Sinking Ships: An Abishag's First Mystery (The Abishag Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  I had met Hillary on my visit to view Thomas. She was somehow related to the family, but I hadn’t paid much attention to her, my eyes only on him.

  I tried the door, my damp hand jerking back when it easily opened. I felt like little Red Riding Hood, creeping into a house, a ravenous wolf waiting inside.

  “Hillary?”

  From upstairs I heard the faint beeps and clicks of medical equipment till I tiptoed through the dining room. Silence thickened outside the kitchen door.

  “Hillary?” I whispered, a cheek pressed against the icy door. I inched open the door, smelling something metallic and earthy. Heart hammering, I felt blindly for the light switch, unable to move my rooted feet.

  Tina had told me that her father had had the kitchen remodeled a few months before his first stroke—chrome appliances, black marble countertops, pale gray walls—very modern.

  Someone had left the back door open. It creaked on its hinges as I widened the kitchen door. The light from the dining room arrowed into the room, and lit the space between the two doors.

  Hillary’s body lay on the slate floor, a hand at the collar of her green scrubs, blood puddled around her head and shoulder. A red gash still glistened across her pale neck.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rule 2 in the Handbook for Abishag Wives: She faces every situation with calm.

  I took deep breaths, willing myself to be calm.

  In the information packet, Florence Harcourt also provided phone numbers to use when the client dies. Although I’d reviewed the materials and was pretty sure that this wasn’t covered, I looked at the list again—Call 911 if the death is suspicious (not uncommon for a family member to grow impatient and off the loved one), the county medical examiner if it is not; the next of kin—Tina Crowder, the agency lawyer, the hospice care group; finally, only in extremely limited circumstances, Abishag Agency director Florence Harcourt’s direct line.

  Although it wasn’t my husband who died, I decided to call each number in order. To 911, I reported “the nature of” my emergency and suddenly realized how cold I was and how my hands shook, the cell phone jittering against my ear. I stared at a note on the kitchen counter, a note spelled out in large, angry, block letters.

  “Are you alone?” The dispatcher’s voice quickened, her words tearing my attention from the note.

  “I’ve only been to the kitchen.” I leaned against the counter, focusing on Hillary’s sightless stare at the ceiling.

  “Leave the house immediately. Wait outside for the police. They’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

  I stalled, something bothering me about the room. I mean something besides the blood, the dead woman and the angry note. Knowing I wouldn’t sleep that night without figuring out what it was but being a rule-follower and not to mention feeling the rise of irrational fear, I snapped a picture of the kitchen with my housemate Katmandu’s spy camera that I’d stuffed into my pocket earlier, then ran through the dining room, the strappy white sandals clattering over the hardwood floors in the foyer, grabbing my duffel as I left the house. Quaking, I stopped on the welcome mat. I don’t know if the killer still lurked inside the house, but I heard nothing, not even the dispatcher’s voice, over my pounding heart. I snicked the door closed.

  “I’ll stay on the line with you, miss, till the police come. What’s your name?”

  “Leslie Greene,” I said. “But I gotta hang up. I have more calls to make.”

  She started to object, but I clicked off. I called Tina, who said she would be there in 20 minutes in a rising note of hysteria mixed with confusion. I didn’t see how she could make it there that fast as she lived at least 17 traffic lights from Palos Verdes. As I walked to the gate at the end of the driveway, I called the hospice care agency. The operator put me through to a supervisor who told me they’d send someone out within an hour.

  I called the agency lawyer next on the list, who sounded cranky but said he would send someone. Unlike the others, he didn’t say when.

  In training, Florence Harcourt had gone over the wedding night for three sessions. She never mentioned how to handle murder. I decided not to call her, not sure if murder fell under her definition of “limited circumstances.”

  I’d forgotten something.

  Nestled on a hill, Thomas’s house faced winding Palos Verdes Drive and the sea cliffs above Portuguese Cove. In the first half of the 1900s the area had been named something else, but a Portuguese freighter foundered in the cove more than fifty years earlier, the surf still chewing its iron hulk inch by inch. No one called it anything but Portuguese Cove since.

