Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

his big almond eyes behind it, tilted his chin just so, she could feel her panties evaporate in a hushed puff of flame.
    Maybe. Maybe . . .
    “Don’t be all day with the lesbians, that’s all, okay? Money’s like rust — shit doesn’t sleep.” He winked at her. “Know what I’m saying, sister?”
    She nodded.
    Alan took another slug of orange juice and some of it spilled into his chest hairs. He dropped the bottle on the counter, cap still off. He pinched her cheek on his way out of the room.
    Nah. Fucking time for you to go, Alan.

    K INEAVY HAD BEEN very clear about the timeline.
    She was to stay in the house until 9:45 to make sure Alan didn’t forget he was supposed to stick around for the cable guy, because Alan, for all his attention to detail when it came to money, could be absentminded to the edge of retardation when it came to almost anything else. She was to go out through the front door, leaving it unlocked behind her. Not open, mind you, just unlocked. At some point while she was out with Lana on a Bloody Mary binge at the bar down the street from the Sherborn Arts Fair, Alan would answer the front door and the cable guy would shoot him in the head.
    Oh, Alan,
she thought.
You aren’t a bad guy. You just aren’t a good one.
    She heard him coughing upstairs. He was probably sitting in the bathroom waiting for the shower to get hot, even though that took about four seconds in this McMansion. But Alan liked to turn the bathroom into a steam room. She’d come in after him, see his wipe marks all over the mirrors as her hair curled around her ears.
    He coughed again, closer to the stairs now, and she thought,
Terrific. Your last gift to me will be a cold. My fucking luck, it’ll turn into a sinus infection.
    He was hacking up a lung by the sounds of it, so she left the kitchen and crossed the family room, which would remain an ironic description unless she hired the von Trapps to fill it. And even then there’d be room for one of the smaller African nations and a circus.
    He stood at the top of the stairs, naked, coughing blood out of his mouth and onto his chest. He had one hand over the hole in his throat and he kept blinking and coughing, blinking and coughing, like he was pretty sure if he could just swallow whatever was stuck in his throat, this too would pass.
    Then he fell. He didn’t make it all the way down the stairs — there were a lot of them — but he made it nearly halfway before his right foot got jammed between the balusters. Alan ended his life facedown and bare-assed, dangling like something about to be dipped.
    Nicole realized she’d been screaming only when she stopped.
    She heard herself say, “Oh, boy. Jesus. Oh, boy.”
    Alan’s head had landed on the wood between the runner and the balustrade, and he’d begun to drip.
    “Oh, boy. Wow.”
    “You got my money?”
    To her credit she didn’t whip around or let out a yelp. She turned slowly to face him. He stood a couple feet behind her in the family room. He looked every inch the suburban dad out on Saturday errands — light blue shirt untucked over wrinkled khaki cargo shorts, boat shoes on his feet.
    “I do,” she said. “It’s in the kitchen. Do you want to come with me?”
    “No, I’m good here.”
    She started to take a step and stopped. She jerked a thumb toward the kitchen. “May I?”
    “What?” he said. “Yeah, sure.”
    She felt his eyes on her as she crossed the family room to the kitchen. She had no reason to think he had, in fact, turned to watch her go, but she felt it all the same. In the kitchen, her purse was where she’d left it, on one of the high bar stools, and she took the envelope from it, the envelope she’d been instructed to leave in the ivy at the base of the wall by the entrance gate on her way out. But she’d never gone out.
    “You cook?” He stood in the doorway, in the portico they’d designed to look like porticos in Tuscan kitchens.
    “Me? No. No.” She brought him the envelope.
    He took it from her with a courteous nod. “Thank you.” He looked around the room. “This is a hell of a kitchen for someone who doesn’t cook.”
    “Well, no, it’s for the chef.”
    “Oh, the chef. Well, there you go then. Makes sense again. I always wanted one of those hanging-pot things. And those pots, what’re they — copper?”
    “Some of them, yeah.”
    He nodded and seemed impressed. He walked back into the family room and stuffed the envelope into the pocket of his