Читать книгу Safe In His Arms - Kay David - Страница 10

“YOUR FRIENDS ARE very protective,” Bishop said as soon as the door closed behind the women. “How long have you known each other?”

“Forever.” Anise led him into her living room. “Would you like a cup of tea? We were having one when you came.”

A drink would have been better but he kept that to himself. “Tea would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”

He followed her to the kitchen, taking in the small house as they went down a short hallway. He’d been surprised when he’d learned she lived in the Heights. The modest one-story bungalow was typical for the older neighborhood but he’d mentally put her in a classier, more expensive part of town. A lot of artist types were fond of the area, though, so it made sense.

The hall opened into a galley kitchen, a glass-topped table at one end in front of a wall of windows that revealed a well-tended backyard. She had lights at the base of all the trees. They threw spooky shadows everywhere.

“How long is forever?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “A very long time. Sarah’s parents raised me after my mother died and I met Madelyn through the gallery when I was in my twenties. Sarah owns Levy’s Art Gallery downtown and she represents both of us.”

“Officer Carter told me you’re an artist.”

“That’s right.”

He expected her to elaborate but she didn’t so he said nothing more. There would be time for that later. The answers he didn’t get usually told him more than the ones he got, regardless.

“You have a nice place here.” Turning to the window, he watched her reflection in the glass. She moved with grace as she filled the kettle and gathered the tea supplies. “It’s very comfortable. The Heights is getting popular. Prices are rising.”

“I bought it ten years ago.”

“Was that before you got married?”

As if suddenly remembering why he was there, she stopped and stared at him. “Yes. Kenneth moved in with me. He was in a condo at the time and he sold it.” She paused. “His ex got the big house.”

Bishop gave her a one-sided smile. “From what I understand that happens a lot. At least that’s what my ex told me when it came time to divide up the spoils.”

Anise Borden returned Bishop’s smile but the expression faded quickly. “I need to call her,” she said. “Kenneth’s ex-wife, I mean. You haven’t talked to her, have you?”

“Didn’t even know he had one. I’ll need her contact information, though, along with a list of anyone else you might think of who could add something to the investigation. If you’d like to phone her first, that’s fine.”

“Her name is Donna Capanna.” She gave him her address and number. “They have a daughter named Brittany. She’s sixteen. I’m not their favorite person but it would probably be better to hear the news from me rather than the television.”

“This could be obvious but humor me…why aren’t you their favorite person?”

“Donna thinks I stole Kenneth from her.”

“Did you?”

“They’d been divorced for two years when Kenneth and I started dating.”

“I guess she wasn’t ready to turn loose, eh? Especially since she kept his name?”

“You could say that.”

“Would you say that?”

Her eyes were emotionless as she considered the question. “Donna’s a very bitter, unhappy woman. It was easier for her to blame me than to examine their relationship.”

“Was she unhappy enough to kill him?”

The candor of his question took her by surprise, which is exactly why he asked it. Her hand snaked up to the lapels of her robe. She hesitated then answered. “I don’t think so…but who can say for sure? I have to admit I wondered if that was her on the phone.”

“Did the voice sound like hers?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Is she capable of being violent?”

“Maybe. When it comes to money.” The teakettle behind her began to whistle and she jumped. Filling two mugs with hot water, she added tea bags, then brought the cups to the table. Bishop pulled out the chair closest to her and sat down himself.

“Did Mr. Capanna and his ex-wife argue over their finances?”

“Constantly. She wanted more of it and he didn’t have it.”

Bishop cocked his head. “I thought you said he was an attorney?”

“He is…or was.” She bit her bottom lip then released it. “But money wasn’t something Kenneth handled well. He never had enough of it.”

“Why is that?”

“For the same reason most people can’t, I suppose. He liked to spend it more than he liked to make it.”

“And the former Mrs. Capanna shared this problem?”

“No. Her family has plenty of money and her parents have always been very generous with her. She liked to use Kenneth’s financial situation against him, though. It was a big stick and she could hammer him with it. He told me tonight that she’d just asked him for more to put into Brittany’s college fund. He wasn’t happy about that.”

“He didn’t want his daughter to go to college?”

“He didn’t think she could make it.” She explained the girl’s troubled background then said, “Brittany’s had a bad go of it but I don’t see her shooting her father. Underneath it all, she loves him.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Did you love him, too?”

