Read Online Blues in the Night by Rochelle Krich - Free Book Online Page B

thought had something serious to hide and might take extreme measures to keep it hidden. I’ll admit I was nervous.
    He pulled the door shut behind him and eyed me coolly. “Am I supposed to know what the hell you’re talking about?”
    “Your ex-wife?”
    “I know my ex-wife’s name,” he said, giving me a steely look that could have razed a building. “I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
    “She’s the woman who was injured by a hit-and-run driver on Laurel Canyon near Lookout Mountain. I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
    His face was a kaleidoscope of emotions that finally rearranged itself into dark somberness. “Lenore’s mother told me,” he said with what sounded like genuine concern. “I have no idea what Lenore was doing there. I was—
am
—terribly upset. Lenore and I have our problems, but I’ve never wished her harm.”
    “Lenore thinks you’re angry with her. She said that’s why you haven’t visited her in the hospital.”
    “I’m not angry with her. Things are—” He glanced behind him at the door, then faced me, his hands raised in helpless surrender before they dropped to his sides. “I’m in touch with her mother. She tells me Lenore is doing well.”
    Either he didn’t know Lenore was dead, or he was pretending. I decided telling him would only infuriate Connors, who would want to gauge Saunders’s reaction when he learned the news. I also wondered why Betty Rowan had been evasive when I’d asked her what Lenore was doing near Laurel Canyon.
    “I’m puzzled because when I talked to you earlier about the hit-and-run victim, you didn’t tell me it was your ex-wife,” I said. “Neither did your fiancée.”
    “Because it’s none of your business,” he snapped, his voice rising along with the color in his face. “It’s not my job to feed the appetites of your voyeuristic readers. Is that it? Are you done prying into my life?”
    “Does your fiancée know?”
    “Yes, she knows.” He was glaring now. “Leave her out of this.”
    “Mr. Saunders, don’t you find it an odd coincidence that Lenore was down the hill from your home when she was struck?”
    He sucked in air, and I could see he was fighting for control. “I find it
very
odd. The police think she may have been disoriented.”
    I nodded. “Because she was on antidepressants and sedatives.”
    “I see you’ve done your homework.” He was assessing me, trying to figure out how much I knew.
    “Why was she depressed?”
    Something twitched in his face. “You’d have to ask Lenore.”
    “But even if she was disoriented, Mr. Saunders, why would your ex-wife be wandering around in a nightgown near your home?”
    “I have no idea.” He shrugged. “Maybe she had a nightmare. Maybe she was sleepwalking. She’s done that before.”
    “Witnesses saw her run out of your house early Sunday morning.”
    Saunders snorted. “You don’t give up, do you?”
    I pulled a notepad from my purse and opened it to a page on which I’d scribbled my grocery list. “You followed and grabbed her arm,” I pretended to read. “She screamed at you, called you names. She told you she was going to kill herself.” I looked up.
    “I was sleeping,” he said in a bored voice, a patient man indulging lunacy. “Who are these witnesses?”
    I referred to the notepad. “You told her, ‘Make sure you do it right this time.’ ”
    He shook his head. “Not a nice thing to say.”
    The guy was cool, as Studs would say. “She ran down the hill. You followed minutes later in your car.” I put the notepad away.
    “And then?” he prompted, the intensity in his eyes giving him away.
    A welcome breeze feathered my face. “And then I think your car hit her.”
    He shook his head sadly, my lunacy confirmed.
    “Maybe it was an accident,” I said. “Maybe you went looking for her, because you were sorry about the argument, sorry about what you said. Worried about what she’d do to herself. It was a dark night, no moon out. Maybe