Five Uneasy Pieces

“How can you be so sure?” he asked.

So I told him.

*****

The next day, I invited Roz over. She came bearing her specialty casserole. Tuna and canned peas mixed with mushroom soup concentrate, topped with crumbled potato chips and baked until golden brown. She placed it on the counter then hugged me with the force of a boa constrictor. I shuddered. “Roz, I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry, sweetie,” she said, her nicotine breath hot in my ear. “How ya’ holdin’ up?”

She let go and stepped back. “Roz. How could you?” I asked.

Roz blinked and withdrew a crushed pack of cigarettes from her jeans pocket. “What?”

“How could you kill Ed? And how could you set it up to make it look like I might have done it?”

Her hand trembled. She lit the twisted cigarette then snapped the lighter shut with authority. “How can you accuse me of such a thing? I thought we were friends, Lainie. Besides, I gave you that PI’s name. Why would I do that if I had photos proving he fooled around with other men?”

I let out a long sigh. “I never told you they were photos of men.”

Roz’s mouth gaped like a frog’s.

“B-b-but ... you did,” she sputtered. “You did. I remember. You”—she pointed with her gnarled, smoldering cigarette—”you, you were so rattled, I could barely get a coherent story out of you. You did tell me.” She lowered her voice. “You just don’t remember.”

I shook my head. “No, Roz. I told you there were photos, but I never said what was in them. The police told me not to discuss the men in those photos with anyone. And, frankly, I was too ashamed to. When you mentioned Ed cheating on me with men, I knew something was off, but I was too rattled to figure it out at the time. Then I connected the dots. You killed him.”

Roz stood there mute.

“My biggest question—what I really can’t understand, Roz—is why? If Ed was gay, why would you kill him? Why?” My voice rose.

Roz’s face contorted. She looked at me with complete disdain. “You are so fucking naïve, Lainie. How you avoided learning more about real life, I’ll never fucking know.”

She tamped out the cigarette on my new Silestone kitchen counter (brand new from Home Depot—I could’ve cried). After digging the last smoke from the pack, she crushed the wrapper and threw it at me. It bounced off my left breast and onto the new parquet floor.

She took her time lighting up. “Good ole’ Eddie swung both ways, my dear.” Smoke billowed out with her words.

Roz leaned against the marred counter, her gaze directed somewhere over my right shoulder. “We had a thing. He was getting sick of you, sweetie.” Sarcasm coated the word. “You and your goody two-shoes ways. Your wide-eyed stupidity. He was supposed to leave your dumb ass. We were supposed to be together.” Smoke poured from her dragon’s nostrils. “But that never happened. He kept ... making excuses for not leaving you. At first, I thought it was because you’re so beautiful. Or maybe he was worried about the divorce settlement, especially since you lost your job.”

She frowned. “Then he stopped seeing me so often. He started making excuses about his whereabouts. I wondered if I was ... losing him to someone else. Someone who wasn’t you.

“That’s when I talked to you about hiring a private eye. I figured you’d share whatever you learned. Tell the best friend who gave you the idea.” She smiled weakly. “But you ... you took so long to call him. I finally said, fuck it, and followed Ed myself. I followed him to that bar and that dump of a motel where he always took his dates. But I still needed proof.

“I couldn’t hire the guy I told you about. But I used something learned during my divorce. Hidden cameras—the best tool for catching people in the act.”

She took another drag and blew the smoke in my face. “I bought myself a nanny cam. I bribed the motel manager to make sure Ed and his date went to the right room. I paid him plenty. He let me place the camera to get the right shots. Those photos are stills from the video.”

She glared. “When I found out he was seeing other men ...” She lifted her hands like a would-be strangler. “I wanted to kill him, right then and there. But I played it smart.” She nodded. “Oh, yeah. When you told me you were finally going to that PI, I waited for you to leave for your appointment. Then I called Ed and told him to meet me here. I also called that fairy assistant of his and sent him someplace where no one could give him an alibi. I told him I had photos of their liaisons.” She shook her head, mouth wrinkled with distaste. “I didn’t. I was just bluffing. I’d seen them together, though. I knew ...

“When Ed got here, he fixed us some drinks. After we’d had a couple, I excused myself to make a quick phone call.” She snorted. “That’s what I told him, anyway. I put on latex gloves, got the knife and ran at him so fast, he didn’t know what hit him. He landed on his back and I stabbed him in the heart. Not that he had a heart, the son of a bitch. One way or the other, I figured I was covered. I’d committed the perfect murder.”

She turned and fixed me with an angry stare. “But you couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You had to go and figure it out, didn’t you?” She took a breath and continued in an anguished voice. “It could’ve been perfect. It didn’t have to be you, you know? Brant could’ve taken the fall, but you wouldn’t let that

happen.”

“Brant didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “And neither did I.”

Her lips curled with disgust. “There you go. Little Miss Innocent. Aren’t you sweet?” she said, in a mocking tone. “So fuckin’ sweet! So fuckin’ clueless! You just have no idea. You could twist men ‘round your little finger, get them to believe anything, if you wanted. You could make saps out of them all!”

I was tired of hearing about saps. Before I could speak, Roz pivoted, yanked my second-biggest knife from the butcher block and charged toward me. At that moment, Mr. Greeley burst out of the closet (no pun intended) and tackled her to the floor.