“I have a reason for asking.”
Cilia studied me for a few moments and then smiled as if she could read my mind. “No,” she said. “My hair is naturally auburn. I began coloring it when I turned forty, to hide the gray.”
“You wore it long.”
“Longer than it is now, yes.”
“You had long auburn hair when Becker was killed.”
“Yes.”
“If I may be so bold . . .”
“Bolder than you’ve already been?”
“Back then most men would have described you as being a stone babe.”
“They still do.”
Cilia smiled her empty smile.
“Yes,” I said. “They still do.”
Cilia smiled some more, waiting.
Somewhere in the distance I heard the rumble of thunder. It was only after staring at Cilia for a few moments that I realized it was the sound of a vacuum cleaner overhead. Caroline had worked her way down the upstairs hall and was now on the staircase.
“An attractive woman with auburn hair was seen with Brian Becker the night he died. She hasn’t been identified.”
“That was me,” Cilia said.
The fact that she admitted it so freely caught me by surprise, and my expression must have shown it. Cilia smiled again, but this time it reached her eyes. I had the distinct impression that she was enjoying herself.
She rested her hand on my arm. “Do you play chess, Mr. McKenzie?”
“Chess? Yes, I play . . . I used to play . . . Cilia, do you realize what you’re telling me?”
She took my arm in both hands and gave it a squeeze. “Let’s see what kind of game you have.”
Cilia led me across her sprawling living room to a den. Inside the den was a fireplace so large I could have parked my Audi inside it. We sat in front of the fireplace in ornate wooden chairs carved in the Spanish style, facing each other across a matching table. A chessboard was on the table, the pieces already arranged in neat, orderly ranks.
“Would you like something to drink?” Cilia asked.
“Drink?”
“Yes.”
“Iced tea?” I said.
“Nothing stronger?”
“Put a shot of gin in it.”
Cilia smiled at that. “Caroline,” she said.
The maid appeared at the doorway.
How did she do that?
“Two glasses of your special iced tea laced with gin.”
“Ma’am,” the maid said, and departed.
“So,” said Cilia.
She moved her pawn to E4. I countered with the identical move to E5. Cilia slid her king’s bishop to C4. The move was insulting. She was going for a Scholar’s Mate. In four moves it was nearly the shortest checkmate possible—a strategy you’d only use against an amateur. I easily countered it by moving my king’s knight to F6.
“I expected more,” I said.
“I only wanted to see if you were paying attention, Mr. McKenzie. You seemed dazed.”
“It’s not often that I hear people confess to murder for no particular reason.”
“Did I confess to murder, McKenzie? I don’t think so. I will, however, if you wish.”
“Ms. St. Ana . . .”
“I told you, McKenzie—it’s Cilia.”
She moved another pawn.
“Would you like to hear it?” she asked. “The whole truth and nothing but the truth?”
I moved a pawn of my own.
“Please,” I said.
“It’s a long story.” Cilia smiled her empty smile. “Perhaps we should wait for our drinks before we begin.”
We sparred quietly on the chessboard, neither of us gaining an advantage, until Caroline arrived. Cilia set her drink on a coaster without touching it. I took a stiff pull of mine.
“Where to begin,” Cilia said. She studied the board for a moment and hid her knight behind a pawn. “It begins, I suppose, with the death of my mother. That’s when I decided that I would never allow a man to abuse me in any way ever again.
“You see, McKenzie, my father was an evil degenerate. Corrupt. Depraved. He treated women, treated my mother, maids—as far as my father was concerned, women were a royal prerogative to do with as he wished, a natural entitlement of wealth and power. His specialty was live-in maids. It gave him immense pleasure to tease them, flirt with them, pursue them, and eventually abuse and terrorize them. And worse. Much worse. A lot of money was spent to hush up his transgressions. Then he began . . .”
She paused for a moment, as if she were gathering her strength.
“My father raped me from age fourteen to age sixteen. He would climb into my bed and he would take me and afterward he would say, ‘That’s my little girl.’ My mother knew this, of course. Her way of dealing with it was to commit suicide. My father insisted that Mother’s death was the result of a traffic accident. Yet even as a child I knew you don’t drive cold sober one hundred and twenty miles an hour into a bridge abutment on a sunny summer day by accident.”
Cilia cursed under her breath. She moved her bishop carelessly.
“She was weak,” Cilia muttered.