Eight Perfect Murders(42)

“Okay, then. Call me if anything comes up.”

“Will do.”

The temperature had dipped, so that all the melted snow had now transformed into ice, the sidewalks littered with dirt and salt. The afternoon was bright, and I was reminded that the days were already getting longer, even though winter would continue unabated for at least two more months. I didn’t mind it, personally, but I could read the faces of the passersby on my walk home. Pale and grim, resigned to this gray city, and to the long, wet slog toward springtime.

Out of habit I peered through the plateglass windows of the Beacon Hill Hotel and into their snug bar, always wondering if my co-owner, Brian, would be in residence. He was in today, wearing one of his familiar Harris tweed jackets, anchoring the far side of the oval bar. I hesitated on the street, deciding whether I should join him when I saw his large shaggy head lift up and notice me through the glass.

“Hey, Brian,” I said, sliding onto the stool next to him, curious about the half-filled martini on the bar with the lipstick imprint on its rim.

“Tess is here,” he said, and just as he said it, I turned to see Tess Murray, his wife for the past ten years, returning, I assumed, from the bathroom, fresh lipstick on her lips.

“Oh, sorry, Tess,” I said, stepping back to let her retake her seat.

“No, sit there. We’re always thrilled to have a buffer between us, aren’t we, Bri?” She slid her martini over, and I sat down between them. I saw Tess far less than I saw Brian, and it was very unusual that she was out for a drink with him, especially early on a Tuesday afternoon. She was his second wife and had to be at least twenty years younger than he was. Everyone said that she’d been his publicist and that was how they met, but I knew that it wasn’t true. She was a publicist, or had been, back when she worked full-time, but not for him. They’d met the only year he’d attended Bouchercon, the annual crime writers’ conference. He didn’t usually go, but they’d made him guest of honor and that had forced his hand.

Brian had told me many times that the only way their marriage worked was that Tess spent six months at their house on Longboat Key without him, and that he spent the other six months at their cabin in down east Maine without her. They occasionally ran into each other in Boston.

“How are you not in Florida right now, Tess?” I said.

“You didn’t hear? Brian, show him your arm.”

I turned, and Brian lifted his left arm, ensconced in a device that looked vaguely bionic. “Oh, no.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I fell a week ago stepping down from this very same barstool. Didn’t feel a thing except the remainder of my pride leaving my body. But, apparently, it’s broken in two places, and you’d be surprised how hard it is to be a one-handed drunk at my age.”

“Are you writing right now?”

“Turned in the new one just before Christmas but I’ve got copyedits to do, and cans of soup to open up, so Tess is making the sacrifice.”

“I tried to talk him into coming down to Florida, but you know what that’s like,” Tess said. “We’ve been meaning to call you, Mal, ask you for a drink. And now here you are.”

“He knows where to find me,” Brian said, then finished his drink, almost always a scotch and soda in a lowball glass with two cubes of ice.

I ordered a Left Hand Stout and managed to talk Brian and Tess into letting me buy them each a drink. Another scotch for Brian and a Grey Goose martini for Tess.

“How’s business?” Tess said. “I’d ask Brian but he never knows.”

“It’s the same,” I said. “Not bad at all.”

“What’s selling?”

Even though she no longer worked as a publicist—last I heard she owned a boutique jewelry store in Florida—she still loved to hear about the business. I liked Tess and had defended her on a number of occasions to other people in the industry, some who saw her as a gold digger who didn’t even have the decency to spend much time with her older, rich husband. But she was always nice to me, and Brian had told me several times how much he valued their marriage, how she understood how important solitude was to him. How she loved him in her own way.

I stayed for two beers, aware the whole time that my phone might ring, or buzz, with a message from Gwen. When they ordered dinner, I said that I’d leave, that I had food at home to cook, which was a lie, but Brian was starting to slur a little and I wanted to get out before the monologues started.

Before I left, I said, “Did you hear about Elaine Johnson?”

“Who?” Brian said.

“Elaine Johnson. She used to come into the store every day before she moved to Maine. Coke bottle glasses.”

“Sure,” Brian said, and I was surprised that Tess, to my right, was nodding along as well.

“She died. Of a heart attack.”

“How’d you hear about that?”

I almost told him, told the two of them, I guess, about Agent Mulvey, and the list, but stopped myself, for some reason.

“Another customer told me,” I lied. “Just thought you might be interested.”

“Good riddance to her,” Tess said, and I turned toward her, surprised.

“You knew her?” I said.

“Sure. She cornered me at one of Brian’s readings to tell me what a hack he was. I told her I was his wife, and she burst out laughing, asked me if I read his books before I married him. I’ll never forget it.”