The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Chapter 4

Mac knocked on my apartment door just before seven. “I’m not so sure this is a good idea,” he said. He was wearing jeans and a gray Red Sox T-shirt and he’d shaved.

“Would you like me to repeat everything you’ve said to me about the Angels investigating a case?” I asked.

He smiled. “Okay, I get your point.”

I smiled back at him. “All the things you said to me were true. Rose, Mr. P. and the rest of the crew are good investigators.” Even as I said the words I realized how much I meant them.

I locked the door and we headed down the hall to Rose’s apartment. “Where’s Elvis?” Mac asked. “Shouldn’t he be sitting outside Rose’s front door waiting for us already?”

Rose was one of Elvis’s favorite people. She talked to him like he was a person and she always seemed to have a bit of chicken or a chopped sardine for him.

“He went early to help her get set up.”

“You’re not joking,” he said.

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. We got home and he followed Rose down the hallway. When I called him she turned around and said, ‘Elvis is going to help me get things set up.’ That was pretty much that. I didn’t get a vote.”

Everyone was seated around the table in Rose’s small kitchen—even Elvis had a chair. Rose got everyone settled with tea and brownies, then she turned to Mac, gave him an encouraging smile and said, “Go ahead.”

Mac’s forearms were propped on the edge of the table, his hands wrapped around the cup Rose had set in front of him. I could see the muscles tense in his arms. He looked around the table before he spoke. “I have a wife,” he said. He let the words sink in for a moment. Mr. P. didn’t look surprised, which told me Rose had shared what she’d learned that morning with him, but everyone else did.

I saw Rose shoot Liz a look. Liz glared back but said nothing—which was actually a bit of a surprise.

“Her name is Leila,” Mac continued. “A couple of years ago we bought a house, an old one, and we were working on renovating it on the weekends and paying to have some things done, too.” I saw a brief smile flash across his face at the memory. “We’d been having problems with the old furnace and the water heater and we’d decided it made more sense to just have the whole HVAC system replaced.”

His voice was calm and steady but his hands were squeezing his cup so hard the skin was stretched tightly across his knuckles.

“I was out of town on business and Leila was sleeping in a room downstairs that we were eventually going to turn into a den. She’d made a makeshift bed on the sofa that was in the room, because of the smell of varnish on the hardwood floors on the second floor. And it was colder up there, too, because of the issues with the furnace.” He glanced down at his cup and swallowed. “I wasn’t supposed to be back until the next morning but my meetings finished early and . . . and I wanted to get home. It was just after two a.m. when I got there. I didn’t want to wake her up because she’d had a cold and she’d been having trouble sleeping. So I went to sleep in our bedroom upstairs. I opened the window a crack and I kept the door shut against the odor. I didn’t mind the cold.” He stopped, raised his head and looked around the table again. I could see the pain in his eyes and the tight lines around his mouth. “I found her unconscious when I got up about five o’clock. Carbon monoxide. She’s been in a coma ever since.”

Liz pressed her lips together. Charlotte reached over and gave Mac’s arm a gentle squeeze.

“The police suspected you,” Mr. P. said. I could see the concern in his eyes. He was a bald and bespectacled little man, whip-smart, with a generous heart and the computer skills of a dark Webmaster.

Mac nodded. “Yes. The hot water heater turned out to be the source of the carbon monoxide. It was old, like everything else in the house, and it was leaking just enough that the heater didn’t shut off, trying to keep the water hot enough. Plus it turned out there was a problem with the flue pipe that vented the heater. The opening was blocked outside and there was a very small gap between two sections of the ductwork.”

Mr. P. glanced at the rest of us. “It would have been the same as if a car engine had been left running in a closed garage for several hours.”

“Why did the police suspect you?” Rose asked. “Was it just because you were Leila’s husband?”

Mac pushed the cup away and shifted in his seat to face Rose, who had taken the chair to his right. “That was part of it. The spouse being the bad guy became a cliché for a reason after all. But that’s not the only reason. Leila was—is a beneficiary of a trust set up by her great-aunt. The other beneficiary is her cousin, Stevie. For now, they each receive a monthly payout from the interest earned, but on Leila’s thirty-fifth birthday, which is just a few months from now, she’ll receive half of the trust just as Stevie will a bit more than a year from now when she turns thirty-five. If Leila dies before her birthday, all the money in the trust will go to Stevie.”

