“Help yourself. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you. I’m fine.” She looked disappointed. “I don’t have much time. I have to get back for a meeting.” I wasn’t crazy enough to eat food from a woman whose husband I’d had an affair with. Martha Littlejohn wasn’t a stellar parent, but she didn’t raise a fool.
I sat in one of the soft-cushion barstools at the center island and watched Anna take a couple wine goblets from the cabinet. Her petite figure was draped in a gray silk shirt and wool slacks, her blond hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She filled one glass with red wine and the second glass with sparkling water and smiled as she pushed the glass of water in my direction.
“Water for you since you have to get back to work.” She raised her glass in a mock toast. “As for me, it’s five o’clock somewhere in the world. Cheers.”
I wondered how long she had been day-drinking. Probably since Michael’s death. Maybe she knew nothing.
“How have you been?” I said. Awkward, but I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t in the habit of socializing with the wife of the dead man I’d been sleeping with. Out of nowhere, a flash of Michael’s bloody body sliced through my mind. I took a deep breath and willed myself not to run out of this house.
“I don’t know. Most days are tough. The kids went back to school.” Anna took a sip of wine. “Anyway, how about you? I heard about the promotion. Congratulations.” Anna’s eyes brightened a bit.
“Thanks.” I was uncomfortable as hell. I eyed the door. Surely, she hadn’t summoned me to her home to pop the champagne cork on my promotion and provide a lunch spread. “You mentioned something urgent about Michael.”
She gazed at me for a beat. “Ellice, I need to know something. And I want the truth, okay?”
“Sure . . . of course.” Oh God. Here it comes. Just be honest, apologize, and leave.
“What was going on in that office?” Anna asked, her voice soft and low.
My mouth went dry. My hands moistened and trembled. “I . . . um . . . I don’t know what you mean.”
“I know something was going on at the office, Ellice.”
“It’s . . . well—” I stopped. I noticed something in her. Her demeanor changed. Her shoulders slumped and her faced flushed with worry. Not what I expected from a wife about to get into a dustup with her dead husband’s mistress. My instincts kicked in. Just be quiet. Let her do the talking. Admit nothing.
“Ellice, I want to know what was going on in that place that would make Michael change.”
“Change? Wait . . . what?” Were we talking about the same thing?
“He spent a lot of time working on some case. I didn’t press him at first. I just figured he’d resolve it at some point, that things would get back to normal. I know you lawyers have your confidentiality rules, but this time, whatever he was working on, it was different. It consumed him in a way I’d never seen before.”
I picked through my brain, trying to recall the last few weeks between Michael and me. How had I missed what was apparently obvious to Anna? I remembered Hardy telling me the security guards noticed Michael working over the weekend before his murder.
“Did he tell you anything about it? A name or what the case was about?”
“No, he didn’t, but I want to show you something.” I followed her down the hall to Michael’s study. “Last Friday, while we were at Michael’s memorial service, we had a break-in, here at the house.”
“A break-in?”
Anna flung open the door of the study and clicked on a light switch. Books and papers were scattered across the floor on one side of the study. On the other, a few picture frames and papers were stacked in short uneven piles on the desk.
“Pardon the mess. I haven’t taken leave of my housekeeping skills,” Anna said. “During the break-in, this room was ransacked—the only room in the whole house. The police dusted for fingerprints but didn’t find anything. I’ve tried to pick up in between everything else going on.” Anna stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, shaking her head, perplexed, as if it had just happened.
“Oh, good Lord. Did they take anything?” I scanned the chaos across the room. From the looks of things, Michael had something someone was looking for.
“As far as I can tell, no. And that includes jewelry that was upstairs and china and silver in the dining room. Computers. TVs. Nothing stolen. They disabled the alarm system panel and everything. They knew what they were doing, a real professional job. The police think the break-in is tied to Michael’s death. But they can’t be sure. I can tell you for a fact, whoever came in here was looking for something in particular. But I happen to know they didn’t find it.”