Her expression didn’t change. “We were separated. The divorce papers are in my purse. That’s the only reason we were together tonight—we met at the bar so Kenneth could sign everything.”

He processed the information slowly, her reaction at the crime scene, or lack thereof, making more sense than it had before. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“I didn’t think it mattered.”

“I guess I don’t understand, then.”

“What’s not to understand?”

He pulled a spiral notebook from his jacket and thumbed through the pages as if he was looking for something. In reality he was giving himself some time to think. A pending divorce had been the last thing he’d expected but he couldn’t say why. Maybe Anise Borden’s elegance had gotten to him. The longer he sat in front of her, the more impressive it had become. He couldn’t imagine a guy who wouldn’t want a woman like her on his arm.

“Here it is….” He tapped the notebook page before him as if he’d found what he was looking for. “This says you were embracing Mr. Capanna when the shot came. You were in his arms, he kissed you, then he was hit and you both fell to the sidewalk.”

She closed her eyes but only for a second. “That is what happened.”

“He was kissing you? But you’d just had him sign divorce papers?”

“We weren’t going for each other’s throats. It was a different kind of divorce.”

“I didn’t know there was another kind.”

She didn’t smile this time. “Kenneth wasn’t happy about the situation but I’d convinced him a divorce was the best thing for both of us.”

“Because?”

“Because it wasn’t working out,” she said. “We needed to move on. It was a mistake from the very beginning.”

“Okay. I guess I can understand.”

“I doubt that,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? He’s gone. And you’ve got to figure out who did this.”

Bishop turned the conversation in a different direction. “Do you have a list of his employees?”

“There was only one. Robin Estes, his assistant. I can give you her name and address if you like.”

He copied down the information she recited. “I’ll need access to his files.”

“I can let you in the office. Just let me know when.”

“I’d like to go as early as we can in the morning. Did you have anything to do with the company?”

She smiled briefly. “I bailed it out whenever he needed funds but that’s about it. I’m no good when it comes to things like that.”

“You must be good when it comes to your own work.”

“Have you seen it?”

“No. But you support yourself and it looks like you did the same for him. I’d define that as success.”

“I suppose you’re right. I tend to define success differently than most people.”

“How is that?”

“All I’m interested in is my art. If I’m able to create something that expresses the emotion I’m after then I’ve been successful.”

“Tell me what you do.”

Like before, it seemed as if she didn’t want to answer him. Her expression shut down and she leaned back in her chair. He let the silence grow and wondered why she was so reluctant to discuss what she did.

“I build shadow boxes,” she said finally.

Again he waited for an explanation. When the silence reached the awkward stage, she spoke once more.

“They’re small boxes,” she explained. “Glass on the front and sides, a tableau inside. They’re…different.”

He didn’t force her. “And Sarah Levy sells them for you?”

“Yes.”

She waited for more questions and he had them, but he wanted to get back to the scene and see if Carter had come up with anything. A quick glance at his watch told him how late it was.

He stood and tucked his notebook into his suit pocket. “We’ll be talking again but I think we’ve covered enough tonight. In the meantime, don’t forget my list.” He paused. “Call your friends back and get them to stay with you. You’ve had a pretty traumatic evening.”

“I’ve gone through worse by myself and made it to the other side.” She looked out the darkened window behind him. “I’ll do the same with this.”

ANISE SHUT THE DOOR behind the cop, then rested her forehead against the wooden frame. She wanted to go to bed, to sleep and dream a senseless dream but she couldn’t. She had to call Donna. As much as she disliked the woman, no one deserved to hear about the death of someone they once loved on the morning news.

She went to the desk in the living room and pulled the phone toward her. Her fingers felt numb as she dialed. When Donna answered, Anise tried to compare her voice to the person who’d called Kenneth earlier but the slurred “hello” didn’t sound like the caller. It was two in the morning, though. Few people sounded like themselves when the phone rang at that time.

“Donna, this is Anise. Are you awake?”

“I am now. What the hell do you want? Do you know what time it is? For God’s sake—”

That was typical Donna. Anise interrupted her tirade. “Donna, I have some bad news. I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Kenneth’s been shot. We met tonight to sign our divorce papers and when we walked out of the restaurant, someone…shot him.”

