Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

snoop.”
    “At my—”
    I waited.
    Venus fished in her purse for her keys and dropped them into my hand.
    “Twelve D,” she said.
    “I left the bugs in at work. I don’t want whoever did this to know we know. I don’t want you to act funny in any way. We’ll have enough to handle on Friday, when they get to see the will.”
    “You don’t know the half of it.”
    “Then tell me. Everything, Venus. There’s no more time for cat and mouse.”
    “I wasn’t playing cat and mouse with you, Rachel. And it’s not what you think.“
    “Which is?”
    “That I don’t trust you.”
    I waited.
    Venus waited, too.
    “Venus, I don’t know what your thinking is—-that the relatives will chip in and hire a hit man? What’s going to happen is that they’re going to contest the new will.”
    “You are thorough.”
    “Isn’t that what you’re paying for?”
    She opened the water bottle and took a sip.
    “They can’t contest it.”
    “Why not?”
    “We were married.”
    That sat between us for a minute, stopping the conversation dead in its tracks.
    “Venus, why didn’t you—”
    ‘Tell? Tell Bailey and Janice that I was their auntie now? Tell Eli that for all intents and purposes I was his boss now? Tell you, Rachel, the first day? What would you have thought if I had told you right away that I’d married the rich old toad who’d just been killed, that he’d just made a new will, a week before the accident, that I was now director of operations and finances at the place where I’d been working for a modest salary? You would have figured it for true love, is that what you would have thought, no notions that I duped him somehow, got him to change his will, put me in charge? Tell me about it.”
    I didn’t. I just sat there, waiting. Behind my back, I could hear Dashiell drinking in the kitchen, his tags clanging against the bowl.
    “You might have wondered, was he seeing me before Marilyn died, maybe even before she got sick? It wasn’t like that, and I wouldn’t want anyone thinking that about Harry. Not anyone.
    “Or you might have wondered if he was senile, doing something so crazy.”
    She put the water bottle on my makeshift coffee table and wiped her eyes with the balls of her fingers.
    “So you think the family might be upset?”
    “It’s a possibility.”
    “Figuring old Harry wouldn’t have married a recovering alcoholic black lady for love?”
    “How did you—?”
    “The first part, that you’re a recovering alcoholic? A pretty good guess, apparently. You’ve obviously got an addictive personality—the gym, the internet, even the way you talk about work and the kids. You said you were lonely. It wasn’t too big a leap.”
    Venus nodded, putting her arms around herself as if she were cold.
    “The second part, that you’re black? Observation. A result of my extensive professional training.”
    Venus laughed. I think this was the third time I’d seen her do that, her thousand-watt smile staying in place, too. I smiled back.
    I didn’t have any problem at all with Harry loving her. But I didn’t think my opinion would gamer a lot of support, not from Harry’s family, not from the Kagans, not from the cops either.
    “We’re in deep shit, aren’t we?”
    “Thigh high,” I said.
    “What’s your plan?”
    “Other than running for the hills?”
    Venus nodded.
    “I’m going over to your apartment, check the phones.“
    “How would someone have gotten in there?”
    “Depends how this was done.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “These people who are going to be mad at you—”
    “To say the least.”
    “Some of them have got a lot of money. They could have hired someone. You can always get into someone’s apartment, with the gift of gab or a good set of picks.”
    “But they don’t have as much money as you might think. With the Pooles, it’s all on their backs. Arlene’s a widow. She wasn’t left all that much, enough to live on, not enough to live the way she thinks she ought to, the way her sister was able to. She’s been supplemented by Harry for a long time.”
    “Why, if he—”
    “His wife. It made her feel guilty that she could go to Palm Beach, and Arlene couldn’t.”
    “What about Bailey and Janice?”
    “Snotty little leeches.”
    “Is that your opinion or Harry’s?”
    She didn’t say.
    “Did Harry support them, too?”
    “Bailey keeps starting degrees, then dropping out. He’d rather gamble than study. Harry bailed him out of debt