How Do I Love Thee? Read online

  ‘Very witty,’ Symes replied. ‘I can see that cropping up in a future episode of the Daily Grimes. But did you know that a coffin was delivered recently to his apartment?’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ I complained. ‘If you’re going to keep punching me with bombshells, come on, here!’ I thrust off the bedcovers and thumped my chest with my fist. ‘Go straight for my heart, will you, and be done with it properly!’

  Symes eyed me intently. ‘Very well, Mrs Hossted. If you think you’re up to it? I want to see how clever he is at keeping up appearances. An honest man would have nothing to fear, so one slip and I’ll have him.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I replied. ‘How do I fit in?’

  ‘As bait, I’m hoping. I want you two in the same room together.’

  I had no idea he meant that night in my living room.

  Being discharged was a bonus for me at first, but Marty looked so dejected when Symes and Moser led him in handcuffed with his suit so dishevelled. No doubt every gossip in the building had seen them, and their car was still in the driveway with its lights flashing.

  I wanted to run to Marty and hug him, but he glanced at me with such a hurt look on his face, I shrank smaller than a flea on my cat. It was all my fault—again.

  ‘Before we begin,’ Symes declared, leaving Marty to stand alone and shackled on my plush white rug. ‘Is there anything that either of you have to say to each other?’

  ‘Sorry!’ I practically shouted, and I took one step but Moser grabbed my arm and sank me onto the sofa, which was conveniently out of Marty’s reach.

  Marty levelled a frown at me. Outwardly, he still held his temper, but I glimpsed pure rage in his eyes for the first time. After everything we’d been through, he was finally shoved against his limits, and now I really feared for him.

  ‘What did you tell them, Emily?’

  ‘Nothing, I swear! How could I?’

  ‘Then who accused me of being your stalker?’

  ‘You can answer that yourself,’ Symes interrupted. ‘You were caught in the act by the ambos.’

  ‘Doing what? Leaving a note to let her know that I’d fed her cat?’

  ‘Indeed. On the surface, such an innocent and kind-natured act. Unfortunately for you, a keen-eyed paramedic also noticed the charred remains of the same calling card on the toaster that you’d obviously used to try to kill her.’

  ‘My fault!’ I insisted. ‘That was totally and utterly my fault. I thought I’d turned it off at the wall before poking around in it!’

  ‘Mrs Hossted,’ Symes pleaded. ‘Calm down, please. I told you we had more evidence and we do. This note …’ He clicked his fingers and Moser pulled out his briefcase from behind his back.

  How the hell does he hide that?

  In no time, Moser was waving Exhibit B: a clear plastic bag with a post-it-note inside, and on it, the same sweet, silly smile sketched shakily by Marty’s black pen, except the lip and one eye had blurred in two patches as if by tear drops.

  ‘We found this in your bathroom, and spank me if that’s not creepy, too.’

  ‘I turned off her shower!’ Marty insisted. ‘Nothing more! Look, I’ve already told you what happened. I heard her smoke alarm go off, and when I knocked to see if she was okay, she didn’t answer. I knew she should have been home, so I used my universal key to the building and found her in the kitchen. I gave her CPR until she started breathing again, then called the ambulance. After they took over, I went about securing her apartment because I knew, as standard procedure, they’d have to take her to hospital.’

  ‘Yes, so you say,’ Symes replied. ‘But who in the world is stupid or careless enough to leave a shower running when they’re just starting to cook breakfast?’

  I raised my hand sheepishly.

  Symes and Moser both shifted their feet uncomfortably.

  ‘What about your shelf company?’ Moser demanded. ‘You stand to make a wild profit from her dead or alive!’

  ‘Actually, I’ll be lucky to break even. It’s like this,’ he sighed as if defeated. ‘The top four apartments were all owned by octogenarians who were needing to move into either nursing homes or more convenient, smaller units on the ground floor, while the ground floor units were owned by investors who didn’t mind making a quick buck by selling to me. And since everybody hates tax, and since tax is mainly payable on the property itself, not usually any inclusions, I simply arranged to buy the apartments for the same price the owners bought them themselves, plus a little extra for inflation. Then the rest will be paid in cash after settlement for any curtains, furniture or whatever else that stays in the unit—just as if I’d bought them at a subsequent garage sale. And provided the tax office doesn’t realise I paid more for the rugs than the rooms they were in, everybody’s happy. Most of all, Emily, who’s just been through the worst possible time you could imagine. The last thing she needed was to be forced out of her own home.’

