he could do her a lot of harm, and somehow he still managed to remind her of a cute guy in high school. No one in particular, he was just the type she used to like. The one with the shy smile who wasn't really shy once you got to know him.

"Nice outfit. You can call me Charlie if you want." He turned around all the way to get a better view.

Click. High school. Cassie blinked. The feeling of the past in the present was strong. She shivered in the heat. "Thank you. What are you doing in my greenhouse, Charlie? Interested in gardening?"

"Girls are supposed to like it when you compliment them on their outfits." There was the smile.

Click. Cassie was back there, eighteen, attracted to a guy, hoping he would ask her to dance. Click. She was fifty, married to a comatose man who hadn't loved her in years.

Puzzled, she ducked her face into the shade of her hat. "Checking out my orchids?"

"Yes, I hope you don't mind. Very impressive. They really are."

"Sublimation," Cassie quipped.

"No kidding, which one is that?"

"All of them. Orchids are amazing. I don't even think of them as flowers. They're more like exotic creatures." She smiled.

Just their names alone set Cassie dreaming: phalaenopis, dendrobium, cattleya, paphiopedlium. She dreamed of them at night-their colors, their shapes, delicate and extravagant, like butterflies and moths and bees and tigers, firebirds, fish, with beauty unmatched by any other species on earth. Each orchid small or large, in bunches like vandas or sprays like dancing oncidium, felt to Cassie like stirrings of the senses she'd lost, teasingly sensual yet entirely accessible. Her substitute for sex. The globes of the paphs were like full, round testicles of athletes, the cats like richly dressed court ladies in heat.

"They're very splendid," Schwab said, neutral on the subject of sublimation.

"So, what are you really doing in my greenhouse?" She knew his job was to catch her husband at tax evasion, embezzlement, everything Mitch enjoyed doing.

"I love these orchids. I didn't know orchids smelled like this. What do you call this one?"

"That's a cattleya. It's called Hawaiian sunset."

Charlie tilted his head at it, sniffed, stuck out his bottom lip to examine it more comprehensively. The two large flowers were elaborately frilled purple and orange, outrageously scented.

"Hmm, of course, tropical sunset," he murmured. "Very nice. This one smells, too." He pointed at a large oncidium with two dancing sprays of mothlike blooms in brown, pink, and lavender.

"That one smells like chocolate. Isn't it amazing? It's an oncidium." Cassie couldn't help being proud of her babies. Not everybody could do even easy orchids like these.

"Amazing. You have quite a talent for this." He looked her over some more. "How are things going?"

Click. The question felt personal. Click. She shook her head.

"That's a not good?"

"That's a not good." She lifted a shoulder, feeling like eighteen. Feeling like a hundred, both at the same time.

He rubbed at an ink stain on one of his fingers. "I'm sorry to hear it. Your husband's still in intensive care?"

"Oh yes, still out of it." She scratched an eyebrow, chewed on the inside of her tortured lip. She was still reeling over the events of the week, the doctors and lawyers. And she was shaken that she could also feel like a teenager in spite of it all. She was hanging back in the doorway because the greenhouse was too small a space for two people who weren't close friends. Nervous. She was very nervous because of the dangerous stranger in her space.

Charlie bent his knees a little to peek under the brim of her hat. "Does that mean you're still not serving coffee?"

She laughed.

"I noticed that you have one of those fancy cappuccino makers in there." He pointed at the house and her wonderful kitchen. "Does it work?"

"Were you peering through the windows again, or have you been inside?" Cassie asked anxiously.

"Just peeping. I saw the car was gone. The alarm button is on. I didn't want to mess with it." He smiled his disingenuous smile that made it clear he knew how to disengage burglar alarms when he wanted to. "I thought I'd hang out for a few minutes and see if you came back."

"Thanks, I appreciate the courtesy."

It was his turn to laugh.

"Actually, I came back because I had a feeling someone was here," Cassie told him. It just wasn't who she'd expected. "Sure, it works. It works very well." She backed out of the door to let him out. "Come on in the house, I'd like some coffee myself."

