His Last Wife

Chapter 2

Widow.

Val was sitting on the edge of her brand-new queen-sized bed, naked. Fresh out of the shower, her skin was still supple from the steam of the hot water she’d stood under just long enough to get the smell of some sweet French cologne she’d encountered on her companion the night before off her neck and nipples. She dabbed a bit of lemongrass-scented shea butter out of the glass tub resting beside her on the tousled silk bedsheets beneath her and rubbed the golden moisturizer into her knees.

The shower water was still running. Along with clouds of steam, the sounds of joyous, comfortable singing slipped underneath the closed bathroom door and into the bedroom with her.

Val slid her left foot onto the bed and massaged the shea butter into her ankle. Between eye rolls at the steam and caroling coming from the lingering visitor in the bathroom, she caught glimpses of herself on the behemoth of a flat screen mounted before the bed.

It wasn’t her reflection cast on the high-definition television. It was actually a recording of an interview she’d done with CNN two weeks prior. On the screen, she was sitting on a couch in a respectable black-and-white tweed Carolina Herrera sheath dress, smiling at the reporter and answering questions her publicist had received and reviewed with her a week before the interview. Beneath her name was a word that kept catching her eye: widow.

Val hated everything that word meant to the world: Someone who’d lost something. Someone broken. Helpless. Hopeless. Cut in half. She was none of those things—felt none of those things. Yes, her husband was dead and in the ground, but any loss she could’ve known—any brokenness, helplessness, hopelessness, dissection—occurred before she’d gotten the call that Mayor Jamison Taylor had been tossed from the top of the downtown Westin. In fact, in life, he’d been the one who’d made her feel those ways. So much so that she was actually surprised when she’d gotten the call to come to the morgue. They needed her to claim the body. To make arrangements. To make decisions. She was his wife. Wasn’t she? Was she?

Val rolled her eyes at the steam and singing coming from the bathroom and again looked back up at the screen.

“So, you were estranged from your husband when his first wife murdered him?” the reporter asked.

As instructed in numerous media trainings, Val nodded as the reporter posed his question, she smiled, sat up straight, kept her freshly manicured hands clasped over her right knee. She paused for a second before answering the question. Her response should appear new, natural, honest, direct.

“Actually, AJ, I wouldn’t use those words,” she said to the reporter. “Yes, Jamison and I had problems. The miscarriage, which was very public—it was hard on both of us, but I believe that if Jamison was alive, we would’ve been together again. We would’ve found our way back to one another,” Val lied softly. “And let me also make it clear to your viewers”—she turned from the reporter and looked directly into the camera “—there is no evidence that Kerry Jackson murdered Jamison Taylor.”

“Actually, there’s lots of evidence.” The reporter looked down at his notes and counted off on his hand: “The couple who heard Jamison and Kerry arguing in the hotel room downstairs. The worker at the Sundial Restaurant on top of the Westin, who said he saw Kerry Jackson on the roof just before the mayor was tossed over. And then there’s Ms. Jackson herself. She was actually there—standing on the roof when police got there. I believe they call that ‘caught red-handed.’ ” He chuckled inappropriately.

“None of that’s conclusive evidence,” Val replied with a clause from her note cards.

“Well, then there’s motive,” the reporter added. “Jackson had motive to kill Taylor.”

“What motive?”

“You.” He looked at Val like a mouse caught in the corner of a snake’s cage. None of this banter had been included on her prep sheet before the interview. They were off the script. This was where things should get interesting. He looked down at his notes again. “Isn’t it true that Kerry Ann Jackson went into a jealous rage after she found out that he’d married you?”

Val took the words hard, like a fist to the face, but it was nothing she hadn’t suffered through before. She used another line from one of those note cards to avoid encouraging the reporter with his interrogation: “I am not here to discuss my dead husband’s private life.” Still, her voice was nervous. Shaken.

“But it is that private life that led to Jackson hating Taylor. Wouldn’t you say? He cheated when they were married. Slept around after the divorce—and we have proof of his attendance at numerous swingers’ parties and fraternity clubhouse romps. And then he moved on to his secretary, a former stripper, whom he impregnated and married. That’s you—isn’t it?”

The camera zoomed in on Val’s fake smile. Not one muscle in her face moved under the condemnation of the reporter’s words and tone.

“I have a quote here,” he went on, reading from his own note card. “When a reporter asked Jackson how she felt about her ex-husband marrying you, she said, and I quote, ‘I’ve moved on. I had to. If I hadn’t, I’d be insulted right now.’ ” He looked at Val again. “What do you have to say about that?”

“About what?”

“She called you an ‘insult.’ Surely you have thoughts on that.”

“No. I don’t. No comment.” Val grinned and looked down at fingernails, clearly done with the conversation.

“Okay. Well, I’ll conclude with what everyone wants to know. What all of America wants to know: Why do you care? Why are you involved in this case at all? Trying to get Kerry Jackson out of jail for murdering a man in cold blood—a man you were married to. A man you loved. After everything she said about you. After what she did to your husband. Why are you in this fight?”

“Because she’s innocent,” Val said. “She didn’t do this.”

“Well, all right. I guess that’s all we’ll get right now. Thank you for stopping by.”

The reporter sat and stared at Val as the cameras stopped rolling.

Looking at the television from her bed, Val could see herself looking like a mouse in the reporter’s eyes and hated herself for it.

The bathroom door flung open and a masculine brown body came dancing out behind a dramatic dissipating cloud of steam.

“Girl you know it’s true-ue-ue-ue, I love you!” he sang into an invisible microphone in his hand. “Girl you know it’s true-ue-ue-ue, I love you-u-u-u.”