Chapter 6

Once the kids were officially “in bed” (meaning Leah was in bed and Ethan was playing games on his computer), Abby and I went downstairs. Without a word, she walked to the dining room, reached down and opened the door on our sideboard (I had recalled the word since this afternoon), the one we use as a liquor cabinet, and started rummaging through the bottles. I went into the kitchen, took out two glasses, and got a tray of ice from the freezer. I cracked the ice tray, causing cubes to fly all around the room, and corralled enough to almost fill the glasses. The rest went into the sink. What the hell, I’m decadent.

Abby walked in, carrying a bottle of vodka. She knows I don’t care much for the taste of alcohol, so she also carried a bottle of Kahlua. She mixed a Black Russian for me and poured herself a vodka on the rocks. During law school, my wife supported herself as a bartender in Chicago. She learned every drink ever invented, but says she never had to pour anything except Jack Daniels for boilermakers. This was before the Wrigley Field area was gentrified.

We adjourned to the living room, glasses in hand. Each of us took our traditional seat on the couch. I put my drink on the coffee table (okay, the Black Russian table) for a moment, put my arm around Abby, and pulled her close to me. She stayed that way for a sublime moment.

And then the phone rang.

I sighed, but took my drink with me. I already knew it was Barry Dutton, and he had waited as long as his patience would tolerate, hoping that I had developed enough sense to check in with him after having spent much of the day at the scene of a murder. He should have known better.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“Atlantic City. It’s lovely there this time of year. And you?”

“This is the worst possible time to be funny, Aaron. Now, I want to hear the whole thing, from the beginning.”

I glanced across the room at my wife, who was plying herself with alcohol and stretching out on the couch, not turning on the television. Strangely, I didn’t want to spend time on the phone with Dutton. I forced myself to look away from Abigail and opened a reporter’s notebook sitting on my desk.

“Can’t it wait until the morning, Barry? I’ve been. . .”

“No, it can’t wait until the goddam morning! This isn’t a woman running out on her husband anymore, Aaron. This is a murder! I’m going to have the Atlantic County prosecutor’s people here in the morning, and I have to be able to tell them something.”

I hate it when Dutton is right. There wasn’t any way around it. I gave him the shortest possible version of the facts while Abby continued to lounge, finished her drink, and picked up the TV Guide.

“That’s it,” I said when I finished. “Now, what have you found out?” I took out a legal pad and pen to take notes.

“Well, the autopsy won’t be available for a couple of days, but I don’t think there’s any doubt she died of gunshot wounds.”

“I was there. There isn’t any doubt.”

“And Gary’s identification confirms that it was Madlyn,” Dutton added. The thought had occurred to me during the long ride home that, given my great memory for faces, I might have looked at someone of Madlyn’s general physical type and wrongly assumed it was her. So that was that.

“Do the state troopers really think Beckwirth did it?”

“Aaron, almost every time someone is killed, it’s done by someone they knew, usually a family member. When a married woman is killed, the first logical suspect, given no obvious outside motive, is the husband.” Barry didn’t sound especially convinced himself. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Abby reach for the remote control.

“Well, let me come in tomorrow morning, and we’ll talk about it,” I suggested.

“Okay,” Dutton sighed. “But I want you here first thing, as soon as the kids. . .”

“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up. I practically flew across the room, spilling a little of my now watered-down drink (the ice had melted) on the musty carpet in my office.

“Hold it right there,” I said to Abby. I slithered in next to her on the couch and grabbed the remote out of her hand. “Don’t touch that dial.” She grinned, and I gave her the kiss I had been waiting for all day.

And what happened after that is, quite frankly, none of your business.