House of Blues

to
feel guilty.
    She picked up her pace.
    Finally, arriving slightly out of breath, she
remembered she hadn't brought her purse, had simply picked up Reed's
key and hurried out.
    Feeling silly, she rang her own doorbell and waited.
It was probably a full two minutes before she realized no one was
coming. Glancing around for Reed's car, she didn't notice it at
first, wondered if Dennis and Reed had gotten so mad they'd stalked
out. But in that case why hadn't they come home?
    She marched to the side of the house and turned over
the rock under which she kept an extra key. Letting herself in, she
felt for the first time a slight sense of foreboding; the lock didn't
give at first, not until she'd turned the key a few times. Could it
be the door hadn't been locked? Had she unwittingly locked it
herself, then had to fiddle to unlock it?
    " Arthur?" she called. Getting no answer,
she turned from the hall into the dining room, where her family
should have been. Instead there was blood.
    Red on the cream walls, splashed as if a kid had
filled a balloon with blood and fanned his arm in a great and joyous
arc to empty it. But it was as if he'd done it sitting on the floor.
The blood was low on the wall, and above the splashes, there was a
bloody handprint. Blood was also pooled on the floor.
    Blood. Like something in a movie. Or on television;
an event in someone else's life.
    The heavy mahogany table had been upended. China,
silver, and beans had spilled every which way, and chairs were
overturned, though not Sally's high chair, which was empty.
    Arthur lay on the floor, faceup, eyes open, white
shirt soaked red. There was blood on his pants too, at the groin.
    The house was so still Sugar's breath sounded like
screaming.
 
 
    2
    "Mrs. Hebert? I'm Skip Langdon."
    The woman on the porch looked blank. She was as
ordinary a woman as Skip had ever seen, though she was trying—she
had on a lot of makeup and her dishwater hair had been highlighted
and permed. She was a little overweight, not much, really, just
slightly round, and wore expensive pink slacks with a sleeveless
white knit top to which small pearls had been sewn at the neckline.
    "Yes?" she said, as if unable to comprehend
why strangers were invading her house.
    "Detective Skip Langdon. I'm from Homicide."
    " Oh, I see."
    Skip had arrived with her platoon, all in the same
car, because there weren't nearly enough unmarked cars to go around.
They must have looked terrifying, a six-foot-tall woman and three men
in suits, advancing like a phalanx. Skip was talking because she had
caught the case, meaning it was simply her turn—she'd been next on
the list when the call came. She gestured for the others to go
in—she'd interview the witness, they could divide up the other
chores.
    Rather than sad, the woman seemed bewildered and
scared out of her mind, though she'd had a little time to calm down.
The district officer had arrived first and had called Homicide. All
Skip knew was that Sugar Hebert had arrived home to find her husband
shot dead in the dining room.
    Hebert said, "They're gone. All of them. I only
left for twenty minutes."
    "Shall we talk in the car?" Hebert looked
as if she could stand to sit down.
    "Yes. Please. They said I couldn't stay in the
house."
    " I'm sorry."
    "Well, not that I'd want to." They were
side by side now, and something passed over Hebert's face that could
have been a memory—of her dead husband, perhaps.
    Another car arrived—Paul Gottschalk from the crime
lab and Sylvia Cappello, Skip's sergeant. "Can you tell me what
happened?"
    "We were having dinner—my husband and my
daughter, along with her husband and their little girl. Somebody
spilled something on Sally and I went to get her clean overalls. When
I came back, it was like it is now. Blood everywhere, and Arthur—"
    " The other three were gone?"
    "Gone! Disappeared into thin air."
    Slowly, Skip drew the story out of Sugar Hebert—how
the family had dinner every Monday, how they had recently celebrated
Arthur's birthday and he had announced his retirement, but tonight
had reneged; how they had fought, the other three, though this one
didn't participate. How she had been gone only twenty minutes—thirty
at the most—and had come home to find her world in shards.
    "Did you touch anything?"
    "No. Not even Arthur. I couldn't stand to look
at him; it was too . . . that wasn't my husband down there. I just
sort of crab-walked to the nearest phone and called the police."
    "And where