The Match (Wilde, #2)(39)

He froze.

Wilde’s heart dropped into his stomach. He stood by a door he assumed led to the basement. He leaned toward it and inhaled deeper.

Oh no.

Wilde didn’t want to open it. He wanted to flee. But he couldn’t. Not now.

With his gloved hand he reached out and turned the knob. He cracked the door open. That was it. That was all he needed. The awful stench of decay rushed out as though it had been pounding on the door demanding to be released.

Wilde flicked on the light and looked down the stairs.

There was blood.

Lots of it.





Chapter

Fourteen



When Wilde’s call came in, Hester was on her back in bed, post flagrante delicto and still catching her breath. Lying next to her, staring up at the ceiling with a smile on his face, was her—was Hester too old to use the term “boyfriend”?—beau, Oren Carmichael.

“That,” Oren said, right before the phone trilled, “was awesome.”

They were in Hester’s Manhattan duplex. Like Hester, Oren had sold the Westville home where he and his ex, Cheryl, had raised their now-grown kids. Oren had been on the periphery of Hester’s life for a long time. He’d coached two of her sons in Little League. He had also been one of the policemen who’d found little Wilde in the woods.

Oren smiled at her.

“What?” Hester asked.

“Nothing,” Oren said.

“So why the big smile?”

“What part of ‘that was awesome’ is confusing you?”

When Ira died, Hester had figured that she was done with men. It wasn’t something she had concluded out of anger or bitterness or even heartbreak, though there was plenty of that. She’d loved Ira. He was a dear, kind, intelligent, funny man. He had been a wonderful life partner. Hester could simply not see herself dating again. She had a busy career and full life, and the whole idea of getting ready for a date with a new someone made her shiver. It just seemed like too much of a hassle. The notion that she would ever one day get naked in front of a man other than Ira both terrified and exhausted her. Who needed it? Not her.

Westville Police Chief Oren Carmichael had been a surprise. Oren, an uber hunk with broad shoulders in a fitted uniform, would never be for Hester and vice versa. But she fell and he fell and now, here they were. Hester couldn’t help but wonder what Ira would have made of this. She liked to think that he would be happy for her, the same way she would have been happy for Ira if he’d ended up with Cheryl, Oren’s still-sumptuous ex-wife who even now posted pics of herself in bikinis—though on the other hand, maybe Hester would have haunted Ira like Fruma-Sarah in the dream sequence in Fiddler on the Roof.

She’d want Ira to be happy with someone new. Wouldn’t Ira want the same for her? She hoped so. Ira could get so jealous, and Hester had been a bit of a flirt back in the day. Still, Hester was deliriously happy with Oren. They were ready to make more of a commitment, but at their ages, what did that mean? Kids? Hahaha. Marriage? Who needed it? Moving in together? Not really. She liked her own space. She didn’t want a man around all the time, even a wonderful one like Oren. Did that mean on some level she loved him any less? Hard to say. Hester loved Oren as much as possible, but she didn’t want to love him like she was eighteen years old, or even forty.

But there was one truth that constantly stung: The relationship with Oren was physical—more physical, though it would never be fair to compare, than with Ira. She felt guilty about that. Her and Ira’s sex life had waned. That was normal, of course. You’re building a life, two careers, you’re pregnant, you’re raising little kids, you’re exhausted, you have no privacy. It was a story too often repeated. But it’d still upset Ira. “I miss the passion,” he had said, and though she’d dismissed it as normal “man wants more sex” manipulation, she wondered about that.

One night, not long before David died in the car crash, Ira had been sitting in the dark with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He rarely drank and when he did, it went right to his head. She had come in the room and just stood behind him. She didn’t think he even knew she was there.

“If I died and you start dating again,” he’d said, “would you want your sex life with a new man to be what we have?”

She hadn’t answered. But she hadn’t forgotten either.

Maybe Ira wouldn’t be happy about what was going on in his old bed. Or maybe he would understand. When you’re young, you expect too much from a relationship; one day, you look back and understand that.

The phone trilled again.

Oren asked, “Verdict?”

Earlier, she and Oren had been discussing the Richard Levine murder case over dinner.

“Either you believe in the system,” Oren, as a law enforcement officer, had commented, “or you don’t.”

“I believe in our system,” she said.

“We both know what your client did wasn’t self-defense.”

“We don’t know anything of the sort.”

“If he gets off, does that mean our system doesn’t work?”

“It may mean the opposite,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“It may mean our system has the flexibility to work.”

Oren considered that. “Levine had his reasons. Is that what you’re saying?”