“Need some help?” he asked.
She turned and saw him. “Sure, save me a trip.”
He grabbed two bags while she carried one. His bags clinked. He looked in them to see the bottles of vodka, scotch, and gin. The lady apparently liked them all. He saw several boxes of crackers and a wedge of cheese poking out of her bag.
“Having a party?” he asked as he followed her into the house.
She looked at him slyly. “Yeah, a party of one, unless you’re interested.”
“On duty, sorry. Besides, I don’t think it would go well with the eggs I had for breakfast.”
He set the bags down on the kitchen table and looked around the space. Dark, not overly clean, dated furnishings, and just a sad air all around.
He glanced at her to find Kline watching him.
“What did you expect?” she said. “I told you my ex had the better lawyer. I got the house and he got the cash. Now he’s traveling the world making whoopie while I can barely pay a high schooler to cut the grass.”
“Doesn’t seem fair.”
“I was stupid. Still trusted him after he cheated on me, more than once. My fault.”
“I think the fault lies with him.”
She unscrewed a bottle of vodka and poured it into a glass. She added some tonic and mixed it with her finger. “I knew I liked you. Have you found out who killed Julia?”
“Working on it. Did you ever see Cummins and Draymont together?”
“Draymont is the dead guy?”
“Yes.”
“Sure, I mean, he was over some nights the last few weeks.”
“Somenights? So, noteverynight.”
“Well, his car wasn’t there those nights, so I just assumed he wasn’t, either.”
Decker sat down at the table and eyed her. “I know she was your friend, but I need to ask you something.”
She sat down across from him and sipped on her drink while she gave him a knowing look. “You want to know if they were having sex?”
“Yes, but what made you think that?”
“He was young and handsome and she was still young and lovely and single and alone. I would’ve jumped into bed with that guy in a heartbeat. The men around here are mostly bald and fat. And all they want to do is play golf. Makes you lose faith in the American male.”
“Anything more specific?”
She looked at him with a coy expression. “Just things that maybe a woman picks up on that men never do.”
Decker sat back. “Let me tell you whatIpicked up on. He wasn’t wearing a tie. Everyone in a suit at Gamma Protection does apparently. At that hour, he wasinthe house, not outside. There were two wineglasses in the dishwasher and an empty bottle of merlot in the recycling bin. The judge had makeup, lipstick, and perfume on when she was killed. I don’t think she was asleep at all. The fingernail and toenail polish she was wearing was the same color as the bottle on her bathroom counter. She’d put it on that night, presumably, which you wouldn’t really do unless you were expecting someone. It was a particularly hot shade of cherry red. It was also on one of the wineglasses.”
Kline smiled. “Go on, Agent Decker. You’re just hitting your stride, I can tell.”
“There were clothes on the floor of her closet, all items of lingerie, as though she was thinking about what to wear that night. Some tissues were in the wastebasket with lipstick marks on them. Same color the judge was wearing. That was probably either the judge wiping off excess, or Draymont getting rid of kiss marks on his face. The bed covers were really messed up and the mattress was several inches off-kilter from the box springs. We thought that represented a struggle with her killer. But now I think it was two people being energetically intimate.”
“At least she had fun before she left this world,” said Kline thoughtfully, her lips trembling. She composed herself with a long drink from her glass. “And I must say, you’re very observant. For my part, I had just seen a couple of times the way they looked at each other. And when I asked Julia about him she went overboard explaining how it was all professional. Which led me to think, ‘She doth protest too much.’”
“You didn’t tell us that yesterday.”