Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set by Nanci Rathbun (surface ebook reader TXT) 📗

the room, then stopped with her back to me, looking out a window. “No…no, I didn’t mean that.” She covered her face with her hands and her body shook. I couldn’t tell if she was crying or if they were tremors of rage.

Moving into Mom mode, I told her, “It’s best to acknowledge the dark feelings that we all have. Expose them to the light. That way, we can work through them instead of hiding them. Secrets take on a life of their own. They fester and grow.”

“That’s what my therapist says.” Her voice was a low murmur. She gave herself a little shake and turned, looking me in the face with an expectation of interaction.

“I’d say your therapist is right.” I waited, but she just watched me with what seemed like hungry anticipation, so I plunged ahead, keeping my voice natural and my face unexpressive. “Why did you hate Elisa?”

Marsha’s face crumpled into a mask of grief. The transformation shocked me. It was as if the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, all complete and ready to admire, were suddenly jumbled and their linkage destroyed, so that nothing matched. She began to cry, and I sat quietly, waiting, as her sobs rose and fell. Gradually, slowly, the crying jag eased and she curled up on the couch, her back against the cushions, her knees tucked up despite the skirted suit, her arms wrapped around them. She was a picture of misery.

She spoke, at first low and haltingly, but then more forcefully and fluidly, as if reciting a soliloquy that she’d rehearsed. “She ruined my life. She took everything away from me, everything that mattered. But not at first.” She paused and looked at me. “Did you ever know someone who was so special, they made you feel special, too?” I nodded, as Marsha’s eyes sparkled and she smiled. “Elisa would light up a room. She made me feel pretty and smart, better than anyone ever said I could be. She helped me shop and get my hair styled, took me to parties, introduced me to her friends. We worked together on school projects. She made me think I could be somebody, not just the plain little bookworm that I’d always been, but somebody pretty and smart and fun and sexy. It was all so wonderful.”

Then her mouth turned down, and her eyes took on the dead look I’d first seen at the car. “But it was all a lie. All fake. She never liked me, never cared about me. She just wanted someone to do her schoolwork, someone plain who wouldn’t be a threat to her. I heard her on the phone, laughing at me, calling me her butt-ugly roomie, telling her boyfriend that she needed me to pay the rent and do the grunt work at school that she didn’t want to do.” Tears pooled and overflowed down Marsha’s cheeks. “Then she cheated on me with Alan.”

I noted that it was Elisa who cheated on her, not Alan. It was Elisa whose emotional fidelity was most important to Marsha. I took a tissue from my purse and handed it to her. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“At first, when Elisa left me, moved into Tony’s apartment, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I knew I had to move. I couldn’t afford the rent by myself, but I couldn’t make myself look for a place or for another roommate.” Her voice dropped and she looked down at her drawn-up knees. “Ben, my old landlord, he found me when he came over to get the rent. I tried to OD, but I couldn’t even do that right. He took me to the hospital and he and Mrs. Lembke from across the street decided to call Alan.” She looked up and gave a shudder of breath, reminding me of my daughter Emma as a little girl and how she would always end a crying episode with that same stuttering intake. “I’m going to make some tea,” Marsha said. “Would you like a cup?”

I nodded and followed her into the small kitchen, where she put a kettle on to boil.

“Lemon? Sugar? Cream?” she asked me. I declined them all and sat at the two-person drop leaf table. She busied herself setting out cups, spoons, tea bags and sugar bowl. When the kettle howled, she poured water into our cups and sat across from me, adding sugar to her tea and stirring.

She looked up at me and tucked her hair behind her ears. As she continued to stir, she spoke. “Alan was great. He talked to the doctors and got me released into his care. He brought me here and moved my stuff into storage. Don’t get me wrong.” She raised her hands, palms up, and looked at me from lowered lids. “We’re just roommates, we sleep in separate bedrooms. That’s all Dr. Nichols thinks it should be, for now. Alan found Dr. Nichols and got me into treatment. But even now, sometimes all I want is to get back to the golden days, the days when Elisa was my friend. Now it will never happen. I’ll never see her again.”

It was gut-wrenching, listening as she mourned. Again, I thought of my Emma, crying her eyes out as she told me that her best friend Gina had a new best friend and didn’t want to play with her anymore. Marsha evoked a lot of girlhood images. But she was a grown woman, and I was here to do a job. “Marsha, were you with anyone the night Elisa was killed?”

“Sure, Alan and I were home that night. We watched TV, I did some work and went to bed early. Why?” Suddenly she understood, her eyes popped and her head snapped back. “You can’t think that I…”

“Did anyone else see you? Did you get any phone calls that night?”

“I honestly don’t know. Alan will be home around seven, he might remember.” Her voice rose, a little panicked.

I patted her hand. “Don’t be too