The Monet Murders

My lungs weren’t functioning. I’d pass out after all and fall to the blood-covered floor.

Before I could, the garage doors went into a noisy ascent, and my gaze switched from Jesus’s corpse straight into Trevor and Ilona’s shocked faces.

Chapter Eighteen

“Christ! It’s Jesus,” Trevor said, stepping into the garage for a closer look.

Ilona gasped and clutched his arm, tugging him back from the body. “No, Trev. Nem.”

He shook off her hand and edged farther in, stopping just short of the bloodstain.

In unison, we both stared down at Jesus, at his startled, unseeing eyes, at his mouth wide open, gaping at what? His murderer?

“Why did you kill him?” Trevor asked, glancing up from the corpse, pinning me with an accusing look.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t kill him. I just found him. He looks like he’s been dead awhile.” I didn’t mention the way he smelled. Trevor had a nose of his own.

He grunted something unintelligible and, eyes once again riveted on the gruesome sight, yelled over a shoulder. “Call the police, Ilona.”

Rooted to her spot by the open overheads, she didn’t move, her face so pale under her golden tan, I thought she’d be the one who’d join Jesus on the floor.

“The phone, Ilona. The phone.” Trevor snapped his fingers. “Hurry up.” At his second barked order, she obeyed, sidling around the other side of the SUV and disappearing through the side door into the house.

“So why did you do it?” Trevor asked again.

“Don’t be an ass.” I was too irritated to be scared. Or polite. “Do I have a weapon in my hand?” I pointed to the remains. “Is that a fresh corpse?”

His eyes flickered at my tone. “How the hell should I know?”

“The blood’s dried on the floor, Trevor. Use your head.” Screw the Mr. Alexander shit.

“You could have killed him and come back. Returned to the scene of the crime.”

This guy had made millions in the stock market? Unbelievable.

“We’re not moving until the cops get here,” he said.

Egads. He must have seen every Eliot Ness film ever made.

Ilona returned and stood gripping the kitchen doorframe for support. As if I didn’t exist, she avoided making eye contact with me, focusing solely on Trevor. “I call,” she said in a dull monotone.

“Good girl. Now let’s see how fast Naples’s finest can get here.” Then, as a sudden thought struck him, he glared at me. “Hey! How’d you get in? The code’s been changed.”

I shot a quick glance Ilona’s way. She shook her head, the movement barely perceptible, but I caught it, nonetheless. Still leaning on the Porsche, I shifted my attention to Trevor. “I’ll do my talking to the police.”

A few minutes later, an NPD squad car pulled up in front of the open garage door. “Well, here’s your chance to spill what you know,” Trevor said as my shadow, Officer Batano, stepped out with his sidekick, petite Officer Hughes, close behind him. As usual, like a secretary in battle gear, she brandished a clipboard.

Before the cops could get in a word, Trevor announced, “I’m Trevor Drexel Alexander. My wife and I have been out of town. We can prove it.” He waved an arm at the body. “This was our welcome home present. My butler, Jesus Cardoza. Or what’s left of him.” Trevor pointed an index finger at me. “She was standing over the corpse when we got here.”

Batano pierced me with a keen glance as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Are you Mrs. Devalera Dunne, age thirty-two? Address Surfside Arms, Gulf Shore Boulevard, condominium unit 104? Proprietor of Deva Dunne Interiors, Fern Alley, Naples, Florida?”

A flawless performance by Batano and I hadn’t said a thing. “Yes.”

Batano shook his head, either in disbelief or disgust, I couldn’t be sure which, and shouldering his way in between the vehicles, he crouched over Jesus. “He’s dead,” he pronounced. The man had a gift for the obvious. Heaving his bulk to his feet, he turned to Officer Hughes. “Call Homicide,” he instructed her. “Then stay with the remains. We’ll be inside.” He reached for her clipboard. “I’ll take that.”

The three of us trooped back into the house after Batano.

“This will do,” he said when we reached the kitchen. It was then that the impact of what I’d seen hit me with the force of a sledgehammer blow. Only a month earlier, I’d entered this same room with its Smallbone cabinets and perched on this same wrought iron stool while Rossi interrogated me.

What would he think when he saw me here again? What would anybody think? Within a span of weeks, I’d found two murder victims. I’d stumbled on them, the poor things, only stumbled on them, but who would believe that? Who would continue to think I had nothing to do with their deaths? That I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time?

No one, that was who. I glanced across at Ilona leaning against the center island looking positively ashen. I’d never seen her so upset, so moved, not even when Maria died. The sight caught me up short. So who was the selfish bitch now? I was. Thinking only of myself. Of my own welfare. What of the two victims? Earnest, hardworking people away from their families and their homeland, most days on duty around the clock, trying to please, trying to live…then murdered without mercy. But why?

There could only be one answer. For what they had seen. For what they knew. But what had they seen? What did they know?

My hands trembled. I couldn’t control them and clenched them together in my lap. It didn’t help. The cell phone suspended from Batano’s hip holster shrilled, and I flinched. He answered the caller with a series of yes and no then stashed the phone back in its holster. “The lieutenant’s on his way,” he said.

The lieutenant. I prayed he meant Rossi.

“High time.” Trevor upped his chin at his wife. “Make some coffee, Ilona.”

“Me?” Ilona pointed a French-manicured fingertip at her chest. “I no make coffee. You want coffee, darling, you make.”

“I don’t know where the hell the pot is.”

Ilona shrugged. “Nobody does,” she said. “Not now.”

Trevor grunted, a sound so deep he must have dredged it up from his belly. “As soon as Homicide gets here, they’ll question the ass off us, and I’ve been up all night. I need some goddamn coffee. Find the pot. Make yourself useful.”

Stiff-backed, Ilona began a fruitless rattling of the cypress wood drawers and cupboards. Pen poised above the clipboard, Batano looked over at Trevor. “While we wait, I’ll take some information. Your full name, sir.”

“I thought I told you that already,” Trevor said.

“Ah, I find!” Ilona announced. Triumphant, she held up a gleaming stainless steel Cuisinart Coffeemaker. “It has another piece.” She put the pot on the counter and lifted out the heating element. “There. That is all of it.”

“Well?” Trevor asked.

“Well what, darling?” Ilona gazed at him, a puzzled expression on her lovely face. She was dumb as a fox, but Trevor bought it.

“Jeez, you really don’t know, do you? Give me a minute here, officer.”

Trevor elbowed Ilona out of the way, marched over to the Sub-Zero refrigerator and yanked it open. He removed a bag of Starbucks Medium Blend, plunked it on the shelf and untwisted the tie.

“Shit. Whole beans. Where’s the grinder, Ilona?”

“I want to leave,” she said to Batano. “To sit in living room.”

“We’ll wait here until Homicide arrives. Have a seat, Mrs. Alexander.” He gestured to a stool.

As Batano questioned Trevor, Ilona glided to the stool beside me, sat and crossed her legs. Not an ounce of her admirable derriere oozed over the seat cushion. I gave myself a mental slap on the knuckles. As if, at a time like this, the shape of her ass was important. Trained to notice details…like the tacks in Jesus’s dead hand…I couldn’t turn off the habit when it didn’t matter. An occupational hazard.

Maybe doing something helpful would calm my nerves. “I’ll make coffee, Trevor. I remember seeing where