Secrets to the Grave

“And ditch me,” Franny complained.

“Three’s a crowd,” Vince returned.

“Do you have any leads on the case?” Anne asked.

“Some interesting possibilities,” Vince said evasively.

“What case?” Franny asked. “Peter Crane?”

Franny was obsessed with the prospect of the Crane trial. The idea that his dentist—the person he allowed to put his hands in his mouth, for God’s sake!—was a serial killer. And that Crane had abducted and hurt Anne made him all the more rabid on the subject.

“Somebody murdered Marissa Fordham, the artist,” Anne said.

“What?”

“Marissa Fordham,” Anne said again. “She did that beautiful poster for the Thomas Center.”

“Oh my God!”

“Did you know her?” Vince asked.

“I’ve met her a few times at social events. She just brought her little girl to school for the pre-kindergarten Halloween party. I liked her. She’s a cool lady. We talked about her coming in for a visiting artist day. What happened?”

“She was found dead this morning,” Vince said, giving no details away. “We’re trying to find out who her friends were in the hopes they might be able to turn the investigation in the right direction.”

“People aren’t supposed to get murdered here,” Franny said, getting angry. “Do we really have to go through this again? This is unbelievable!”

“People who kill other people don’t tend to stop and think how it’s going to impact the community,” Vince said. “They don’t stop in the heat of the moment and think Oh my God, there were all those murders here last year. Maybe I should wait.”

Franny ignored the edge of sarcasm in Vince’s voice. His mind was racing to try to make some kind of sense of a senseless act. “Was it a robbery or something?”

“No.”

“Oh my God. Someone just went to her home and killed her? At random?”

“We don’t think it was random,” Vince said. “In fact, I would say it was very personal with a lot of rage behind it. She managed to piss someone off to the point of no return.

“I remember you once telling me you know everybody worth knowing in Oak Knoll, Franny,” he said. “You run in some artsy circles. Have you ever heard anything negative about her?”

Franny looked uncomfortable. Vince sharpened his stare a little.

“She was single, independent, talented, and gorgeous,” Franny said. “A lot of not-single, not-independent, not-talented, not-gorgeous women are threatened by that. Surprise, surprise.”

“Women worried about someone stealing their husbands.”

Franny rolled his eyes. “Like anyone would want them.”

“Does anyone in particular jump to mind?”

“No, no. I’ve heard the odd catty remark, that’s all. She’s a sexy single mom—she must be a slut. That kind of thing. It’s 1986, for God’s sake,” he said. “Single women have children. Hello: The scarlet letter went out with the poodle skirt.

“What about her daughter?” he asked. “Where is she?”

“In the hospital,” Vince said. “Unconscious, the last I heard.”

That was the final straw for Franny. Color slashed across his pale cheeks and his eyes all but disappeared behind an angry brows-down squint.

“When you find who did it,” he said, “do the world a favor and just shoot him.”

“If only life was that simple,” Vince said.

“It should be,” Franny declared. “Bad people off the planet! Now! More wine for the rest of us!”

He raised his glass in a toast and tossed back the last of his cabernet.

16

Sara walked around her sculpture, trying to concentrate, trying to focus and see the direction she needed to go. Nothing came.

She had a vision a week ago, when she started the project. It was supposed to be about strength and femininity. The metal—the strength—would bend but not break. From the wounded heart would flow feminine beauty in the form of hand-painted silk ribbons.

But as she looked at the piece now, she saw nothing but a mess of twisted wire and steel mesh. Car Wreck on a Stick. That was what it looked like.

Anxiety swirled through her. Fragments of the morning kept flashing through her mind like a strobe light. Detective Mendez, grim faced, mustache framing his downturned mouth. Marissa’s house. The ruined studio. The ruined art.

“Ms. Fordham is deceased.”

Oh my God.

“Ms. Fordham is deceased.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered, trembling.

In her mind’s eye she could see Marissa walking, talking. She used her hands when she spoke as if she were trying to draw a picture to illustrate her point. Vibrant. Animated. Full of life.

“Ms. Fordham is deceased.”

She felt nauseous.

She reached out and tried to adjust a piece of the wire mesh, and nicked the tip of a finger. A droplet of blood rounded bright red like the sudden bloom of a flower on a cactus, then rolled off her fingertip to splash like a tear on the heavy canvas drop cloth that covered the garage floor.

They had converted the space above the garage into a studio for her some months ago. But it was no place for a sculpture as tall as this was, made from steel and requiring welding. She had commandeered this far stall of their three-car garage for the project.

Her studio upstairs was a beautifully lit space with plenty of room for painting and crafts projects, and working with the silk, her latest passion. Although in empty moments when her head wasn’t full of whatever she was working on, she could never escape the thought that the studio was her consolation prize. It was her payment for not divorcing Steve.

He had been cheating on her with Lisa Warwick, a nurse who had volunteered her time to advocate in family court for women from the Thomas Center. Just as Steve devoted hours and hours of his time—their time—to the same cause.

Sara had suspected for a long time, but had never had the courage to confront him. If she had confronted him, she would have then had to confront the reality of the next step. Did they go to counseling? Did she just divorce him? Could she ever trust him again?

The answer to the last one was no. He had never admitted to the affair. To this day, he had never accepted culpability. Typical lawyer. His accomplice was dead. There were no witnesses to testify against him. But Sara knew, and Steve knew she knew. And she got a lovely art studio out of it, but her self-esteem had taken a beating.

She accepted that and lived with it, but she wore that mantle of the betrayed wife like it was made of chain mail and coarse hair. It was heavy and uncomfortable, but she couldn’t get out of it. She told herself she did it for Wendy. She hoped that was true. She hoped that was right.

Wendy loved her father. She very much enjoyed being the center of her parents’ world. She didn’t need to know that her parents’ marriage no longer existed in a true sense of the word. At least, that was what they all pretended.

Sara tried again to focus on her work, walked around to see it from a different angle. It didn’t look like