  Even with the streetlights and a full moon, I couldn’t see the few feet of rusted hull that I knew remained above water. I’d seen it on my visit a week earlier.

  I heard the relentless crashing of waves, and the sirens wailing from the highway. When I saw two police cars turn onto Palos Verdes Drive, I stopped trying to remember what I’d forgotten, shouldered the duffel, and raced down the driveway, fumbling in my purse for the gate key.

  Two officers entered the house, and one escorted me to her patrol car. She asked me questions about how I’d discovered Hillary, the family and my relationship to them. Seeing me shivering, she put me in the backseat, cracked open the window and shut the door. She leaned against the car, watched more vehicles rolling up the driveway, and directed a forensics team into the house. I hugged the duffel to me, hoping to get warm.

  I looked around the backseat. This is where they put bad guys. I touched the vinyl, still shivering. In fairy stories, the good guys chopped the bad guys into bits or burned them in ovens or hung them. Would they find Hillary’s killer?

  Twenty minutes after the police arrived, a red haired man, maybe five years older than me, wearing an Italian suit oh-so-well, talked his way past the yellow crime scene tape and strolled with elegant speed to the patrol car. Nodding, he said to the officer, “I’m her lawyer.”

  Her back to me, I didn’t see her reaction. If I’d been her, I’d get his number as he was movie star hot. Maybe she was like me—already married.

  “Donovan Reid with the Abishag Agency,” he said, handing her his card. Lucky her. “Don’t say anything.” Since he wasn’t looking at me, it took me a moment to realize he was talking to me. “I’ll answer any questions the police have. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s cold,” he said. Maybe he did look at me after all or heard my teeth chattering. “Can’t she wait inside?”

  “Ask the detectives when the place is cleared,” she said. “They’ll be here soon.”

  He huffed impatiently, wheeled in his Italian shoes, and strode down the driveway. A few minutes later, he returned with a travel mug that he handed me through the car window. It still smelled of his minty toothpaste and musky cologne. I cupped my hands around its warmth and sipped at strong, milky coffee. He shrugged when I tried to thank him, his attention roving between new cars arriving at the gate and traffic in and out of the mansion, finally zeroing on two men climbing the driveway.

  The detectives (acting exactly like ones in television shows so they must be)—an older man with a ruddy wolfish face and a heavy tread followed by a younger narrow man drinking an enormous smoothie—paused at the walkway to the house. The older man had stopped once to talk to a crime scene tech near a SUV, nodded at the policewoman watching me, his gaze passing indifferently over me and the agency lawyer, focusing on the mansion beyond. The younger detective seemed more concerned with the condensation dripping from his smoothie cup.

  Another epoch passed while I watched but couldn’t hear Donovan answer questions. At one point, the officer signaled someone who raced into the house. Besides Donovan, the only other civilian allowed past the gate was a man in hospital scrubs who sprinted to the house a few minutes later and disappeared inside. I didn’t get a good look at him but hoped that they hadn’t found another person hurt by Hillary’s killer. Someone who might have been bleeding nearby that I hadn’t seen and could ha
ve helped. At the gate, the police shifted the yellow tape, and the coroner’s van rolled slowly to the top of the driveway directly across from my patrol car. I shivered, and not just because the coffee was gone and I could feel the damp ocean air seeping into my bones. Was the coroner retrieving Hillary, the injured person who had died, or both?

  From where I sat, I could see a growing crowd beyond the crime scene tape. Flashlights illuminated the bushes, the gate to the side yard behind me, and disappeared into the backyard. Through my window I heard the occasional shout, muffled voices, and feet tramping up and down the walkway.

  The lawyer Donovan Reid proved an effective barrier at the patrol car as no one talked to me. He stood between me and the stream of people passing us. Only a few craned their necks to get a better look at me.

  Nearly three hours after I made the 911 call, the officer settled me and my duffel in the first floor study and stood guard at the door. I wanted to ask her about the person who had been injured, but though Donovan had remained outside, I didn’t think he’d approve me breaking silence. The number of police and investigators had thinned over the time I’d spent in the patrol car. Only a few voices still murmured in the kitchen and dining room when the gurney rattled up the porch steps.

