She walked into the living room as he pulled out the stopper to a bottle of scotch and splashed a healthy dose into the old-fashioned glass. She watched silently as he bolted it down and she could almost read his mind as he considered the bottle, wanting to pour a second drink but thinking it might not be prudent based on his wife’s uncertain mood.
“What’s wrong?” he asked sullenly, rolling the glass between his palms.
“Is it true that you met Whitney Bellhard in Santa Monica?”
Court jerked his head back as if he’d been slapped, then tried to cover up the tell with a bunch of bluster.
Detached, she watched his florid face turn brick red and knew he was going to lie to her.
“Who the fuck told you that?”
“Someone from the school,” she lied right back.
“I wouldn’t have that plastic bitch on a dare,” he declared.
“No one said you had her. They just said you met her for lunch.”
“Whatever nosy bitch told you that should just mind her own fucking business and stop trying to stir up trouble.”
“It’s not true?”
“Of course it’s not true!” He slammed his empty glass down on the bar and reached for the bottle of scotch again, his misgivings gone in the face of bigger issues.
“So, if I check, I’ll find out you were still in Denver on Wednesday, like it says on your itinerary.”
“Since when do you check on me?” he demanded, his dark eyes glittering as he shot her a vituperative look.
Elizabeth almost lost her nerve at that point. She’d never challenged her husband before. Court Ellis was a master arguer, a born lawyer, and she couldn’t compete with him in any discussion. He loved talking circles around her, and she hadn’t realized how little affection was left between them until that very moment.
“What’s the name of the bitch who told you those lies?” he demanded as he took another healthy sip of scotch.
“What’s the name of the hotel where you supposedly stayed in Denver?”
He slammed out of the house after that and didn’t come home the rest of the night.
Saturday afternoon he returned, but they didn’t talk about Whitney Bellhard or Santa Monica or if he’d been in Denver at all. They lived in icy silence throughout the day. Chloe, picking up the tension, cried and fussed, and it was a relief when it was finally late enough to put her to bed. Elizabeth told herself that she should talk to Court some more, but she never found the energy and in the end, while Court slept on the couch, she lay awake in their king-sized bed alone, feeling a cool breeze come through the open window, smelling the menthol scent of nearby eucalyptus trees, watching palm fronds wave in the soft landscaping lighting of their backyard.
About five AM Sunday morning, Court entered their bedroom and stood at the foot of their bed. Aware something momentous was about to happen, Elizabeth sat up and pulled her knees up to her chest under the covers, automatically bracing herself.
He was perfectly sober, the anger seemingly drained out of him. “I didn’t want it to happen this way,” he said, his voice curiously tight as if he might break down, though Court Ellis never showed any emotion. “I’m in love with her,” he said, shocking Elizabeth so much she actually gasped. “I’ve been meaning to tell you for months. Whitney and I have been meeting at a place in Santa Monica at the end of my business trips. I wasn’t in Denver. I haven’t been in the final cities on any of my itineraries for almost a year.”
It was such a bone-deep betrayal that Elizabeth couldn’t find her voice. There was no love between her and Court; maybe there never had been. But she was shocked, hurt, and cold. Frozen to the core. She stared at him and thought terrible thoughts—I wish I’d never met you. I wish I never had to see you again. I wish you were dead.
“Get out,” she ordered through gritted teeth.
“Elizabeth, you know I never meant to hurt you.”
“Get the hell out and don’t come back.”
“Jesus.” He stared at her as if she were being unreasonable. “You’re such a bitch. When did you become such a goddamn bitch?”
“You need to leave,” she said woodenly.
“This is my home, too, and—”
“This is not your home,” she corrected swiftly.
“Be careful. Don’t push me. I can make your life a living hell.”
“You didn’t just say that.” She was stunned by how quickly he went on the offensive.
“I have a daughter, too, and when I get back from this next trip—”
“You don’t have a daughter anymore!” she shot back in fury. “You’re never going to see her again. Get the hell out and never come back!”
“Cut the dramatics, Elizabeth.” He came around the bed so swiftly it scared her.
She tried to scramble away. When he placed his hands on her shoulders and glared down at her, she felt threatened. She sensed that he wanted to put his hands around her neck. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, then he suddenly released her and left the room. They suffered through the rest of Sunday not speaking to each other.
Elizabeth shook her head to clear away the memories. Now it was Sunday night and two police officers were standing in her living room. In a hollow voice, she said to Officer Maya, “Court’s dead, isn’t he?”
Her careful expression said it all. “Yes, ma’am.”
You wished this on him. You made this happen. It’s happened before . . . Elizabeth swallowed. “You said it was a car accident.”
“That’s right.” It was Officer DeFazio who answered her. “A single car accident.”
“So, no one else was hurt?” she asked, hopeful.
Maya, who was somewhere in her thirties with blunt-cut dark hair, shared a look with DeFazio who was at least ten years older and a whole lot grayer, before turning back to Elizabeth. “There was a second fatality.”
Elizabeth’s head swam. “Oh, no . . .”
“It appears your husband was driving and another person was in the passenger seat.”
