Murder Plays House Read Online Free PDF Page B

in a delicate physical condition.”
    The detective leafed through the small stack of documents and then handed our driver’s licenses back to us. “We’ll be needing to talk to you again,” he said.
    “Of course,” I replied.
    “We’ll see,” Nahid said. She poked Kat and said, “Katayoun. Up. We’re going home.”
    Kat struggled to her feet, and I reached out a hand to help her. She shook her head at me, rubbed her eyes once, and then stood up. “I’m okay. Nahidjoon, I’m fine.”
    Nahid clucked her tongue. Then she turned back to the detective. “I assume when you’re done here you’ll clean up after yourself. I’m planning an open house for next week, and I can’t have you making a disgusting mess here.”
    His jaw dropped, but by then the woman had spun on her heels and was halfway across the yard to the outside gate, dragging my friend along behind her.
    I turned to Al, expecting him to escort me out, but he shook his head slightly. “I’m going to hang out here for a while,” he whispered to me. “See if I can’t get in to see the body. You go on.”
    Kat and her mother-in-law had already driven away by the time I got out to the front of the house, and it was a moment before I remembered that I’d left my car in the parking lot at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Nahid had hustled Kat into her own car, and Kat’s Mercedes was still on the street in front of the house. I debated waiting for Al to drive me, but, it wasn’t more than a fifteen or twenty minute walk home. In the middle of the trek, I realized that while I’d routinely walked dozens of blocks when I lived in New York City, since Peter and I had transplanted ourselves to the City of Angels—and of SUVs—my walking had been pretty much limited to trips to and from various parking lots, and the odd, desperate perambulation with a stroller, trying to convince a crying baby to nod off. I’d certainly never attempted a mile or so in this late stage of pregnancy. But the walk, or should I say waddle, was good for me. By the time I got home, I had managed to calm myself down sufficiently to fool the kids, if not my husband. We spent what remained of the afternoon playing Chutes and Ladders. Peter seemed to understand that I wasn’t in any shape to be alone, so he hung out with me and the kids. He hadn’t cleaned up the bathroom after Isaac’s latest adventure in emesis, but only because we have always had an unofficial division of labor that makes disposing of the children’s various effluvia my purview. There are other household unpleasantnesses my husband assumes responsibility for, including dealing with the cars, plumbing problems, and his mother. Trust me, it’s an even trade.
    It was only after we got the kids to bed that I could collapse on the couch and recount to my husband the horror that I’d witnessed.
    “So the shower didn’t have any effect on the progress ofthe rigor?” Peter said, when I was done describing the state of the actress’s body.
    “Peter!” I said.
    “What? It might come in handy some day.”
    I shook my head. You’d think after eight years of marriage I’d be used to my husband’s voracious appetite for the disgusting detail.
    He suddenly seemed to remember that we were talking about a real person, and not one of his celluloid corpses. He reached an arm around me and snuggled me closer to him.
    “It was pretty awful,” I said, leaning my head against his chest. “Mrs. Lahidji said the woman was an actress. Alicia Felix. I’ve never heard of her, have you?”
    He shook his head. Then he reached under the couch and pulled out the laptop he’d stashed there when I’d walked in the door. I had pretended not to notice that he had been sitting on the couch playing on his computer while the kids wrestled on the carpet, and I didn’t comment now. He tapped on the computer for a while. Peter had set us up with an Airport, so we could get a wireless connection to the Internet from anywhere in the