Love Can Be Murder

Daniel is murdered in my apartment.”
    He lifted his hand and rubbed my jaw line with his thumb in a comforting gesture I realized I’d missed since our split. “Let’s let the police handle it, okay, Renni?”
    “You’ll tell the detective to look into it?”
    “You know I will.”
    I climbed into my car and followed Grant to the small house in Virginia-Highlands we’d once shared. As I parked in the driveway behind him, a wave of nostalgia swept over me. The daylilies I’d planted around the mailbox had multiplied and were well-maintained. The tarnished birdbath Grant hated from the day I’d dragged it home from an antiques market was filled with seed on one side, fresh water on the other. He’d even painted the shutters the bright yellow I’d always wanted.
    I was suddenly nervous standing behind him as he unlocked the front door. I felt small and selfish, my heart burning over the way I’d abruptly ended our marriage mid-sentence and for no tangible reason, leaving him open-mouthed and broken. It wasn’t him, I’d said, it was me. I couldn’t admit that I’d found his fastidiousness suffocating, his organization unnerving. I’d known those things about him when we’d dated, but after the wedding, his compulsive behavior seemed to intensify. I found myself watching him and watching myself…and found him watching me as well, silently disapproving every time I opened a box of crackers on the wrong end or snorted when I laughed. The affection I’d once felt for him had withered under the tension. I had begun to understand how husbands and wives could snap and murder the other person in his or her sleep. I’d had to get out of there.
    “Welcome back,” Grant said, swinging open the door.
    I stepped inside to see the same leather furniture situated the same way, the same silk floral arrangements on the same end tables, the same botanical prints hanging on the same walls. I half-expected to see a pair of my sandals tucked under the chair where I used to sit watching Grant watch me.
    “I love what you’ve done with the place,” I joked, and he laughed, an unbridled noise that surprised me.
    “I’ll sleep in the guest room,” I said, then added, “if it’s still a guest room.”
    “Everything is pretty much the same as when you were here before,” he said, as if I’d been a visitor then, too.
    “Do you mind if I take a shower?”
    “Go ahead. The soap you like is in the vanity.”
    I didn’t ask why that was—it seemed perfectly natural that Grant would anticipate my needs. Besides, I was single-mindedly focused on getting to the shower. Once there, frothy with ginger-orange soap, I lost it and cried like a little girl. For whatever reason—sex, companionship, or sheer laziness—Daniel Hale had been compelled to visit me last night…and was dead because of it.

    ***

    “BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU say at work today,” Grant told me over morning oatmeal. I wondered if his cholesterol was still high, his arteries clogged with the stress of a disorderly world.
    I set down my spoon. “Grant, I didn’t kill Daniel.”
    “Of course you didn’t,” he replied easily, then took a drink from his coffee cup. “But until you’re cleared, anything you say can be misconstrued. The important thing is that people see you getting back to normal.”
    I squinted at him. “I can’t simply behave as if nothing has happened. A coworker and a man I used to date was murdered in my apartment. Don’t you think everyone would expect me to be traumatized?”
    “I didn’t realize you got that attached to people,” Grant murmured.
    A direct hit. It felt good, actually. I’d often regretted not giving Grant the chance to tell me what he thought of me for walking out—it would have hurt less than living with the fact that I’d robbed him of even that satisfaction.
    “I wasn’t in love with Daniel,” I said evenly, “but it’s not every day someone gets murdered on my couch.”
    “I saw you and him together once.”
    I blinked. “When?”
    “A few months ago, in a restaurant. You looked happy.”
    I wiped my mouth with one of the cloth napkins Grant preferred—I was more of a paper towel girl myself. “Grant…I’m sorry.”
    “For what?”
    “For leaving you with no explanation. You deserved better.”
    He shrugged. “Water under the bridge. Right now let’s concentrate on getting through this mess.”
    That you created.
    His unspoken words hung in the air next to the light fixture with