Feeling like everything was coming at her at once, Elizabeth held up her hand and said in a strangled voice, “Excuse me. I have to check on my daughter.” She left the two officers hanging as she hurried on rubbery legs down the hall to Chloe’s room and opened the door a crack. The night-light bathed the room in a soft circle of illumination. Of course, Chloe was still breathing easily, sleeping soundly, but Elizabeth clung to the doorknob for support, fighting down a rising panic.
It can’t be your fault, she told herself. Things like this don’t happen.
But she knew she was lying to herself.
She carefully shut the bedroom door and returned to perch on the edge of the couch. The two officers were still standing in the center of the room.
Elizabeth wasn’t sure what emotion they could read on her face. Grief? No. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Numbness? Definitely. Fear? Yes . . . a little of that, too, though she would never be able to explain why. Even if she could, she knew they’d look at her as if she were stark raving mad.
“Who . . . ?” she asked, picking through the words that seemed to be shuffling around in her brain, not connecting in sentences. She thought she knew already and didn’t want to hear the name yet, so she changed direction. “Wait, no . . . how did it happen?”
They’d been about to tell her about the other victim; she could see the way both drew a breath, but they checked themselves.
DeFazio said, “That’s still to be determined. It looks like your husband lost control of the vehicle. A BMW. It appears to be his car.”
Elizabeth nodded. Court loved his silver BMW while she was happy with her Ford Escape.
“The car was found near San Diego,” Maya supplied.
“San Diego?” Elizabeth half-expected to hear Santa Monica, thinking maybe Court had decided to meet Whitney Bellhard at the beginning of his trip, not the end.
“South of San Diego. Almost to the border,” Maya said.
“Court would
n’t go to Mexico,” Elizabeth responded with certainty. “He got a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge once, and he swore he would never go there again.” And he would never drive his beloved car across the border, either.
“We have a receipt from a Tres Brisas Hotel in Rosarito Beach from last month,” DeFazio stated.
Elizabeth could feel herself staring and had to force herself to drag her gaze away. “You sure it was Court?”
“A man and woman were registered as Mr. and Mrs. Bellhard,” DeFazio told her.
Elizabeth felt near collapse. He had been with Whitney again. Of course he had. What had she expected? Clasping her hands together and squeezing so tightly it hurt, Elizabeth asked, “The other fatality is . . . ?”
“Mrs. Whitney Bellhard,” Officer Maya confirmed.
Not only Santa Monica, Elizabeth thought dully, though why she should care she had no idea. If Court had been meeting his lover from Los Angeles to Mexico and beyond, what did it matter? They were gone now.
“One of our detectives will be here soon,” DeFazio said into the silence that followed.
Elizabeth felt dissociated from the action around her, as if she were far away looking down on them, watching a play, maybe. Someone else’s troubles.
“We spoke with Mr. Bellhard before we came here,” Maya said. “He told us he’d suspected his wife was having an affair with someone for about a year. He apparently followed her to Rosarito Beach and saw her with your husband, but he didn’t know who he was. So, he tailed her again today. She left her car in the parking lot of your husband’s law firm and got into his vehicle. Mr. Bellhard then followed them to the juncture of I-5 and the 405 south, then turned around because he had a dinner meeting with his boss at the Bungalow in Newport Beach. He was still at the restaurant when officers contacted him. Detective Bette Thronson has taken a statement from him. She sent us ahead to contact you.” Maya hesitated as if she were deciding if she should say anything more, and then added, “Mr. Bellhard followed them because he wanted to use their affair as leverage in the pending divorce between his wife and him. They’ve been separated for several years.”
Elizabeth didn’t give a damn what happened between the Bellhards. She was having trouble processing that Court was dead. Gone. Never to trouble either her or Chloe again. She should care more that Chloe had lost her father but couldn’t summon up the emotion. “A detective is on her way here?”
“Yes. Detective Bette Thronson,” Maya repeated, her dark eyes studying Elizabeth. “Can you tell us where you were today?”
“Me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Maya said.
“Well . . . uh . . . I was home with Chloe in the morning, but I went into work for a while. Misty—she’s our babysitter—she was here. She . . . um . . . she lives down the street.”
“You’re a real estate agent,” Maya said.
In a distant part of her mind, Elizabeth realized the officer was stepping outside her bounds a little. It wasn’t part of her job, but maybe she wanted to be a detective herself. “I was at the office for a while.”
“From when to when?” Maya questioned.
They want me to account for my hours. “Umm . . . I went to a couple open houses . . .” she said vaguely.
In truth, she’d been at the office for a short time and then had gone to a local park and sat at a table under a tree, lost in thought. When she got home, Chloe had practically been done in from all the fun she’d had with Misty who was fourteen going on ten and who had lots of energy. Elizabeth had fed Chloe and put her to bed at seven thirty, her thoughts still on her fight with Court. She’d thought about leaving him a text on his cell that he could read once he’d landed in Chicago but hadn’t gotten around to it. Now she knew he’d never made it to Chicago.
Of course.
