Before her husband could get too comfortable, Cissy said, “I think I can handle it from here. Thanks.”
His lips tightened at the corners. “Don’t do it, Ciss,” he warned.
“Do what?”
“Play the part of the bitchy ex-wife. You know, all prickly and able to handle life on her own no matter what kind of trauma she’s just been through.”
“But I can. Handle everything.”
“Even your grandmother’s murder?”
“Don’t be such a bastard.”
He inclined his head, taking the heat. “I just want to face reality.”
She slid a glance at their son, and her voice softened. “Let’s not discuss this now, okay? Little ears hear a lot, Jack. Maybe you should just go home.”
“This is my home.”
“No more. And I’m tired. It’s been a helluva week.” She slid another piece of pizza onto the tray of Beej’s high chair, then poured some milk into a sippy cup. “Careful with this,” she told her son, and he, so much like his father, grinned mischievously before taking the handle and swinging the cup to and fro, spraying milk on the wall, floor, tray, and Cissy.
Perfect.
“I was afraid of that. You just lost your ‘get out of jail free’ card, bud.”
She retrieved the cup, and he started winding up to wail before she distracted him with his favorite toy. A little rubber car with no moving parts. It did nothing except look remarkably like Jack’s Jeep.
“Dad-dee car!” he said gleefully, his attention diverted as Cissy dabbed at her sweater with a dishrag before swabbing the counter. She glanced up at Jack and saw him smothering a smile. “Don’t say it,” she warned, pointing at him and dropping the rag by mistake. “Crap.” She bent to pick it up and nearly cracked heads with Jack, who had also dived for the soaked towel. “I’ve got it!” Retrieving the dishrag, she mopped up the sprayed milk, then walked onto what had once been a porch and was now the sunroom. Opening a cupboard door, she dropped the rag into a laundry chute that channeled to the basement.
By the time she’d returned to the kitchen, Jack had retrieved two bottles of beer from the fridge. “Something I forgot when I moved out,” he said, then popped the tops. He handed her a bottle, tapped the neck of his to hers, and said, “To better days.”
A part of her wanted to argue and throw him out, though another part told herself to let it go for the night. She didn’t need another fight. She figured there were enough battles on the horizon. Reluctantly she offered him a conciliatory smile.
“Amen,” she whispered. “To better days.”
She lifted the bottle to her lips, but paused as a horrid thought hit her.
What if this was the best day?
What if from here on in, things just got worse? She took a long swallow as her son pounded his little car on the tray of his high chair.
Now, there was a happy thought.
Chapter 4
Paterno felt a case of heartburn coming on.
He reached into his pocket and found a near-empty packet of Tums. Popping a couple of the chalky tablets, he took a sweeping glance at the Cahill estate, thinking this was the price he paid for returning to the city. A few years back, he’d taken a leave of absence and spent some time working in Santa Lucia, thinking the quiet life might appeal to him. Instead, though, he’d caught one helluva case involving a firefighting family, and after that he’d slowly become bored with the slower pace of small-town life. He’d done his share of touring wineries, golfing, or fly-fishing, but the quiet life hadn’t taken. Truth to tell, he’d missed the hustle and bustle of the city: the steep hills, rich history, and varied elements and ethnicity of San Francisco. He loved the smell of the wharf, the Irish bars, the noise and color of Chinatown, all of it. He still got a thrill driving over the Golden Gate, and hell if he didn’t ride a damned cable car now and again. He just liked the feel of the city, the smell of it. So despite this new Cahill mess and the long hours he put in with the department, he was glad to be back.
“Hey! Detective! Over here!” From within the house, Tallulah Jefferson gestured for him to come back inside. She was eyeing the marble tiles of the floor while the ME was examining the body, taking internal temperature, checking for contusions and lividity. A petite black woman, Jefferson was nothing if not an enthusiastic criminalist. She was able to divorce herself from the person within the body in a way that Paterno had never seen. She wore no makeup, and she always sported some kind of headband to scrape her springy curls away from her face. Now her usually smooth forehead was wrinkled in thought as she huddled with Janet Quinn at the base of the stairs while an officer dusted the railing for prints and a photographer snapped off pictures.
“What have you got?” Paterno asked, approaching her.
“No accident, that’s what I’ve got.” Jefferson nodded, as if agreeing with herself, then looked up at the landing and squinted. Paterno guessed that in her mind’s eye she was watching a slow-motion movie of what she thought were the last seconds of Eugenia Cahill’s life. “The way I see it, she fell from the landing, not down the stairs.” Jefferson pointed to the sweeping wooden steps covered with an expensive runner. “I can’t find any signs of anything hitting the wall, no blood, no unusual scrapes on the risers or railing where either her body or her cane would have hit and bounced as she tumbled down. Nothing on the runner, no tears to the carpet or smears of blood, at least none that I can see.” Jefferson scratched a spot near her headband. “And see where she landed…over here.” The criminalist walked back to the victim’s body, where the ME was getting it ready for the body bag.
A thick red stain spread upon the floor, Eugenia’s blood in a pool directly under a huge chandelier suspended from the floor above. Dripping crystal and illuminated by hundreds of small lights, the chandelier seemed garish and overwhelming considering the tiny victim directly beneath it. “She’s a good six feet from the bottom step. No way would any kind of momentum send her over here, even if she skidded over the tile. This rug”—Jefferson pointed to a small circular carpet at the base of the stairs—“would have been disturbed, but see: not even one piece of fringe is out of place. No blood streaking the floor. No scuffs from her shoes. And I don’t think the body was moved. It looks like she landed right where she ended up.”
“She was pushed?”
Jefferson glanced up at the landing. “She was not quite five feet tall, and presumably a little stooped. Walked with a cane. The rail would have hit her about here.” She leveled a hand on her own body, to a spot just under her breasts. “Even if she tripped, or fell, or had a heart attack or stroke or whatever, how did she get over the railing? I could see her stumbling on the landing and falling against the rail, and if it was really weak and she hit it with some kind of force, maybe the old railing would have splintered. Maybe then she could’ve fallen through, but I really don’t think so. Doesn’t matter. I checked. That railing’s oak and damned solid. No weak connections, no broken balusters. Besides, I think the body’s in the wrong spot. If she fell or were dangled, she’d land over here.” Jefferson walked to below the landing, closer to the wall. “We won’t know until we take more measurements, but I’m guessing she either did a swan dive from the railing, leaping outward, or, more likely, she was helped over.”
“Homicide.”
“It’s preliminary, but yeah, right now, that’s what I’m saying. I didn’t see any sign of a struggle on the landing, but I’ll look again.”
So who would kill her? Paterno wondered, his gaze moving from the foyer to the sitting room, then toward hallways that he