“Did it happen a lot?”
“No. Our daughter went to rehab and we were both very upset about it,” I say, and sigh as I pull my hair out of my face. “It was comfort.”
“What about his girlfriend?”
I shrug. “He’s always had a lot of girlfriends.”
“Do you know where she is, the girlfriend? We’d really like to talk to her.”
“Talk to her about what?” My pulse goes thready, and I’m suddenly worried that there’s more to this than just establishing a timeline. “Do you think someone killed him?”
“It’s inconclusive at the moment.” He taps his pen on the table.
Cold freezes my spine. “What do you mean? I thought it was a heart attack?”
“It was the logical conclusion at first, but the coroner hasn’t been able to nail it down. It wasn’t a classic heart attack for sure.”
“He hadn’t been feeling very well for a few weeks.”
“Did he see a doctor? Did he talk about his symptoms?”
“Not really. He didn’t have a lot of energy.”
He writes something on his paper. “And you don’t know where Norah Rivera is?”
I shake my head. “I kicked her out.”
“Kicked her out of where?”
“Belle l’été, the house on Cliff Road.”
He nods, blank faced. “Did you have the authority to kick her out? Do you own part of the house?”
“No. It belongs to my daughter.”
“The one in rehab?”
“Yes. She needed a place to live, and I knew Augustus had left it to her.”
“She was in rehab the night he died?”
“Yes. I’m sure that’s easily verified.” My stomach is burning with tension. “Is there anything else?”
“Did you have sex with Augustus that night?”
I take a breath, meet his eyes. Lie. “No. I just brought him the strawberries.”
He scribbles on his notepad, his handwriting so tiny I’d need a magnifying glass to read it.
“Can I go now?”
“That should do it. For now.” He meets my gaze with his cool blue eyes, and again I feel a shuddering reminder of my stepfather. “Thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.”
Back in the car, I realize that my hands are shaking. For long minutes, I sit with my hands in my lap, staring out the windshield at the past.
Did you have a sexual relationship with the deceased?
The third time we started again, Maya had been settled in rehab for five days. That night, I sat in my garden beneath the moon trying to absorb the light and ease my jangled nerves, my tangled emotions. I drank my own special herbal tea blend, made with lemon balm, peppermint, and chamomile. In the darkness, I smoked a joint that had come highly recommended by the clean-shaven guy behind the counter at the local pot shop. He promised it would be mild and mellow and, maybe because my eyes were practically swollen shut from crying, added that it would probably help.
I hadn’t been high for decades, but my entire soul felt shredded, so shredded I feared that it would not come back this time. I was desperate to escape my own experience. Nothing on earth could have made me drink a glass of wine. After rescuing Maya, soaked inside and out with the wine she had so painstakingly created, that pleasure was ruined forever.
So I sat in my garden, smoking with lazy attention, waiting to see what happened between inhales. So far, he was right—a soft blurriness crept up my limbs, and the heavy weight of the past few days finally dropped away. I had my feet propped up on a table, and tilted my head to admire the bare shape of them, high arches and long toes. Nice feet, I thought.
Both dogs sat with me, alert for things to chase, or invaders, or a cat who might tease them. Elvis growled low in his throat, and I said, “It’s all right, baby.”
“Calmez-vous,” said a deep voice in French. Settle down, to the dogs.
Augustus. I looked at him, then back to the garden, unwilling to allow my anger to rise again, anger so bitterly, blisteringly hot that I’d had to walk away before I struck him in the kitchen of Peaches and Pork. His great flaw was carelessness—carelessness with me, with his life, with his daughter in particular.
“Will you share?” he asked, and without asking permission, sat in the chair beside mine. I handed over the joint.
“What are you doing here?”
The joint glowed orange as he inhaled. I waited. He exhaled in a gust, the smoke making a cloud against the stars. “I can’t sleep, thinking about her, wondering if she’ll be okay. If . . .” He paused, pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. “How I could have changed things.” He handed me the joint. “I wish I could go back in time,” he said.