It was another thirty minutes before the detective finally showed and the officers departed. Detective Thronson was tall, iron-jawed and intense. She had short, gray hair and a body built like a barrel. She didn’t stand on ceremony and almost immediately began asking questions that made Elizabeth feel like she was under attack. She asked the same questions Officer Maya had, then started in on her family.
“Your daughter goes to school?” Thronson also chose to stand and took center place in the middle of the room while Elizabeth was once again seated on the edge of the couch.
“Preschool until this fall,” Elizabeth explained.
“She was with a babysitter this afternoon while you were working?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know your husband was heading south of San Diego, possibly to Rosarito Beach?”
“He was supposed to be flying to Chicago. That’s what his ticket said.”
“Did you know Whitney Bellhard?” A trick question said off the cuff as if the answer didn’t mean that much to her, but Elizabeth knew the detective was keyed into her response.
“I knew of her. She . . . advertised around the neighborhood with flyers.”
“Her husband said she was an aesthetician.”
“Yeah . . . she advertised Botox and facials and skin peels. I never went to her.”
Elizabeth’s mind was starting to wander into dangerous areas again. You wished him dead . . . just like you wished bad things on Mazie . . . just like you wished ill on that other cop, Officer Unfriendly . . . and they both died, too ...
But how could thoughts kill?
Detective Thronson asked questions about her relationship with Court, which Elizabeth answered dutifully. Yes, there were some problems in the marriage. No, she hadn’t known he was having an affair with Whitney Bellhard until . . . She stumbled and lied, saying, “Until the officers told me.” She didn’t bring up Tara’s revelation, nor her fight with Court, nor the true deteriorated state of their marriage. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to determine something was fishy about the accident. The probing questions the detective was asking indicated something wasn’t right.
Finally, Detective Thronson wound down and slowed her questions. When she ended the interview, she told Elizabeth she would be in touch with her later.
Elizabeth thanked her and showed her out, then nearly collapsed against the door panels once the woman was out of her house. With an effort, she gathered her strength, then made her way to the bathroom, staring in the mirror at her own drawn face.
You shouldn’t have lied. You should tell them, right now, what you know. Before they learn it some other way. Let them know he’s dead because of you. That you knew it was going to happen. That it’s your fault. That it’s happened before. Tell them before it’s too late.
But it was already too late, and she knew she wouldn’t say a word.
Chapter 2
The funeral for Courtland Ellis was scheduled for eleven A.M. on the Friday following his death. Despite being stunned and feeling as if she were living in an unreal world, Elizabeth had started planning a memorial service, but on Monday Court’s estranged sister Barbara had flown in from Buffalo and insisted on orchestrating her brother’s funeral. She took charge as if she’d just been waiting for a chance to bully her way back into her brother’s life, or death, as the case may be, which seemed odd as Court and she had suffered a falling out years earlier.
Elizabeth, still dealing with her own reeling emotions as well as Chloe’s seeming lack of them, gratefully let Barbara make all the arrangements. Fighting her sister-in-law would take more energy than she could spare, and she needed to take care of Chloe. Take care of herself. As for the details of burying her husband, she didn’t much care one way or another how he was interred. Memorial service . . . funeral service. . . the only thing that mattered was keeping Chloe’s life on track, making certain it was as normal as it possibly could be.
That was Elizabeth’s aim, and she had been monitoring Chloe all week. Apart from an initial sadness when she’d learned the news of her father’s unexpected death, Chloe had been pretty much business as usual. There had been a few tears the first night and several nightmares
where Chloe had ended up in Elizabeth’s bed, but all Chloe’s night fears had seemed to evaporate. Elizabeth hoped it meant her daughter was coping with her grief, not burying it, but it was hard to say. Chloe, like Court, was adept at hiding her feelings.
And what about you, Elizabeth. Aren’t you the master of repressing your emotions? Maybe your daughter learned to maintain tight control because she’d witnessed it in you.
Whatever the reason, when Barbara blew in, Elizabeth was relieved to let her take over. Barbara was tall, brown-haired and brown-eyed and looked a lot like Court, but where Court had been smooth and polished, Barbara was raw, socially awkward, and had a tendency to stare at people a little too hard for any kind of social comfort. Fortunately, she’d decided to stay at a nearby hotel, keeping Elizabeth apprised of her plans as if it were a duty, which, Elizabeth supposed, it might have been.
On Friday, Barbara came over at the crack of dawn, rapping loudly on the door until Elizabeth, in her bathrobe and balancing her first cup of coffee, let her inside.
Barbara’s gaze swept over her as she headed into the kitchen. Barbara followed and spied her niece.
Chloe, hair mussed, still in her pajamas, was eating breakfast at the kitchen island.
“You need to get dressed, sweetie. We don’t have time to dawdle.” Barbara was dressed all in black—black dress, black shoes, black hat with a veil.
“Not dawdling,” Chloe said, frowning, her little eyebrows pulling together as she stared at her aunt.
Barbara glanced at Elizabeth. “We can’t be late!”
“I know.” To her daughter, Elizabeth said, “You can finish your pancakes first, Chloe.”
“I’m not going to the funeral,” Chloe said, unconcerned. She was scooting a mini-pancake around her plate, soaking up as much maple syrup as possible.