All the dancing moths on Cassie's oncidium jumped into her stomach as she led the IRS agent into the minefield of her house. She had no clear idea what Mitch had hidden there or what the agent was looking for. But she had a strange, upsetting feeling that he wasn't here only about taxes. He was here about her.

She opened the door and turned off the burglar alarm that she'd used only rarely up to now. Then she went about grinding beans, setting up the machine, getting out the milk for frothing while Schwab looked around.

"Nice Viking, Sub-Zero. What a pot collection!" He took it all in.

"Don't get too excited. It's all fifteen years old," Cassie informed him.

"Age doesn't matter with quality items," he replied, touching another nerve.

"Some maybe. Do you like to cook?"

"I fool around a little. I cook for my dad."

"That's nice."

"Not really. He has special needs. He has a problem swallowing." Charlie checked out the cupboards of dishes, good ones.

"Really? That sounds unusual." The coffee machine started chunking and spitting, getting its job done. It was a big and fancy one, but it took a while.

"It's a rare condition," Charlie said.

"That's a shame," Cassie thought of the soft food groups. Purees, soups, ice cream. Puddings, soufflés. She didn't want to ask if Charlie lived with his dad or vice versa. Or if his wife lived there, too. He was the one who was investigating her.

"He's been living with me for thirteen years, since my mother died." He answered her unasked question easily, pulling out a chair and plopping down at her table as if he'd been drinking coffee there for years. "I don't like to talk about it. Must be your kitchen that got me going." That smile again.

Click. "I know what it's like. My mother died first, too. Widowers can have a lot of trouble if they don't remarry." Cassie kept it conversational.

"Everybody has a lot of trouble if they don't remarry. But I agree with you about geezers. My dad is a handful."

Cassie thought of Edith and nodded. Then a big thing happened in a tiny beat without her deliberating about it at all. She'd met a man she might have liked if she'd known him in high school. His investigation of her felt like a date, so she led with a strength. She'd skipped breakfast and missed lunch, and wanted something to eat with her coffee. There was nothing in the house, so she preheated the oven to four hundred and began to assemble scones. She filled a measuring cup with flour, added salt, sugar, baking powder, then cut butter into it, sprinkling in enough milk to create a small lump of soft dough. She patted the lump out on her granite countertop and kneaded in a handful of currents and some candied orange peel. Then she cut out eight tiny biscuits with a shot glass and frothed the rest of the milk while they were baking.

By the time perfect scones came out of the oven, Cassie had set the table with her own strawberry jam and cappuccino in big cups, and her visitor was speechless with wonder.

"Tell me about gift tax," she said matter-of-factly, as if this kind of hat trick was an everyday occurrence, which it was.

"This is just the most amazing thing I've ever seen," Charlie said, lifting a tiny browned scone to his nose to sniff, as he had the orchid. "You just did that?" He snapped his fingers.

"Well, we needed a grain food group," she explained.

"Wow, a competent woman."

She sipped the coffee. That was not bad, either. "Well, thanks. It's not as great as it looks."

"Yes, it is. It's better than it looks," he murmured.

She snorted. "The picture of perfect domesticity, I mean."

"Oh?" He tilted his head in that way he had.

"My comatose husband has a girlfriend." Cassie took a scone and broke off a tiny piece. "I didn't know he was planning to divorce me until the stroke. When I found out he and this girl had been together for years, I got upset, drove over to her house, and yelled at her, so she's suing me for ten million dollars. You came as a surprise on the same day." She sucked her lip into her mouth. "Actually, I'm a nervous wreck."

"Well, you could have fooled me." Charlie drank some coffee and put the cup down. "This is the best coffee I've ever tasted. The best scones. About you, this says it all. It really does. You have a lot of style."

Her lip trembled. "Thank you."

"And I've seen it all. This is the oldest story in the world. I've lived it myself. What do you want to know about gift tax?"