  I leapt to my feet, shoved Moser aside and lunged my arms around Marty, nearly bowling him over.

  ‘Get these cuffs off him!’ I demanded. ‘Right now!’

  Symes gaped like a fish for a long moment, but then gave the nod to Moser, who had the key in his Tardis briefcase. ‘Sincerely sorry, Dr Cage. Ten years and two hundred cases I spent in Homicide, and my instinct has never been wrong before this.’

  ‘Everyone’s entitled to at least one bad day,’ Marty replied. He hugged me a little tighter and I hugged him back with everything I had.

  ‘I think you can both leave now,’ I suggested in the same tone as Marty’s. ‘You can send a formal apology to him through the building management committee tomorrow so everyone in the building knows he’s completely innocent.’

  Symes nodded and Moser packed up his briefcase.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Marty whispered. ‘I’ll never have anything to fear from you, will I?’

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Disaster seemed to follow us everywhere. ‘I’d expect you to be terrified!’

  He grinned and I wasn’t exactly sure why. ‘You saved my life?’ I asked, nuzzling into his warm, five-o’clock-shadowed neck. ‘Marty, you’re so polite, but I thought you hated me, that you’d be glad to be rid of me first chance you got.’

  ‘Hate you?’ he whispered into my hair. ‘It’s a wonder you’re not psychologically scarred for life after what I did to you!’

  I pushed away from him enough so he could see me wink. ‘Oh, and how was that, sir? You’ve never been anything but a perfect gentleman since we met in the stairwell.’

  He laughed and I barely registered that Symes and Moser were on their way out.

  ‘There you go again, Emily. Your smile kills me, and me without my notepad or pen. There is one other way I can repay you now though—provided you don’t mind if I engage another popular purpose for lips?’

  ‘Oh, thanks, but I’m sure I’ve had my fill of muffins for a long time.’

  His grin widened, making his eyes sparkle, and I was lost in them.

  ‘No, no, it’s like this: love is a slow kiss, Emily. So—may I love you?’

  His face drew closer to mine and my skin prickled with expectation.

  Symes coughed from the doorway, interrupting us. ‘There was just one more thing I meant to ask, Dr Cage, about that delivery last week to your apartment? Who’s the coffin for?’

  LOOKING FOR MR AVPR1A

  ANN CHARLTON

  ‘Let me count the ways …’

  ‘AVPR1A. It’s the male monogamy gene,’ I said. Julia snorted.

  ‘I told you about it ages ago. Men with one or two copies of variant 334 on AVPR1A are less likely to commit to a relationship, and if they do, they’re more likely to cheat. But he has no copies of variant 334, which means he’s predisposed to monogamy.’ I skimmed some froth from the top of my cappuccino and sampled it. Warm, generous, delectable froth with caffeine lurking beneath.

  ‘Who has no copies of the cheating variant?’

  ‘Keith Fa—’ I just man
aged to bite down on the surname. ‘Forget I said that. I’m not supposed to have his name in the front office, only the code number. Email screw-up from the laboratory. Not that it matters much. The sample came from a collection lab and the order could have come from anywhere in the country. Or from any other country for that matter.’

  Julia raised her eyebrows and waited, a sign that further explanation was required.

  ‘It’s a perfect genetic profile,’ I said, recalling the moment of discovery. ‘A perfectly normal day in the lab office and suddenly there was his file. An actual man with no variant 334.’

  ‘Not actual,’ she pointed out. ‘Cass, this monogamy gene can’t be proven. I would have read about it in Cosmopolitan.’

  ‘It’s still controversial,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s the best rational predictor of male fidelity we’ve got so far.’ I licked some powdered chocolate from my lips. ‘He’s got a profile to die for, genetically speaking.’ I looked for no good reason at the coffee shop’s plaster reproduction of Eros. Caffe l’amour, the shop was called in false promise. ‘I never thought I’d see an AVPR1A with no 334.’ I took my first sip of the life-affirming espresso. Hot and strong. ‘But, of course, I’ll never meet him.’