  I couldn’t relax on the office’s soft-as-butter burgundy leather sofa or in the swivel chair at Thomas’s massive cherry wood desk. Feeling less like an ice-cube, something started nagging me again. I looked around my husband’s office, pausing at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Without the murder or murders or a police officer standing at the door, I’d be scanning titles, looking for anything mathematics-related. Not that I expected a retired businessman like Thomas to have anything interesting me.

  My gaze strayed to the small duffel I’d borrowed from Kathmandu, carried from the patrol car and pushed into a corner. Perhaps I should have called my university housemates but all of them, even Kat, had been against me marrying Thomas. She’d loaned me the duffel and interrupted dinner with her husband Doug to walk me out. As the taxi had pulled away, I saw disappointment and worry on Kat’s face. It still bothered me.

  Perhaps I’d not forgotten something but someone. Someone I should call? Not my parents. The agency usually didn’t contract candidate wives under 21; because I was 19, I’d needed a parent’s signature. My mother said no till she heard I’d be marrying Thomas Crowder. Although he was on the executive board of Crowder Industries in name-only, mother instantly recognized the potential benefits to my father’s political career. I couldn’t call her now—she’d worry about a scandal and blame me.

  So the something/someone wasn’t Florence Harcourt, my parents, or my housemates. My gaze strayed to the window where I could see the agency lawyer pacing the front yard in his Bruno Magli shoes and wished he’d bring me more coffee.

  As expected, Tina Crowder hadn’t arrived yet. Perhaps I’d forgotten something related to her? I ticked off possibilities but nothing useful. With me she’d been polite, sometimes weepy, generous with explaining her father’s likes and dislikes. I didn’t know how close she’d been to Hillary, but as they were related, Tina might arrive distraught. Should I do something? I’d heard of people in a crisis making tea, but I didn’t think the police would let me into the kitchen. Maybe I could find a box of tissues.

  Lost in thought, I heard a soft conversation at the door, but didn’t turn till a familiar voice said my name.

  “Dog!” Forgetting his disgust of the past week, I jumped to my feet, immediately feeling less rattled. Doug Kovic had that effect on everyone.

  Studying pre-med at UCLA, he was male model handsome with strong Slavic features, melting dark eyes, heavily fringed lashes. His name was Doug, but since he’d married Kat, my housemates had dubbed him Dog.

  Yeah. That was a bad time after their wedding last year, but I was over my crush. Mostly.

  He steered me to the couch and held my hand while I told him everything—from finding the unlocked front door to seeing Hillary to calling the police. Even though the officer at the door was obviously listening to everything I said, I didn’t care. I’d nothing to hide. Then I blinked, noticing the scrubs, the nametag that said DOUG KOVIC.

  “Dog, what are you doing here?”

  He smiled ruefully. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  I withdrew my hand. “What do you mean?”

  “We decided that you shouldn’t have to do this on your own. I mean, being married to that old guy and having him die on you. So I applied to work at his hospice care agency. Kat’s working in the gardens three days a week.”

  I stood, clenching and unclenching my fists. “You decided this? Why? You thought I couldn’t handle…what?”

  He stared at me, those velvet brown eyes looking both puzzled and hurt. “We thought you’d be pleased not to be alone.”

  I glared at him. “I am not alone. I have Thomas.”

  That’s when I remembered.

  CHAPTER THREE

  While I patted my husband’s hand, Dog checked his chart, his vitals, and replaced an empty glucose bag. Thomas looked the same as he had when I’d seen him a week earlier, when I decided I would be his Abishag wife. His hand seemed bloodless, the bones fragile beneath my fingers.

  Dying had shrunk him to the size of a ten year old, smoothed his skin, colored it a pinkish grey. I felt the same thing I had before—protective. But now, also, ashamed. I’d forgotten Thomas. I hadn’t recognized that a hospice aide, Dog, had been allowed into the house to care for him. Someone had murdered Hillary downstairs, and I’d not thought about him upstairs, vulnerable and alone.

