ALL I WANTED by the time I got home was to open a bottle of wine and crawl into bed. After I sent the various bank statements to Diana, naturally.
However, such was not to be. When I came up the driveway, I saw I had company. A nondescript gray car was parked at the bottom of the steps. It might have belonged to anyone, except for the couple of extra antennae sprouting from the roof. I wasn’t surprised when the driver’s side door opened and Jaime Mendoza stepped out.
I was surprised at the way he greeted me. “Where have you been?” accompanied by a scowl.
“Running errands,” I said, reaching into the backseat for the paperwork for Diana. “Why?”
His eyes narrowed. “Where?”
I wanted to ask him what business it was of his where I’d been, but I didn’t dare. He was the police. He could make anything I did his business, and probably would, if I annoyed him. So I rattled off the list of places I’d visited so far today. “The gym, the funeral home, David’s apartment, the funeral home, David’s office, the Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue...”
Mendoza’s scowl deepened. “We need to talk.”
“I thought we were talking,” I said.
“Inside.”
Fine. “Would you like to come inside, Detective?”
“Yes,” Jaime Mendoza said, “I would.”
“Follow me, please.” I closed the car door with a tilt of my hip—my hands being full—and led the way up the stairs to the front door. Mendoza followed, so close on my heels I could practically feel his hot breath on my neck. It was ridiculous. What did he think I was going to do, make a break for it? In the shoes I was wearing, I’d make it fifteen feet down the driveway before he caught up. And then he’d probably tackle me to the ground, and that would hurt, not to mention ruin my outfit. So no, I wouldn’t run.
Yet he stood there, close enough to smell, while I juggled papers and inserted the key in the lock.
He smelled good. Not strongly—probably not aftershave or a spray-on fragrance—but clean and fresh. Shampoo and soap, at a guess, with an undertone of spice.
David had been partial to Nautica. I wasn’t. This was nice, though.
The door unlocked, and I shifted the papers over to the other arm and pushed it open. “Come in.”
I left Mendoza to close the door, and headed into the dining room, where I dropped the statements on the table for later. No sooner had I stepped away than Mendoza picked up the top sheet and perused it. After a second, he glanced at me.
“David was hiding assets,” I said, shrugging out of my jacket. “I found the statements this morning. I’m sending them to Diana.”
He didn’t comment, just put the piece of paper back down on top of the pile before plunging his hand into his jacket pocket. He was wearing another designer suit today: a nice charcoal with thin, black stripes that emphasized broad shoulders and narrow hips. The shirt underneath was fuchsia. A lot of men wouldn’t be able to pull off the combination, at least not without looking ridiculous, but Mendoza looked great.
“Here.” He pulled out his own folded piece of paper and handed it to me.
I unfolded it. And felt my breath catch and my capacity for speech leave me yet again. “What—?”
“Restraining order,” Mendoza said.
“I can read.” I didn’t need him to translate for me. I hadn’t actually questioned what I was holding. It was more that I was wondering why I was holding it. “Someone filed a restraining order against me?”
“Jacquie Demetros,” Mendoza said.
I took a breath. And then another. And finally managed, “Why?”
“She said you were stalking her.”
The unfairness practically choked me. She had seduced my husband and ruined my marriage and perhaps left me destitute, and now she had the nerve to complain that I was bothering her? “I’m not stalking her! I’ve never even spoken to her.”
“She said you park outside her apartment building for hours,” Mendoza said. “And that you follow her when she goes out.”
Oh, for... “I’ve never parked outside her place for hours. Ever. Yesterday I hadn’t even been there five minutes when Nick showed up and they left.”
Mendoza sighed. “And naturally you followed.”
I tossed my head. It didn’t work the same when I had no hair to toss. “For your information, I lost them after two blocks. They went through a yellow light, and I got stuck on red. By the time I could move again, they were gone.”
Mendoza’s brows arched. Clearly he didn’t believe me. “She said you followed her into Rotier’s.”
“I was hungry,” I said. “I wanted a hamburger to take home, because I didn’t feel like cooking. I had no idea that’s where they were until I got inside.”
He looked at me. Down and up again. “You don’t look like someone who eats hamburgers.”
“I don’t usually. I’m getting older, and I’m trying to stay healthy.” And keep my figure. “But I did an extra thirty minutes on the elliptical this morning to atone.”
