Read Online Suicide King (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series) by Shelley Singer - Free Book Online

about seventy-five feet to the turnaround near the front door, and parked behind a BMW.
Big deal
, I thought, disappointed. I could see a BMW anytime in my own neighborhood.
    As I walked up the steps, the big dark wood front door opened smoothly and a pleasant-looking woman of sixty or so greeted me by name. I had called from the airport and been told to “come along anytime this afternoon” by this same slightly high-pitched voice. When I inquired, on the phone, I was told she was not Mrs. Anderson. The Andersons were out. She was the housekeeper.
    So the housekeeper let me in. She did have the caution to put a question mark after “Mr. Samson?” but she seemed to assume I was not there to sell her magazines. I was grateful.
    Emily Richmond was sitting in a lounge chair beside the pool, a book with a flowered cover in her hand. A swimming pool is no big deal in California, where lots of middle-class people have them and get to use them most of the year. But in a place like Minneapolis, I guessed, with three warm months a year, a pool represented real luxury.
    So did Emily Richmond. She was wearing a loosely belted ankle-length robe, a pearl-gray confection I was pretty sure was silk. I caught a glimpse of swimsuit under it. The day was not warm enough for sunbathing. Either the pool was heated or she was pretending she was home in Southern California. For my benefit, or rather for my non-benefit, still holding the book, she wrapped the robe more securely around herself. Then she stood and walked over to me. She was tall and slender, five-nine or ten. She transferred the book to her left hand and held out her right.
    I took it for just a second, a long and graceful hand. Even her hair was long and graceful, fine and ash blond, falling down beside one eye, along the curve and angle of cheek. Her eyes were gray, like the robe, and like the eyes of a woman I once loved. Her lips were finely made, not full and not thin, and her nose was long and perfect. She smiled at me, just the tiniest bit, and invited me to sit at a poolside table. The housekeeper was still hovering. Mrs. Richmond asked if I would like some iced tea and I said I would be grateful. The housekeeper was dispatched.
    “I’m sorry about your husband,” I said. She nodded, a slight tilt of the head, a slight dropping of the eyelids.
    “Thank you. You’ve come a long way to tell me that.”
    She was serious.
    “I don’t understand. Didn’t you get my phone message? That I’m investigating his death?”
    She looked at me, perplexed in a dreamy way. “Yes, but there’s nothing to investigate, is there? I mean why would you do that? He killed himself.”
    “Well, there are some people involved with his campaign who don’t think he would do that. So they hired me. Just to check things out.”
    She nodded. “That explains it.”
    I looked for some sign of anger that she’d been left out of the decision, left out of the conviction that someone had done her husband in. I saw none, I did see some slight amusement. Our tea arrived. Emily Richmond thanked the servant and dismissed her. I took a long drink.
    “Why doesn’t it bother you that someone hired me without consulting you?”
    “Because I really have no involvement with them. With the campaign.”
    “Do you mean,” I persisted, “that you planned to stay altogether separate from your husband’s gubernatorial campaign? Not be with him?”
    “It was silly. He couldn’t win. Why spend all that time and money and energy for nothing? He knew from the beginning I wouldn’t participate.”
    “Let me see if I understand,” I said gently. “The two of you talked it over at the very beginning and you told him you wouldn’t work with him on this? How did he react to that?”
    “No, Mr. Samson. You don’t understand. We never talked it over. There was no need to talk it over. He knew. I don’t do public things. I’m a poet. A private person. A solitary person. I find social intercourse painful