“What happens to the money if Leila dies after her thirty-fifth birthday?” Mr. P. asked, adding a bit of milk to his tea. “I’m assuming it goes to her next of kin, which is you.”

“It does,” Mac said. “And yes, I know how bad that looks.”

“If you were going to kill your wife for her money I think you would have been smart enough to wait until she actually had it,” Liz commented, raising an eyebrow at him. She was elegantly dressed in a cream-colored shirt and a pink-and-yellow-flowered skirt. Her blond hair looked like she’d just left a stylist’s chair—which she probably had—and as usual she was wearing ridiculously high stiletto heels, which would have left me with a broken ankle if I’d had them on for very long.

Mr. P. shook his head. “I don’t think so, Elizabeth. If Mac waited until his wife inherited from the trust, at best he’d end up with half of the money if their marriage ended and that would only be if the courts decided it was joint property—which I doubt they would have. On the other hand, if she were incapacitated, he’d have control of the current payout and if she were to die after her thirty-fifth birthday he’d get all of her share.” He looked over at Mac. “Not that I think for a moment you’d do anything like that.”

“Could Leila’s cousin have been behind what happened to her?” Rose asked as she got up to get the teapot. “If Leila had died, all the money would have been his.”

“Hers,” Mac said. “Stevie is short for Stephanie, and I don’t believe that she would have hurt Leila. They were close.”

Rose refilled my cup and patted my arm as she moved past me.

“Why are you here in North Harbor and not with your wife?” Liz said. She looked at Mac across the table and I saw no recrimination in her gaze, just curiosity.

Rose shot her a withering look but Liz ignored it, deliberately or possibly because she hadn’t seen it. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected the former.

Mac explained about his in-laws and the lawsuit.

“Why are you and Leila still married?” Liz asked.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Rose said sharply.

“I’m sorry. But it’s a valid question,” Charlotte said. It was the first time she’d spoken.

Tall, with the posture and focused gaze of the high school principal she used to be, Charlotte was often the voice of reason in the group. Like Nick, she was one of the first people to step up when there was a problem, but unlike her son she was a lot more easygoing.

Mac looked at Rose. “It’s okay. Charlotte’s right.” He put both hands flat on the table and shifted his attention back to Liz. “I promised for better or for worse when I married Leila. And even though I agreed to her parents being in charge of her care for now”—he put extra emphasis on the last two words—“I didn’t give up the right to change my mind. As long as I’m her husband, I have the option to change things if I feel that’s what she needs. And I didn’t stop loving her, just because the person I knew is . . . gone.”

Liz nodded. Taking care of the people you cared about was important to Liz, to all of them. I knew they’d understand Mac’s reasoning.

“Mac, may I ask what Leila did for a living?” Mr. P. said as he added a little sugar to his tea.

“She has an MBA from Northwestern and an undergraduate degree in chemistry before that. She actually did two years of art history before she changed her major.” I saw the beginning of a smile on his face. “She ran her own organic beauty products company, du Mer. She bought seaweed and sea salt produced here in Maine. In fact, the first time I saw North Harbor was on a trip to Maine with Leila to source sea salt for a body scrub she wanted to add to her line.”

“Who’s running the company now?” Rose asked as she sat down again.

“Leila has a half sister, Natalie Welland, who’s ten years younger. She’s the result of an affair that their father had. Natalie worked summers with Leila while she was in college and she’s been running the company since . . . since Leila’s accident. Leila’s share of the profits goes into the trust that helps fund her care.” Mac shifted in his seat again. I knew him well enough to know the conversation was making him restless. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said to Rose, sending her a sideways glance. “Leila and Natalie didn’t grow up together but they were very close and I just don’t believe Natalie had anything to do with what happened.”

He studied his hands for a moment. “I can’t think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Leila. Even though she hadn’t made art her career she never lost her love for it. She was warm and creative. Everyone loved her. She was that kind of person.” He looked up, looked around the table and then focused his attention on Mr. P. “Alfred, go ahead and dig into my life and Leila’s. I don’t think you’re going to find anything. I still think what happened to her was a horrible accident. I’ve told you everything. There are no secrets to uncover, so go ahead and look.”

Even though it was a warm evening I felt goose bumps rise on my arms at Mac’s words, that feeling my father called “A goose just walked over my grave.” I didn’t believe in omens or signs, good or bad, but if I had, this wouldn’t have been a good one.