  Rule 12 in the Handbook for Abishag Wives: Her husband is always in her thoughts.

  Maybe my housemates, my parents, everyone who knew me were right—I focused on the wrong things. I’d been fired from seven jobs in 18 months because I concentrated more on process and products than on people.

  Until this moment, marrying someone brain dead seemed a good fit for me.

  “Leslie?”

  Tina Crowder stood in the doorway of the bedroom, sunken eyes glazed with horror, hands clutching her purse. If I really lived in fairy tales as family and friends thought, then Tina, tall and raw-boned, wild black hair framing a face better suited to Roman gladiators, would have played the wicked step-mother, I the hapless, though fair daughter. Reality had put us in opposite roles.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long. I couldn’t reach my sons….”

  I tugged her to the chair I’d just vacated. “Your father is fine,” I said. “May I make you some tea?”

  She shook her head. “The police have questions.” She clutched a corner of the pale blue thermal blanket covering Thomas. “Why did this have to happen now? Why did they have to kill her in his house?”

  “They?” Dog asked.

  Tina started violently. “Who are you?”

  “This is Doug Kovic, Tina. Mister Kovic, this is Thomas’s daughter.” I frowned at Dog, hoping he wouldn’t let on that I knew him. “I called hospice care after I talked to you, and they sent him over.”

  She took a shuddering breath. “Thank you, Leslie. I should have thought of that. Now that Hillary’s gone—” She stood, still looking frail and lost. “I should talk to the police.”

  I shot Dog a challenging look. I’d prove that I didn’t need help, that I could be trusted in a crisis. “I’ll go with you, Tina.”

  I heard no sound from the dining room or kitchen as we passed through the foyer, but a stolid policeman stood, an intimidating presence, before the closed French doors. The female officer waited at the bottom of the stairs and herded us into Thomas’s study.

  The older police detective, tall, freckled hands holding an e-tablet, nodded at Tina as we entered the Thomas’s office, but his wolfish gaze followed me as we sat on the sofa. His partner seemed lost without his smoothie and sat morosely in Thomas’s desk chair. The Abishag agency lawyer prowled the room, shooting me warnings from his glinting, green eyes.

  I kne
w that Donovan Reid, possibly the youngest lawyer at the Westwood Agency, would ensure that the Abishag name remained untarnished, its wives not accused of anything heinous. Maybe because it had been a long night and maybe because my housemates decided I needed rescuing again, his warning looks grated on me.

  When Tina explained to the detectives about me being at Abishag, Donovan let loose a spiel about the integrity of the elite and honorable agency and its contributions to society and humanity, blah, blah.

  Now he frowned at Tina Crowder as she fumbled in her purse for a tissue while telling the detective about yesterday’s ceremony.

  Staring at me, the detective licked his stylus in a way that made my skin crawl. “You bed-warmers go for a full wedding?”

  Donovan cut in frostily, “We prefer the term “Abishag wife,” and it’s a signing ceremony. Abishag wives do not have real weddings.”

  I thought about the shoes I’d bought for the signing and how my hand quivered when I signed the contract. Weren’t those real wedding feelings?

  “Services rendered for a fee,” the detective countered. “Marriage is not a business transaction.”

  I blushed even though I believed all marriages were transactions. Tina glared. “What are you inferring?” At least she’d stopped crying.

  Donovan intervened. “Leslie Greene is Thomas Crowder’s contract wife whose comforting duties are both compassionate and medically therapeutic for comatose patients.”

  “Comfort is one word for it.” The detective shot me another look. “Why didn’t you move into the house yesterday after marrying Mr. Crowder?”

  Donovan Reid opened his mouth, but I answered quickly. “It was how we arranged it with Tina.” Hoping I looked like a supportive stepmother, I squeezed her arm. “Yesterday worked better with her schedule for the signings, but I couldn’t join Thomas till tonight as I had a final this morning.”

  “You’re in high school?”