I Love You More: A Novel (6 page)

“Did you say anything to him?”

“I can’t remember for sure.”

Detective Kennedy looked deep into my eyes. I couldn’t tell whether he actually felt sorry for me or if he was just pretending to. Daddy pretended a lot. “You did a real good job, Picasso. I might have more questions later, but I think that’s enough for now.” He rose, started rubbing the sand off his clothes, looked at me, and laughed. “I think it’s a lost cause. What do you think?”

In spite of myself, I laughed too. He looked like Gulliver with his hair all matted, his trousers rolled up, his clothes and toes full of sand.

“Finally,” he said. “A smile. And a very pretty one at that. See you later, alligator.”

“In a while, crocodile,” I said.

I watched him walk toward the beach house. When he was about halfway there, he stopped, turned around, like he had eyes in the back of his head and knew I’d been watching him. He waved.

I waved back and started working on my sand castle again, only this time it felt different. I was grateful, but not because I was trying not to think about Daddy’s eyes, which I’d pretty much forgotten about. I was grateful because my interview with Detective Kennedy was over. Awhile later, I saw that two white vans had parked in the driveway; one of them had a sign on it that read Channel 3 News. I realized I hadn’t noticed them arrive. I stood, looked toward the beach house. Even though I could see people moving around inside, I couldn’t really see them clearly. They were mostly just shapes. But still, it worried me a little.

Did someone see?

We had decided to wait one year. We knew there would be a murder investigation and that the police would suspect all of us regardless, but if they found out that we knew one another, the risk of discovery would be greater. Once Oliver was dead, there would be no communication between us whatsoever. And there wasn’t. Yet the events of that day, and the year prior, had wound us together as tight as the neck of a noose. It wasn’t only that we knew one another’s thoughts, felt one another’s fears, experienced one another’s pain, or saw our own reflections in one another’s faces. It was as if we had been conceived by the same sperm and waited patiently in the same bloody womb to be born. Oliver’s death would mark our rebirth. Although we knew our journey through the birth canal and into the world would be unpleasant, we hadn’t anticipated how much so. Even with all our planning and preparation, none of us were ready for the cold slap of reality that greeted us, especially Diana.

At first—in between her bouts of extreme sadness over the loss of Oliver of course—Diana obsessed over what really happened that day. Had she or hadn’t she called off the murder? The plan was to call Jewels the afternoon before, at five o’clock. If it was a go, she was supposed to say “The meeting is on,” and if not,
if something went wrong, she was to say “The meeting has been canceled.” What had she said? Had she even made the call?

She recalled fretting over a credible excuse to leave the house, something we hadn’t thought to discuss in advance, and, yes, that’s right, telling Oliver she needed to run into town to pick up something she forgot for dinner. Oliver and Picasso sat either side of the coffee table playing Scrabble.

“Why don’t you let Picasso and I go get it,” Oliver said. “What do you need?”

“Salt,” she said. It was the first thing that came into her mind.

Oliver laughed. “Salt? Don’t they have any here?”

“Not that I could find,” she said.

“We can get by without it. The doctor says I need to cut back anyway.”

“No,” she said, a little too frantically. She calmed herself. “I’m making shrimp and grits. It’ll be bland without salt.”

“We could grill up some burgers instead.”

“The shrimp will go bad. You two stay here. I want to pick up another book anyway. I’m almost finished with mine. You can’t get that for me. You know how I need to read the opening page first.” She saw her book sitting on the sofa end table, the bookmark protruding not even a quarter of the way in.

“Anything we can do for you while you’re gone?” Oliver asked.

The question relieved her. “No, I’m good. Everything else is ready.” On her way out the door, she slid the book she was reading into her handbag.

Yes, she’d made the call, but what message had she left?