Stunned silence echoed at Donna’s end. “What is this? Are you kidding me? Is this some kinda sick joke like one of your sick pieces of art?”

“I’m telling you the truth.” Anise closed her eyes and rubbed them with her thumb and forefinger. Star-bursts formed in the blackness. “He’s dead.” She took a deep breath and the reality hit her all over again. “Kenneth’s dead. He died in my arms in front of the restaurant.”

Donna’s gasp was loud, like fabric ripping. “He’s dead… Are you sure?” Before Anise could answer, Donna asked a second question. “What time did this happen? Where were you?”

Her queries made no sense but few things Donna said ever did. “It was around seven or eight, I guess. I’m not sure. We were at Lido’s—downtown.”

She expected Donna to start crying but she didn’t say a word. Anise wondered if she’d hung up. “Donna?”

Her answer was barely a whisper. “I’m here….”

“Can you tell Brittany?”

“Brittany…” She said her daughter’s name as if it were a stranger’s.

“Can you break the news to her?” Anise forged ahead with dogged determination. “She needs to hear it from you, not the TV or something. There might be reporters contacting you later. You don’t want her to be blindsided.”

She seemed to gather herself, although Anise couldn’t really imagine that happening. “I’ll talk to her,” Donna promised. “I’ll find her right now and tell her what happened.”

Anise weighed the odds over whether or not Donna would follow through. Whatever they were, she couldn’t worry about them now. She had enough to handle on her own. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

DESPITE HER PROMISE, Anise didn’t call Sarah. She didn’t have the emotional strength to fight with her friend and that’s how the conversation would turn out because Anise didn’t want her or Madelyn to come back. She wanted to be by herself and went straight to bed after talking to Donna even though she didn’t expect to sleep. She dozed restlessly when things were going well. Tonight she’d do nothing but stare at the ceiling and replay the events of the day.

She closed her eyes and pretended regardless. Sometimes she could fool herself into a short nap.

It took less than a minute to realize that wasn’t going to happen.

Behind her eyelids, the images came fast and furious, a slide show running amok. Everything that had happened from Kenneth easing into their booth on time to his final, dying gasp replayed itself behind her shuttered gaze. She tried to stop the visions from coming, but realized her efforts were pointless.

She got up, threw on her robe and went into her studio.

In the streetlight filtering through the windows everything looked just as it had earlier when she’d left to go meet Kenneth. The worktable was strewn with pieces of broken glass and lengths of wood. At her painting station by the window, brushes soaked in glass jars while tubes of paint littered the tabletop. Beside another window, her drawing easel stood ready. She’d half expected a tornado-like path of destruction to greet her.

She tightened her belt and walked slowly to her stool and the pad of paper propped up before it. Before she started a project she always sketched it out, the concept flowing from her brain to her fingertips without much conscious thought. She picked up the pencil and looked at it, her mind drifting back to her childhood. There had only been the two of them. Anise had no idea who her father was, and her mother hadn’t had contact with her family for years. Mother and daughter had been incredibly close. Her mother had seen her talent early. When she’d hardly been able to feed them, she’d encouraged Anise with sets of colored pens and bordered papers. “Someday you’ll be a famous artist,” she’d predicted. “Your pretty pictures will hang everywhere—in fancy houses and important museums. You’ll be legendary.”

Anise hadn’t known what legendary meant but from the shine in her mother’s eyes when she made the pronouncement, Anise had known it was a good thing. Too bad her mother hadn’t lived long enough to see part of her prediction come true. Anise was well-known in the art world and her pieces were displayed in “fancy houses.” She wasn’t legendary, though, and she didn’t do “pretty pictures.”

Any desire she might have had to do that had vanished the night her mother died. After she’d been pulled from the closet where she’d hidden, Anise had begun to see the universe differently than she had before. It had changed, just like the skin on her palms. It was full of danger and scary things and situations that could go wrong. If you weren’t careful enough, you could die. People died every day. They left and you had to cope all by yourself.

