Face of Murder

“You like to cook?” The green-eyed monster already stirring in Zoe’s chest took another leap toward life. Not only was Shelley married with such a pretty child, but she had a husband who didn’t mind taking on his share of work around the house?

“Well, with Shelley’s hours, she wasn’t always home to take care of it, so I learned. I have to say it’s become a bit of a passion of mine. Me and Amelia take some time on the weekends to bake together, don’t we, munchkin?”

Amelia giggled and joined her parents by the stove. “We made cookies,” she said.

“That’s right! We should have some after dinner. Z, you’ll love them. We still have chocolate chip and oatmeal left,” Shelley said, reaching to get down some half-full jars from a cupboard above the sink.

“That would be nice,” Zoe said distantly, already feeling herself disengage from the conversation. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to, but she was seeing that there were four cookies left in one jar but only three in the other, and that the cupboard contained seven other items before the door was closed, and that the joint on the door was slightly off by two degrees causing it to hang crooked, and everything was closing in on her.

Zoe didn’t have this. She didn’t have anything even close to this. She had one person in the world—just one. Not a parent, or a lover, or a child, but just one person that she could rely on and trust and always be comfortable with. Dr. Applewhite. And now she was in a cell at the FBI headquarters, waiting to go through further questioning in the morning rather than going home to her husband.

Dr. Applewhite’s husband! How he must have been feeling! He would be so worried—and that was Dr. Applewhite’s real family, wasn’t it? Don was a lovely man, but he wasn’t as close to Zoe as his wife was. He wouldn’t see this from her side. He would be angry with Zoe. He would blame her, even if Dr. Applewhite didn’t.

He would be right, too.

And here Zoe was, coming to the home of a colleague who was kind enough to show care for her at a difficult time—and what was she doing? Comparing herself, over and over, relentlessly. Studying Shelley’s family and her home, judging her. Finding herself wanting. The flame of jealousy over Shelley’s perfect life was twinned with one of shame, and it was all getting too much.

“I think it’s about ready,” Harry said. “I’ll start dishing up. Amelia, honey, can you get some bowls out for me? You want to help Daddy serve dinner?”

Zoe wasn’t supposed to be here. She didn’t belong. She was intruding on this perfect picture, staining it just by being there. She wasn’t the kind of good person that Shelley and Harry and Amelia were. She should have seen that from the beginning, should have stayed away.

She couldn’t stay now.

“I have to go.” She rushed out, turning abruptly and striding down the corridor.

There were fifteen steps to the door, and in the interim after her announcement there was a sudden silence in the kitchen. Then she heard the clattering of plates behind her, murmured yet hasty words from Shelley and Harry, and footsteps.

“Z, wait,” Shelley called out, coming rapidly closer as Zoe grabbed her boots and started to put them back on. “Please, stay for dinner. It’s cooked now. Just sit and eat, and you can go home right after.”

“I cannot stay,” Zoe told her, chancing a look up at her partner’s face. She regretted it immediately. By the way a change came over Shelley’s expression, Zoe gathered that she was showing too much of her inner turmoil on the outside.

Emotions were tricky. She wasn’t good at faking the ones she did not feel, like everyone else was. But other people were good at hiding them, too, and Zoe had never been great at that. It was only when she had her ice-solid mask on, the lack of any kind of expression, that she had ever been able to fool anyone. It seemed that her mask must have slipped.

“Just take a breath, Z. Please. I know you’re having a hard time right now, but that’s what I’m here for. We’re partners, right?”

Zoe, her boots now firmly in place, could not look at her. “Not here. Here you are a wife, a mother. I should not be here. I have to go.”

She turned away from Shelley’s pleading arms, opened the door, and strode away, unlocking her car as she went. She started the car without looking back and drove home, somehow not at all comforted by the thought of the microwave meal waiting for her along with her cats.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Zoe watched a streetlight flickering up ahead at the end of the block, at the intersection with the next road along. On, off, on, off, on. The pattern appeared random, but of course, it wasn’t. It was defined by the dying bulb inside it, or perhaps the flow of electricity in some damaged part of the light, or some other factor that Zoe was not aware of. If she had been an electrical engineer, perhaps she would even have been able to tell just by looking at it.