Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

I said: “I understand you don’t like being disturbed this late. But these are my normal business hours.”

She said: “All right. Excuse me for a minute. I’ll put something on.” She walked upstairs. I closed my eyes, leaned against the wall and began to imagine I had pulled the sash.

The robe opens and I pull her up against me—she’s still hot from the bath—but before I can ease the robe off, she goes for my pants, unzips them, takes it out, holds it in her hands and…

I heard her on the landing and opened my eyes fast, in time to watch her walk downstairs. She’d put on jeans and a white T-shirt, a man’s V-neck undershirt of washed-out cotton, only hers was tucked in tight, so you could see every stitch of the white lace of her bra. I hadn’t seen this one on my illegal search; it was one of those tiny bras women wear not for support but for men. I thought: Over-the-hill bitch.

Except she looked fantastic. I caught myself rubbing the pads of my fingers together, in anticipation.

“Uh,” I said. Oh, was I one cool cop.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Where’s your dog?” That was the only thing I could think of to say.

“My dog? ” She started to relax. Even to get playful. “Why?

Do you want to question her?”

“Yeah. I want to know about her relationship with the deceased.”

“I got her at Bide-A-Wee about two years ago, so I don’t think she ever really got to know Sy. I mean, beyond the usual social superficialities. ‘Hi, angel. Fabulous haircut.’”

I started to smile. “I just asked where your dog was.”

Bonnie’s tone stayed teasing, light. “I shot her.”

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“Stop it.”

“Ha!” she exclaimed, like a TV lawyer who’s just elicited a damaging admission in front of a jury that will help his client. “See? Deep down, you don’t think I’m capable of murder.”

“No. I don’t think you’re capable of murdering your dog.”

Bonnie laughed a little too hard. She took a step back; this was too real, and suddenly she was comprehending how terrified she was. But she made herself take a deep, deliberate breath. Easy, she was telling herself. Relax. She stuck her thumbs into the belt loops on her jeans, cowgirl style, as in, Get off my ranch, mister. “Where is she?” I hated to keep asking the same stupid question, but having made a fool of myself asking about the dog, I now had to treat it like it was a key to the investigation.

“She likes to go out at night.” A cool, matter-of-fact response. No, cold. “Sometimes around ten I open the back door and yell for her. She’s back inside in two minutes.”

Bonnie turned away from me, probably to hide her fear.

Despite her laid-back, home-on-the-range posture, it was stealing over her face—jaw a little rigid, eyes too wide. She strode into the kitchen, opened the door and yelled: “Moose!

Milk-Bone!” While we waited, she went to the refrigerator and took out an Amstel Light. She did not offer me one, so I wasn’t able to say “No, thanks.” By the time she popped off the cap, Moose came barreling up to the screen door. I opened it. She let out a blissful bark and started licking my hand.

But Bonnie was hardly blissed out. She was busy being tough. She pulled the dog away from me, patted its head, then took a doggy bone out of a cookie jar and put it in Moose’s mouth. For that instant, Bonnie forgot herself and was tender, a mother offering her child a lollipop. Moose, meanwhile, glanced up. She may have been nuts about me, but I wasn’t part

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of her nightly ritual; she decided I might want to grab her treasure, so she hightailed it out of the kitchen, bone in mouth. I grinned. Bonnie didn’t.

“What do you want to know?” she demanded. She tilted back her head and took a swig of beer. I stared at the arch of her throat, the rise of her breasts. I wanted her so much.

“Well?”

All right. She wanted it, I’d give it to her. “Can you shoot a .22 rifle?”

In a movie, Bonnie would have shown her shock by spritzing out the beer. Real life lacks grand gestures, or even spectacularly messy ones. She just swallowed a little harder than normal. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not being funny. You’re the funny one. I’m the cop.

And I’m very, very serious. I want to know whether you can shoot a .22.”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

“You already have. You didn’t say no.”

“I didn’t say yes, either.” Suddenly her fear turned to anger.

She slammed the beer bottle down on the counter. “Just let me tell you something. I’ve been watching detective movies since I’ve been eight or nine years old. I know hard-boiled and soft-boiled. I know you’re supposed to frighten me so much that I spill whatever beans there are to be spilled. Or you’re supposed to charm me, so I’ll get giddy and babble all my girlish secrets. Well, guess what, buster? You’re no Humphrey Bogart. And guess what again? I didn’t do anything wrong. I have nothing to confess. You’re wasting your time.”

“Yeah?” I shouldered an invisible rifle. I sighted. I pulled the trigger. “Bonnie Bernstein Spencer. Her family owned Bernstein’s Sporting Goods in Ogden, Utah, a store which did not sell junior lacrosse sticks. No: rifles, handguns. Ms.

Bernstein-Spencer grew up with several older brothers and was reputed to be a

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tomboy. Her father was known as a fine shot; he even used to go up to Wyoming to shoot elk. Tell me, Bonnie, is Ogden a nice place to visit? Because if you don’t answer my question now, I’ll be on the next plane out, spend half a day in town, and I guarantee you, I’ll come home with whatever’s left of the rabbit you shot between the eyes in 1965, plus affidavits from ten witnesses who saw you shoot it.”

She started to cry,