  Julia, wryly. ‘This is a bittersweet moment.’

  That was exactly the right word. Bittersweet. To know one such man existed and no more than that.

  ‘How do you know,’ she said, after some thought, ‘that the police didn’t order this test to match him up to the DNA in an axe murder?’

  ‘Our lab doesn’t do police work,’ I said, offended that she could think Keith might be a crim. ‘And anyway, he’s low on indicators for violence and criminality.’ And thinking of Simon’s lack of appreciation for my oil paintings, I added, ‘And high for creativity.’

  ‘Aha,’ said Julia, pointing her Lifestyle Shortbread cookie at me. ‘Gay.’

  I was disappointed that she couldn’t see Keith’s full potential. So it was with a hint of triumph that I told her his chromosomes indicated hetero. ‘And,’ I said protectively, before she could accuse him of being seventy-five and past it, ‘he’s thirty-four.’

  Julia looked hard at me. ‘Cass. It’s a lab report. It isn’t real.’

  ‘Simon was real,’ I said, with the familiar sensation of something shrivelling inside. ‘Told me I was His Destiny, and for the last four months we were together he was having it off with a fellow jogger.’ I’d actually admired Simon’s discipline and applauded his healthy nightly runs, in training for a marathon. Nothing makes you feel more stupid than admiring a fraud.

  ‘My father was real,’ I went on, jabbing a froth-smeared spoon at Julia. ‘He left my poor mother in the lurch for a woman cricket umpire and now he’s a serial divorcee. My brother has already messed up one marriage because he bumped into a girl on the beach when he was surfing. Before I even dip a toe into reality again I want some good, solid facts about a man.’

  ‘Or at least avoid sportsmen,’ Julia murmured. She put her glass down suddenly. ‘Solid facts? Please tell me you won’t be pilfering used tissues and smeared wineglasses at Martin’s party.’ She studied me with suspicion. ‘You wouldn’t get Martin to do any surreptitious lab tests for you, would you?’

  I protested too heartily. It had occurred to me, I confess. Martin probably did the odd test for friends. After all, he was part owner of the lab. ‘Of course not. That’s DNA theft. It goes on, of course, but I’m not about to risk my job. And no way could I talk Martin into doing something like that.’

  Julia gave a shrug. ‘Oh, I think you could talk Martin into just about anything.’

  I wondered if that was a judgement on Martin’s laid-back attitude or on my persuasive charm. ‘Anyway,’ I said, gulping my caffeine before it grew lukewarm. It was such a short distance between hot and lukewarm. ‘Now that I’ve seen Keith, I’d be disappointed in anyone else.’

  ‘You haven’t seen Keith, Cass.’ Julia was as earnest as I’d seen her. ‘You’ve seen a lab report called Keith.’

  Her firm tone made me feel prickly. Julia had soothed me through the various stages of betrayal and the what’s-wrong-with-me? phase that still lingered. She’d shared champagne with me as I officially tore up the diagrams of my wedding dress, applauded the elevation of my Buffy DVDs (despised by Simon) from a box under the bed, to the living room.

  She’d provided tissues at all the small endings that follow a big one. Like the discovery of a Simon-scented sweater left behind, and a note he’d scrawled on the back of an electricity bill and left for me when I’d been working late—‘Gone running. Lasagne in oven.’ The note finished with a heart and xxxx, which I’d supposed were kisses at the time. Julia had encouraged me to tear the note into fragments and to forget that Simon made a great lasagne. ‘You’ll find another man who has a way with pasta,’ she’d said at the time to make me laugh.

  So I had expected her to show some enthusiasm today when I felt up-beat about something at last. And it was the monogamy gene, after all.

  Stubbornly I pursued Keith’s merits. ‘He also tested high on intelligence and low on addictive behaviour,’ I said, getting down to the base of my coffee cup with the spoon as Julia gave all the signs of getting down to serious tactics.