“So it was a total coincidence that you happened to be there at the same time as Ms. Demetros.”
“Yes.” I did my best to look like I was telling the truth.
He tilted his head. “I’m not sure I believe you.”
“I can’t help that,” I said.
He took a deep breath. It expanded an already nice chest under the gray jacket. “Mrs. Kelly.”
I returned my attention to his face. Nothing wrong with that, either. In fact, every part of him was a pleasure to look at. “Detective Mendoza.”
“You’ll have to leave Ms. Demetros alone from now on. No sitting outside her apartment with binoculars. No following her around.”
“She was sleeping with my husband,” I said. “I had a right to know what he’d left me for.”
Mendoza didn’t disagree with that. “If you come within a hundred feet of her,” he said instead, “I’ll have to arrest you.”
I stuck my bottom lip out. “Fine. How far is a hundred feet?”
“From here to the backyard,” Mendoza said. “Farther than across the street from her apartment building. And you can’t go inside the same establishment that she goes into. No more to-go orders from Rotier’s.”
Fine. “What am I supposed to do if she shows up at David’s funeral tomorrow? Leave?”
He blinked. “You think she will?”
“She was his girlfriend,” I said. “I think she might.”
Mendoza thought about it. “If she shows up here, or at your husband’s funeral, then she’s breaching the restraining order. Not you. As long as you don’t go near her, you should be fine.”
Good to know. “But if she shows up tomorrow, I can’t pull her hair out by the roots, right?”
“No,” Mendoza said. “That would be assault. I’d have to arrest you for that, too.”
Figures. “There isn’t much I can do, is there?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “She came into my life and stole my husband, but I can’t keep an eye on her. She can come to my husband’s funeral and to my house, but I can’t throw her out.”
“You can ask her to leave. You just can’t lay a hand on her. And it would be better if you got someone else to do the asking.”
“If she shows up here,” I asked, “can I file a restraining order? Or some other kind of report? Like, can I sue for emotional battery?”
His lips twitched. “Probably not.”
“That’s a damn shame.”
We stood in silence for a moment. “Can I offer you anything, Detective?”
“Nothing I’d be able to accept,” Mendoza said. And added, “I’m working.”
“Coffee? Tea? Bottled water?”
“I’m fine.”
Yes, he was. But I wasn’t about to say so. I shouldn’t even be noticing, since he had a five-year-old at home, and probably a wife to go with the kid.
“We can at least sit down. And you can tell me about Daniel.”
Mendoza arched inquiring brows at me, and I elaborated. “You said you’d look into him and get back to me.”
“Oh,” Mendoza said. “That.”
I pulled out a dining room chair and planted myself. After a moment, and a bit reluctantly, Mendoza did the same. And folded his hands on the table. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Not that that meant anything. Lots of men don’t wear them, and as a cop, maybe it was a safety measure. He probably upset some people, and the less they knew about his private life, the better. It didn’t mean it was OK for me to ogle.
“Well?” I prompted when he didn’t say anything.
He sighed. “I knocked on Kenneth Kelly’s door this morning. Daniel Kelly was there.”
“I knew it!”
“He admitted that when I spoke to him on the phone the other day, he was already in Nashville.”
“That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”
“Yes and no,” Mendoza said.
“He lied to the police. That has to be suspicious.”
“He had a good reason,” Mendoza said.
It was my turn to arch my brows at him, and he added, “By the time I spoke to him, his brother was dead. He knew if he admitted to being in town, he’d become a suspect.”
“So why didn’t he leave again? Why is he still here?”
“For the funeral,” Mendoza said. “He wants to bury his brother.”
Great. Not only did I possibly have Jacquie to look forward to, I had Daniel, as well. And of course Krystal and Kenny and any number of David’s friends and associates who no doubt believed I’d killed him. Nothing but good times ahead.
“How long has he been here?” I asked.
“Since the weekend,” Mendoza said.
“Does he have an alibi for Tuesday night?”
“He was staying with your stepson. He said he was tired and spent the night in the apartment. It’s a long drive from Santa Monica to Nashville.”
No doubt. “But Kenny was at work. So Daniel could have gone out and Kenny wouldn’t have known about it.”
Mendoza nodded.
“So he’s a suspect, too.”
