Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

stop me.
    “Thanks,” I said. “We need to talk.”
    He led me into a living room of antique wicker furniture and plants—Sadie’s taste, I was sure. It was an inappropriate room for a house with two children—a little too delicate and breakable, a little too feminine. The furniture would soon have been replaced with sturdier stuff, I thought.
    But for the moment it was lovely, as cheerful as a nineteenth-century house in the country. The windows were open, and the breeze had caught a lace curtain. There was no television or stereo anywhere in sight. The walls were even hung with flowered wallpaper, completing the effect. They were decorated with a child’s drawings, Libby’s, I was sure.
    “Are the kids here?”
    He gave me a rueful smile. “No. I lost the argument.”
    He looked sad and vulnerable sitting there barefoot with his chest naked. I felt intrusive.
    “I’m really sorry about this morning,” he said. “I was upset.”
    “You have a lot to be upset about. I’m sorry for your loss.”
    “Thank you.” He leaned over, catching his face in his hands, not wanting me to see his expression. “This is very hard for me.”
    “Don,” I said, “I hope you don’t think I’m judging you, that I bear you any ill will because Marty’s my friend. Things happen. And anyway, I’m beginning to think I didn’t really know Marty at all.”
    “She can be difficult.” His eyes were full of pain. “Sadie was so soft—so sunshiny.” He stopped. “I’m having a hard time with this.”
    It seemed cruel to make him go through it alone. I was furious at Marty. “I’m sorry you don’t have the children with you. I think they need to mourn Sadie, too, and I have a feeling they don’t think they can with Marty around.”
    He looked at me as if I’d just pulled him from a burning building. “Yes. You think that, too?”
    I nodded. “I think they really miss Sadie a lot.”
    “She was so warm—they’d never been around a woman like that.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” He certainly was pulling no punches.
    “Marty and I got married when she was pregnant with Keil. She told me later—when she wanted me to know how much she hated me—that she’d gotten pregnant on purpose. I was on her list. A goal. Two goals. She wanted to get married, and she wanted to marry someone successful. Also she wanted a kid. Three goals. Though why she wanted that, I don’t know. She isn’t the maternal type.”
    “And she had Libby because, having had a boy, she then had to have a girl. That was the next goal.” I was surprised to hear what came out of my mouth, and apparently Don was, too; I could see it in his eyes.
    I was on a roll and I wasn’t going to stop: “Tell me something. Does she often yell the way she was doing this morning?”
    “No. I’ve never seen that before in my life.”
    “She’s not the type to get mad?”
    “She got mad when I left. First time I’ve ever seen it.”
    “I came here because I need to ask you about something, and I also need to ask a favor.”
    “Of course, Rebecca.” To my amazement, he smiled; perhaps the anticipation of doing a favor had made him comfortable, given him something he knew how to cope with.
    “Did you talk with Sadie Friday? Even Thursday?”
    “Both days, but only once on Friday. We usually talked several times a day.”
    “Did she mention a pearl to you? Something Esperanza brought her?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Esperanza came into possession of something that might be valuable—she said she found it on the beach. This is going to sound strange, but it looked like a pearl the size of a Ping-Pong ball.”
    He stared.
    “But she wasn’t sure it was a pearl, and she took it to Sadie for confirmation. Sadie, I think, recognized it as something she’d seen before—she knew it was genuine. But that isn’t the point. The point is that it’s missing now. It wasn’t in Sadie’s desk, but there’s a chance she brought it home. I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything like that.”
    He shook his head, still staring, trying to take it in. “The police didn’t mention it.”
    “To tell you the truth, Esperanza didn’t come out with it right away. She was upset about Sadie’s death—”
    “They were very close.”
    “She’s an awfully sweet child, isn’t she?”
    “Yes.” He looked befuddled, not sure where I was going with that one.
    “I told her I’d try to find it for her. I wonder if