  ‘Okay. So why’s he having his genetic profile done?’ She finished her coffee and checked off points on her elegant fingers. ‘One, he’s married or committed and checking out his genes before he and his wife-stroke-partner make a baby. Two, he’s trying to wriggle out of a paternity claim because he’s too generous-stroke-careless with his DNA. Or three, he’s got some horrendous family history of disease and needs to know how long he’s got before the rot sets in.’

  She’d touched on the one thing that puzzled me. It was a very comprehensive kind of profile and nothing I’d seen at the lab could account for it. Still, I was no scientist and the genetic testing field was changing rapidly. ‘One and two, a paternity or hereditary test would be more specific and, three, he tests low on all the diseases that involve early mortality or oxygen tanks.’ I felt a glow of pride in my man.

  ‘Feel the romance,’ drawled Julia. ‘“Let me count the ways …”’ She gave a flourish with a hand made for poetic sarcasm.

  My mood, always changeable these days, had required Julia’s amazement or consolation—something—to remain elevated. Now it nosedived. I made one last frugal sweep of the cup.

  ‘Life’s a bit like a cappuccino, when you think about it,’ I mourned. ‘You start off with a rich brew, all steam, chocolate on top, and mouth-watering aroma, then halfway down you find it’s mostly froth and you end up avoiding the gritty bits on the bottom while you scrape at anything that looks like a fleck of chocolate.’

  Julia sighed. ‘Cass, things will change. Trust me. I’m in fashion and I know.’ She scribbled some contact numbers on the back of her business card. She would be in Singapore and New Zealand for a month or so, working with designers and the factory on next year’s range. ‘Promise you’ll call or text me if you need to talk.’

  She linked her arm with mine as we left.

  ‘Forget Mr AVPZ-whatever. He’s just another version of that well-known myth, Mr Right.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘He couldn’t be the perfect man,’ she went on, giving Eros a pat as we passed. ‘There’s no way you could have a perfect man called Keith.’

  ‘He’s probably married, anyway.’

  Julia gave my arm a comforting squeeze. ‘Yes, and with genes like that you’d never prise him away from his wife.’

  Martin’s parties were legendary. He had inherited serious money from his mother and some dodgy genes from his father, who was a classic adventurer. That was a nice way of saying that his dad had run through millions breaking world records kayaking on the Amazon and making hot-air balloon flights over cactus country.

  What was amazing was that Martin, while doing his share of skiing, mountain climbing and diving, had successfully studied science and set
up the lab. Martin, who was also tanned with a sculpted nose and a classic forehead, had occasionally been called the Playboy Prince of Proteins by his staff, but never to his face. He blew every stereotype of the scientist as dull, serious and absent-minded out of the water. I’d known him for more than a year, since I’d begun managing the lab office.

  I looked around for him and saw him across the room—in a clinch with a girl I’d never seen before at any of his previous parties. There was always a girl-I’d-never-seen-before. I talked a while with a couple of people I knew, but my low mood must have shown because they melted away. One drink, I decided, and then I’d go home.

  I had started on the second when Martin appeared by my side. ‘Cass, you look poetically sad but lovely.’

  ‘I shouldn’t really do the party thing,’ I told him, wondering how many women he’d called ‘lovely’ this evening. ‘I’m not really in the mood.’

  ‘That’s what parties are for,’ he said, with a smile. ‘To create good moods.’

  ‘For couples perhaps. For singles it’s to meet likely partners and I’m not into that.’

  So why did I go to Martin’s parties? I used to come with Simon and now I turned up alone as a social failure. I gulped the remaining drink, wondering if Martin found me as pathetic as I felt. Maybe that’s why he kept inviting me. He felt sorry for me. I found that suddenly unbearable.

  ‘Give it time,’ he said. ‘You can’t get over a relationship in an instant.’

  I smiled at that and searched out the girl-I’d-never-seen-before. ‘How would you know?’

  He blinked and said lightly, ‘Must be instinct.’

  ‘Instinct,’ I said, with a snort worthy of Julia, ‘is very overrated. I’m going with evidence in future. As a scientist you’d have to agree with that.’

  ‘Evidence about—?’

  ‘About a man,’ I said, feeling the rush of alcohol as a wonderful light-headedness. ‘About a potential life-long mate. People put more research into buying a car than into their choice of partner.’