Love Can Be Murder

neighbor’s?”
    “I have to get dressed,” I murmured, then flinched when I realized I was saying every wrong thing.
    The operator agreed I should get dressed, but warned me not to touch anything else and to stay on the line until the police arrived. I pulled on sweats with the cordless phone crooked between ear and shoulder, breathing like a sprinter. My normally well-ordered mind was operating like a Roomba vacuum cleaner, pinging off every barrier and heading in another direction.
    The operator continued to ask questions—How did I know the deceased? What was his full name? Where was I when the stabbing occurred?—but I didn’t answer. I was already thinking like a criminal, reviewing my alibi (sleeping), and brainstorming how I could shore it up before the uniforms arrived. I unlocked the deadbolt and cracked open the window in my bedroom even though it was on the second floor and the only way anyone could have reached it was with a ladder. Ditto for the window in the living room.
    “Ma’am, don’t touch anything,” the operator repeated, and I realized the sounds of all my movements had been caught on tape. I could picture a prosecutor recreating the noises for a jury. Here she’s unlocking the door, here she’s opening a window. I heard sirens, so I disconnected the call before I incriminated myself further.
    The next two hours brought a flurry of bodies through the door—police, EMT’s, a medical examiner. A slender black female detective sat with me in the bathroom—me on the lid of the commode and her on a chair draped with the white shirt I’d worn to work yesterday. Her name was Detective Salyers.
    “Miss Greenfield, you had sex with the victim?”
    “I told you, yes.” I was growing irritated with the repetitive questioning, primarily because I was paranoid of saying something wrong. The reason I’d opted for real estate law versus criminal law was my lousy public speaking skills. “Like I said, Daniel knocked on my door around two in the morning. He was drunk and asked if he could crash on the couch. He was disturbing my neighbors, so I decided it was easier to let him in than to try to get him to leave.”
    “Had this happened before?”
    I nodded. Daniel had been fond of late-night episodes where he’d banged on the door in prelude to banging me . “But not for months.” Not since he’d dumped me.
    “So you let him in, and then you had sex?”
    “Yes. Then he passed out and I went back to bed. When my alarm went off, I got up and found him, dead.”
    “You didn’t hear anything after you went to bed?”
    “No.”
    “And nothing is missing.”
    “That I know of. Of course, Daniel could’ve had something valuable on him.”
    “His wallet, cash, and gold watch are intact.”
    Damn—so much for robbery.
    “So after you went to bed, someone entered your apartment and stabbed Mr. Hale to death for no apparent reason?”
    “It appears so.”
    “How did they get in?”
    “Like I said, I left the door unlocked.” The lie was getting easier, sounding more plausible.
    “Someone intent on doing harm entered your apartment through a door you happened to leave unlocked, walked right past you sleeping in your bedroom, killed Mr. Hale on the living room couch, and left?”
    “They could’ve gotten in through a window,” I offered.
    “Both windows raise only a few inches, for safety. An adult couldn’t have squeezed through.”
    “Oh. Right.”
    The detective blinked slowly. “Miss Greenfield, the knife in his chest matches the other knives in your kitchen.”
    “So the murderer used one of my knives.”
    “Are we going to find your fingerprints on the knife?”
    “Possibly, if it came from my kitchen.” I pushed to my feet. “I’d really like to take a shower.”
    Detective Salyers stood, too. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. You’re going to have to come to the station with me, Miss Greenfield.”
    I closed my eyes and sighed. “I need to make a call first.”
    She extended her cell phone. “Use mine.”

    ***

    “I CAME AS SOON as I could.”
    I lifted my head from a sticky wood table scarred with key-carved initials to see Grant Bellamy standing in the doorway. I had maintained my composure to this point, but when I saw Grant was wearing the navy blue crested blazer I had bought him for one of our two wedding anniversaries, I melted into a big gobbet of goo. Gentle brown eyes, severely clipped hair, and triple-pleated chinos I had once found so