Elizabeth Zelvin - Bruce Kohler 04 - Death Will Save Your Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

alibi.”
    “Annabel despises me,” Honey said. “She’d sure be glad to see me in trouble.”
    “Did they have a nasty divorce?” Barbara asked.
    “Very.”
    “Media, lawsuits, the works,” I added. “Right, Honey?”
    “You must think I was crazy to have married him,” Honey said.
    We all made soothing noises. One thing about people in recovery, no craziness involving families or relationships surprises us.
    “They wanted to know when he left our room,” Honey said. “I was reading in bed, and at about 10:30 he said he was going off campus to use his cell phone. I fell asleep waiting for him. No matter what time he died, I have no alibi.”
    “Why would Melvin have gone up to the Outlook anyhow?” I asked. “He wasn’t that much of a nature boy, was he, Honey?”
    “He wasn’t athletic,” Honey said, “but he was crazy about nature stuff, you know, as something to look at. He could have wanted to see the sunrise.”
    “Or the Northern Lights,” Jimmy said. “He was cold by sunrise, so he’d been there a while.”
    “Yes, we’d heard you could sometimes see those from up there,” Honey said. “It was his kind of thing. He liked to give his workshops on cruises. He did them in the Caribbean, Alaska, the Galapagos, all those places.”
    “Did Annabel ever go with him?” Jimmy asked.
    “No, he always said she thought cruises were bourgeois.” The word sounded funny on her Nebraskan lips. “Besides—”
    “Besides?”
    “He liked not having her along. He liked the freedom.”
    “You mean he’d play around?”
    Honey nodded unhappily.
    “I can see it,” Barbara said. “Charismatic older guy, young women yearning for the good relationship, he’s an expert so he must know what’s right.”
    “Enough, Barbara,” I said. “Honey met him at a workshop, right, Honey?”
    She gazed at her toes.
    “I didn’t tell you this part,” she said. “We met on one of those cruises. He was still married to Annabel. That’s why she hates me.”

    Jojo was still up when I let myself into the room at 2 AM. He looked at me over the top of his reading glasses.
    “Out on the tiles?”
    The closest to an honest response would have been “Yes and no.” My lips still buzzed with Honey’s kisses. We had gone down by the lake and necked like a couple of kids. I hadn’t done that since I was thirteen, with an older woman of fourteen named Peggy Costello, under the bushes in Carl Schurz Park.
    “I heard you were spied comforting the grieving widow.”
    Jeez, how did that get around so fast?
    “While you stayed in to mourn for your bestselling client? Or were you out comforting the grieving ex?”
    “I’ll rend my breast with the best at the funeral, never fear. Tonight I’m resting up from all that emotion. Too much sturm und drang for me. Poor Annabel is devastated.”
    “Why? She dumped him, didn’t she? Or was it the other way around?”
    A sly smile flickered on his lips.
    “Reports of the death of that steamy relationship were greatly exaggerated. If you ask me, the little chippie was on her way out. Oops, I forgot she’s a friend of yours. Just a word of warning before you bet your shirt on the wrong horse.”
    I did not like this guy.
    “Is she in the will?”
    “That would be the point, dear, wouldn’t it?”
    “I meant Annabel, and you know it.”
    “Now that I couldn’t say.” He wiggled his reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and turned a page.
    I stripped down to my shorts and climbed into bed.
    “You might consider the sister,” he said as I turned out the light. “Feather née Arlene and her mad, mad husband.”
    “According to Jojo,” I told Barbara and Jimmy the next morning, “Annabel and Melvin still had the hots for each other. If you can believe Jojo. So wouldn’t she have wanted him alive?”
    “Not if what she really wanted was his money,” Jimmy said. “But the timing is wrong. We have only Jojo’s word for it that the marriage with Honey was