From that point on, she’d been another person and no one, except Sarah, had even known she changed because no one else had known her that well before. She looked three times before she crossed the street. She wore a cross and the Star of David. She guarded her emotions and her body and most of all her heart. That’s why she’d married Kenneth. She hadn’t loved him so she’d thought it might be safe. Her plan had worked for a while, but then she’d come to care for him. In return, he’d wanted more of her and she hadn’t been able to give it to him. Now he was gone, too.

She sat down on the stool, with only the streetlight for illumination. A pattern of leaves from the pin oak danced across the tablet before her and her pencil drifted over the paper trying to catch the design.

When the sun came up, she was still drawing. The doorbell brought her out of the trance and her eyes shot to the clock that hung between the windows on her right. It was seven.

BISHOP STARTED TO CURSE. He’d told her he would call first but he hadn’t had the time; now he was standing on Anise’s front porch with ten dollars’ worth of fancy coffee and she wasn’t answering her door. He’d left last night with the impression she wanted to be by herself but maybe she’d changed her mind—or her friends had changed it for her—and she’d gone to spend the night with them after all. He wouldn’t have wanted to be alone if he had gone through what she had. But a moment later, the door swung open.

She wore the same thick robe she’d had on before, her hair pulled back from her face, no makeup on her skin. Nothing was different about her but she looked smaller in the morning light, less in control. Her expression was startled—she’d clearly forgotten he was coming over.

“I’m sorry I didn’t phone first,” he said. “I got busy. But I did bring coffee….”

“No…no, it’s fine.” She looked at the Starbucks cups in his hand and held her door open wider. He stepped inside the house he’d left only a few hours earlier and handed her one of the coffees.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said. “But thank you anyway.”

“I thought you could use the extra caffeine.”

“I never went to sleep,” she said. “So I didn’t have to wake up.”

He understood now. “I can come back later if you’re not ready.”

“No, that’s not necessary.” She smoothed her free hand down her ponytail. “If you don’t mind waiting, I can be ready in ten minutes. I know you need to get into Kenneth’s office.”

Once again, she managed to surprise him. He would have taken her for a woman who needed hours to get dressed. It took his ex ten minutes to even prepare her face to put on her makeup.

“That would really be great,” he said.

“I can’t be gone all day,” she warned. “I have a lot to do.”

“Ms. Estes can drive you back. I want us to ride together so I can tell you on the way about the headway we’ve made.”

Her eyes opened wide. “Did you cat—”

“No, nothing like that,” he said. “But we’ve gotten a few leads.”

She spoke over her shoulder as she left the room. “I won’t be long. Make yourself at home.”

He’d been hoping she’d say something like that.

Sipping his coffee, he looked around the living room he’d only passed through the night before. The area was nicely decorated but it could have been a hotel lobby. It didn’t seem lived-in. There were no personal photos or travel mementoes or knickknacks of the sort people usually picked up during a lifetime. Hoping to learn more about who Anise really was, he made quick work of the kitchen and dining room, then headed down the hallway that went the opposite direction from her bedroom. From outside he’d guessed it was her studio and when he stepped inside, he saw he’d been right.

He realized something else as well. The rest of the house served its purpose but here was where she really existed.

Windows lined every wall. In the past this had been someone’s sunroom, a place to retreat and view the garden and sip iced tea. The comfortable couches and hooked rugs he imagined were long gone, though. Brick pavers lined the floor and worktables filled the space. He took another sip of coffee and walked to the nearest one. It was covered with scraps of wood and fabric. A tiny plastic doll was propped up at one end, a miniature snake lying beside her. He stared at the bits and pieces and wondered how it all went together. Then something on one of the other tables caught his eye. He put down his cup and crossed the space to look.

It was a shallow glass box, about ten inches wide and twelve long. The lid, also made of glass and framed in wood, was smeared with something that obscured the contents.

He lifted the top and peered inside. Lined in red velvet, the box held a collection of tiny objects, none bigger than his thumb, dividers creating three distinct areas. One part held a diminutive bed with a tiny painted chest beside it, one held a small black table, and in the third sat a piece of paper cut like a heart with a ragged slash running down the length of it. It looked like a Valentine, the kind that kids made and gave to each other. Each of the items had been placed precisely but other things had the look of being tossed in. A doll’s tennis shoe, the eraser from a pencil, a glittering sequin…

None of it made sense to Bishop. But he was fascinated by it. And that’s why he didn’t hear Anise when she walked into the room.