The Other Man

“Eduard.  He’s been killed.  I’m sorry to tell you that way, but I knew you wouldn’t open the door otherwise, and I’ve been trying to call all day.”

I studied her some more, trying to process the information, finding it hard to believe, but the signs of grief were evident in her.  This wasn’t some strange stunt.  She was genuinely distraught.

The woman I remembered had been very well put together with a consciousness for the way she dressed that bordered on vain.  She’d come to my house in sweat pants and a stained tank top.  She was a mess.

My God.  Eduard was dead?  My mind kept jumping around, to her car at my curb, to the yellow patch in my lawn.  Anything normal that did not involve death.

“How?” I finally asked her.

She blinked rapidly, and I could see that she was struggling not to weep.  “He didn’t come home for a few days, and I was really worried.  It’s not like him to disappear for that long.  Overnight maybe, but not for more than one night.”

I’d learned a lot from that little bit.  For one thing, they’d been living together.  I hadn’t even known, but of course it was salt in the wound that she was likely helping him spend the money he’d gotten out of me in the divorce.

“Still,” she continued.  “I didn’t call the police or anything, even then.  I just figured he was off having fun somewhere, and he’d be back, you know, sometime.”

I didn’t know.  Eduard had never done any of his cheating on me out in the open, as he apparently did with her.  He’d gone to great pains to hide it well from me.

If he hadn’t, I’d have kicked him to the curb ages ago.

I was surprised she seemed accept it, but then, what could she expect when he’d been married at the start of their relationship?  Hell, maybe that was what made them compatible.

“But the police found him before I could call them,” she added tremulously.

A chill ran through me at those words.  That sounded ominous.

I blew out a breath.  God, she had me feeling sorry for her, that’s how pathetic she looked just then.

“Do you want to come in?” I asked her.  This did not seem like a conversation we should be having through an open doorway.

She shook her head back and forth rapidly.  “No.”

Whatever.  I nodded at her to go on.

“Someone had called in a tip, a tip about a body in a warehouse somewhere near the strip.”

The word body got to me for some reason.  Made it more real.

Perhaps it was that I was starting to process that Eduard was not a living person anymore, instead he was a body.

Christie was openly crying now, her whole, frail body trembling with it.  “Eduard was murdered, Lourdes.”

I tensed up.  “What?”

“Murdered!  The police said—they said—they said he was evic-er-ated,” she pronounced the word like she’d never said it before in her life.  And she probably hadn’t.   “They found his body strung up, tied by his wrists.  Even they—the police—were shocked by the way he was killed.  They said—they asked me if he had any enemies, Lourdes.  They asked me if he was gang affiliated.”

“My God,” I said dully.  What else could I say?  What did a person say at a time like this?  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I added, because it was the only appropriate thing I could come up with.

At that, her trembling stopped and her eyes hardened.

She pointed at me.  “You know he was about to sue you!”

And then I saw her game.  Why she’d been so determined to tell me herself.

Goodbye, sympathy.  It was real.

I stood up straighter.  She was petite, and I towered over her.  “Are you accusing me of something?”

“You know he was about to sue you, and he—he said you were dating some huge, young, scary guy that kept threatening him.”

I glared at her.  “I was aware Eduard was suing me, thanks for the heads-up, by the way, and I couldn’t have cared less.  As you saw in the divorce, I can afford better lawyers than he can.  I wasn’t worried.  And the only reason my boyfriend ever spoke to Eduard was when he was harassing me.”

“Where is he?  I want to talk to him myself!”

“He’s out of town.  He’s been out of town.  And I’m sorry to hear that happened to Eduard, but it had nothing to do with me.”

She looked unconvinced, to say the least.  She was distraught and grief could quickly morph into rage, and she had clearly settled on a target for her misfiring emotions.  There was no reasoning with a person in that state.

“Well, just so you know, I told the cops all about his threats,” she said unevenly.  “This isn’t over.  Eduard wasn’t in a gang.”  She said the last as though I’d been the one to imply such, when I knew as well as her how ridiculous that was.

“No, he wasn’t.  That doesn’t mean his death had anything to do with my boyfriend.”

She waved a hand at me like she was trying to bat the words away.  “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

“I guess,” I said, my voice as emotionless as hers was emotional.  I’d turned off to her.  Sympathy, anger, all of it was just gone.  I wanted her to leave so I could call my sons about their father.  I dreaded that even while I knew I needed to do it before they heard from someone else.