For a long while, Diana didn’t remember much of what happened that day. She didn’t remember her swim, or walking back to the beach house. She was just there. She had vivid nightmares. Sometimes Oliver was dead, but he began talking to her, told her how much he loved her and Picasso. Sometimes she felt the warm gun in her hand, smelled gunpowder, an unexpectedly smoky and
tinny smell. Oliver, still alive, grabbed her ankle, held it tightly, cocked his head in disbelief, sadness, then fear. When she woke from these dreams, she felt nothing but curiosity. Curiosity about the look on Oliver’s face. Curiosity about the measured saturation of the blood on the short-looped carpet. Curiosity about her reactions: power, calm, relief. Pleasure.

There were things Diana was certain about. She remembered standing in the doorway, and Picasso walking into the room from the hallway, wearing her purple swimsuit, the one Diana had seen hanging on the bathroom hook before she headed out for her swim. Picasso cast an incredulous look at her mother, ran to her father. Pled with him. A woman and man appeared. Then two men in suits. One caught her attention. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but there was something about him. A commanding presence? He was tall but somewhat soft, especially around the middle, and his nose had obviously been broken. Diana chastised herself for being curious in
that
way while her husband lay dead just a few paces away.

She also remembered the younger detective questioning her, and how anxious and warm she’d become. Whereas once she’d shivered, sweat oozed from her pores. We had playacted that scene several times, but as Diana found out, reality was always more complicated than imagination.

“I apologize for this, Mrs. Lane,” the detective had said. “We were hoping to ask you these questions before the crime lab showed. But this’ll only take a minute. Can you tell me what happened?” He pulled a small spiral-bound notebook and pen from a pocket inside his suit coat.

“Who are you again?” Diana asked.

She was doing what we discussed, attempting to take control from the start.

“Oh, sorry, ma’am,” he said. “I’m Detective Jones. Detective Kennedy and I are with Cooper’s Island PD.”

“What do you mean what happened?” she asked.

“Your husband was shot, ma’am.” He pointed at Oliver. “We’ve ruled out suicide. So that leaves—”

“Why have you ruled out suicide?”

“Was your husband depressed, ma’am?”

She pondered the question. Though Oliver hadn’t officially been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he had mood swings and took medication for them. Like all of us, Diana had been seduced by the happy Oliver but fell in love with the brooding, misunderstood Oliver. “Sometimes, but not lately. I was just wondering how you know it was murder.”

“I don’t recall saying it was murder, ma’am,” he said. “It could’ve been an accident.”

“Do you think it was?” she asked, with perhaps a little too much interest.

“Doubtful,” he said. “Do you know anyone who might want to hurt your husband?”

“No,” Diana said. “Everyone likes—I mean liked—Oliver. What about burglary?”

“Is anything missing?”

“I haven’t checked,” Diana said. “Oliver usually traveled with several thousand dollars in cash.”

“Where did he keep the money?” Detective Jones asked.

“His wallet.”

“Nowhere else?”

“Sometimes he put part of it in a drawer.”

Detective Jones made some notes. “You’re sure he brought the money with him?”

“If you mean did I actually see it? No, I didn’t.”

“We’ll look into it,” Detective Jones said. “May I ask where you were at the time of the murder?”

“Swimming. I saw him when I came back inside.”

“You came back in through the side door?”

“Yes,” Diana said.

He wrote something in his notebook.

“Why does it matter where I came in?”

“It doesn’t,” Detective Jones said. “Just seems a little strange with the sliding glass doors being right there. That nice little deck set up for ocean watching. And it’s right at the top of the stairs. I’d probably come in that way. Especially since you went out that way. But that’s just me.”

“Why do you think I went out that way?” Diana said.

“I thought you said that earlier.” He made a show of looking back through his notes.

“I … I might have. I don’t remember.”

Just stick to our story, Diana
.

“Do you usually lock the doors behind you?”

“Well, no,” Diana said. “Were they locked? If they were, then I must’ve gone out through the side door.”

But Diana was certain she left through the sliding glass doors. Or was she?

“Where were your husband and daughter when you left for your swim?”