“Everyone’s a suspect,” Mendoza said, which was a relief. Even if that ‘everyone’ included me. At least I wasn’t alone under suspicion.
“Do you know anything about the guy Jacquie was having dinner with?”
“His name is Nick Costanza,” Mendoza said, a bit reluctantly. “She said they’re friends.”
“That’s not what the guy at the Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue said.”
Mendoza looked at me.
“Nick Costanza works at the Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue. The Rotier’s waitress told me.” He didn’t speak, so I added, driving the information home, “He’d know how to cut David’s brake lines.”
“Everyone in the world would know how to cut your husband’s brake lines,” Mendoza said.
“I wouldn’t.”
He just arched his brows at me, so I decided not to pursue the subject any further. And anyway, Mendoza added, “That’s somewhere you said you were today. The Body Shop on Charlotte Avenue.”
I nodded. “Nick saw me and ran. He left someone else to do my oil change. A guy named Bud. And Bud said Nick and Jacquie were involved.”
“Hearsay,” Mendoza told me.
“I told him I thought Jacquie was involved with someone else, and he said that ended when the old dude died.”
There was a beat. “That’s not proof that Costanza had anything to do with it,” Mendoza said.
“But it’s possible he might have, if Jacquie left him for David, and he wanted her back.”
Mendoza didn’t say anything to that. “Anything else?” he asked me.
I thought about it. David had been hiding assets, Nick had run away from me—there was no need to tell Mendoza that Bud thought I’d been chasing after him—and I’d talked to Rachel and Farley. “I don’t think so. I assume you know that David’s share of the business goes to Farley.”
Mendoza nodded. “But he’ll have to replace your husband with someone else, or he won’t be able to keep the business going. He needs a constant influx of clients with money to manage.”
“It’s like I told you. David was worth more to him alive than dead.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“So did you get your kid fed last night?” I asked, when it became clear that we had nothing more to say about David’s murder.
Mendoza nodded. “Without burning down the kitchen and before his mother came home.” He grinned. “I got brownie points for both.”
Good for him. He’d probably gotten sex after the kid was asleep, too. I tried not to think about that, or about how long it had been since I’d gotten any. It was before I knew about Jacquie, although I was pretty sure David had slept with us both for a while. He could hardly stop sleeping with me without arousing my suspicions that he was getting his needs met elsewhere, and I hadn’t suspected a thing.
Anyway, it had been a while. And I definitely didn’t need to be thinking about that now.
I came back to myself in time for Mendoza to say, “You and your husband didn’t want any children?”
“David didn’t. He was in his mid-thirties when we got married, and he already had Krystal and Kenny with Sandra. I guess maybe he didn’t want them to feel like he was replacing them, too. Bad enough that he was replacing their mother.”
Although that was crediting David with a level of sensitivity I wasn’t sure he had possessed. It was more likely he’d simply realized that he didn’t like children very much, and he didn’t want any in addition to the two he had.
“How did you feel about that?”
“I went along with it,” I said. After a pause, I added, “If I’d been older when we got married—you know, a little more sure of myself and who I was—I might have said something, but I didn’t. It’s my own fault.”
Mendoza tilted his head to look at me. “How old were you when you married Mr. Kelly? He was in his mid-thirties and you were...?”
“Twenty-two,” I said.
Mendoza muttered something. It was my turn to arch my brows, and he said, “That’s a big age difference.”
“Not as big as David and Jacquie.”
Since there was nothing Mendoza could say to that, he didn’t try. “I should be going,” he said instead.
He probably should. Since he had a wife and kid at home, and all. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed sitting here looking at... I mean, talking to him.
“The funeral’s at eleven tomorrow,” I told him as he headed for the front door. “At Boling & Howard funeral home in Woodbine.”
He nodded.
“Visitation’s at ten. The graveside ceremony at one. And the festivities start at three. Here.”
“I’ll try to stop by,” Mendoza said.
“Do you think the murderer will show up at the funeral?”
He grinned, and damn near blinded me. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Your husband was killed by someone he knew. Anyone who isn’t there, will move to the top of the suspect list.”
“I’ll make sure nothing stops me,” I said.
“I can’t imagine much would,” Mendoza said, and walked out, leaving me to stare after him, not quite sure whether he’d just complimented or insulted me.