“Sleeping. I swim early.”

“How early?”

“Sixish.”

“You a good swimmer, ma’am?”

“I swam competitively in college.”

He wrote. “Do you swim out pretty far?”

“A mile or two, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“How long I plan to swim.”

“How long is that?”

“An hour, hour and a half, sometimes longer.”

He paused, tapped his pen. “How long did you swim this morning?”

“Until seven thirty.”

“So an hour and a half? Not an hour?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that? Do you wear a watch when you swim?”

“No.” The writing made Diana nervous. She didn’t like the thought of everything she said being recorded. Even though we had rehearsed many times, what if she forgot something? What if some of his questions confused her? Like the ones about which door she’d used.

Take a slow, deep breath, Diana
.

“Do you need some time, ma’am?”

“No, I’m fine. What did you ask me?”

“I asked how you know you swam for an hour and a half.”

“I don’t need a watch. I can tell by my routine. I did the longer routine today. I count it out. Breaststroke, then backstroke, then sidestroke, then breaststroke again, and so on.”

“Mrs. Butterworth says that she and her husband heard the shot at seven fifteen. According to you, your husband was lying there when you walked in, so why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

“Mrs. Butterworth?”

“Your neighbor. The woman who was here earlier.”

“Oh, yes,” Diana said. “I don’t know. I guess because he was dead.”

“Did you check?”

“What do you mean, check?”

“To make sure he was dead.”

“No.” Now her heart was pounding.

“Why not?”

Pounding louder.

“Mrs. Butterworth says you were standing by the door when she came in around seven forty-five. So you just stood there for fifteen minutes without feeling for a pulse? Without calling 911 to report that he was dead? Why not, Mrs. Lane?”

“I don’t know,” was all Diana could say.

She couldn’t tell Detective Jones about the mix of emotions she’d felt, that she’d wished the entire thing—Jewels showing up on her doorstep, the plan, the murder—was all a bad dream, that any minute she’d wake up, go for her swim, come back into the house, and make breakfast for Oliver and Picasso. She couldn’t say that her husband had admitted his infidelities the night they arrived at the beach house. That he’d apologized. Told her that he loved her and Picasso more than his other families,
more than life itself
. That he’d break off his other relationships—she still couldn’t say
marriages
. She couldn’t tell the detective the real reason she hadn’t checked Oliver’s pulse: She
knew
he was dead.

“Just one last question, ma’am. Is there any particular reason you’re carrying your passport with you? You aren’t planning on leaving the country anytime soon, are you?”

“No. It’s just that I misplaced my driver’s license, so I thought I might need some other form of identification. You know, just in case …” She paused. Had that sounded incriminating? “I mean, I’m sure I’ll find it. I’m always losing it.”

Diana waited for Detective Jones to ask what she meant by “just in case,” but he didn’t. He closed his notebook and put it in his breast pocket. Then he addressed a uniformed woman who was standing near Oliver’s body.

“Maggie, we’ll need to get a swab of saliva from Mrs. Lane and check her hands and swimsuit too.” He looked back at Diana. “Is that okay?”

“Check for what?”

“Gunshot residue, ma’am, and blood splatter.”

Diana’s heart dropped. She felt faint. “Am I a suspect?”

“Everyone’s a suspect, ma’am, until we eliminate them. Sit tight. It won’t take long. The wolves will be arriving soon. Let’s hope you and your daughter are out of here before then.”

“Where will we go?”

“I’ll get an officer to drive you to the station until things calm down. Then you can pack and we’ll get you home.”

Detective Kennedy returned just as Detective Jones was rising. Diana looked at Oliver’s body one last time, shuddered, and then, clasping Detective Kennedy’s coat tightly around her shoulders, she walked past her dead husband and looked through the sliding glass doors. Down by the ocean, a young girl was building a sand castle, and though the girl was too far away to be distinguished as her own, her Picasso, Diana could still
see
her. Her stomach sank. What if someone had been on the beach?