Murder Mystery | Marriage
She Cradled the Smoking Gun: Ch 11
Stone questions Lisa and she wonders why she and Paul grew apart
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The Kaye’s living room was formal and furnished like it could be featured in Good Housekeeping magazine. The fabrics were supposed to be warm and inviting, but the atmosphere was icy and lonely.
Stone looked at the note that lay on the coffee table and paused his questioning as Lisa Kaye tried to stop crying. “If you had known that he had written the note would you have done anything differently?”
“Maybe. I can’t say, of course.” She put her hands to her face and grabbed a tissue from the side table. “I feel terrible.”
Stone didn’t respond.
“I suppose now you want me to confess that I shot him, hmm?”
“You were in Santa Barbara, though?”
“Yes.”
“And had too much drink?”
“Yeah, I did. My head was spinning.”
Stone felt an inspiration. “How often do you drink?”
“A glass of wine now and then. A sip of scotch, occasionally, once or twice a month. Maybe more. A little tipsy feeling can be nice once in a while.”
“Why that night?”
“Guess I had been feeling extra jealous of Morgan with Paul at another premier, and then with Joel Burman thinking he was going to soak up some of Paul’s money for a production it was so stressful. I couldn’t imagine him lining his pockets and I felt like I just had to get my mind in a different place.”
“Is that how you normally deal with stress?”
Lisa showed her annoyance. “Well, Detective. I don’t think of it like that. Especially being with a friend, someone who listens to me like Selena does. Maybe that’s why I garden so much. I like helping things grow and I don’t have to get tangled up with so many people.”
That’s what it was. Paul was tangled up with so many who wanted to dip into his pockets or do business with him.
“What’d you talk about that night?” asked Stone.
“You mean, in Santa Barbara with Selena?”
“Yeah. What’d you talk about over dinner?”
“How torn I was feeling. And I imagined what’d it’d be like to go to Santa Fe, leave LA, and travel with Paul.”
“How’d she react?”
“How’d Selena react?”
“Yeah.”
“I, well, I don’t know. She listened. Didn’t offer an opinion. Said she’d miss me.” For the first time, Lisa sounded determined. “I didn’t kill him. I never once thought about doing something that awful.”
“Divorce?”
“No, not that, either.” Lisa sighed and fought for composure. “Our marriage should have seemed so simple. A couple with lots of money and no kids to hold them down. We had it made, right? Except, we just got used to living on our own terms. We stopped talking.” She smiled. “You know the Grand Canyon has a river running through it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And the river gradually washed away the dirt and created a chasm between the two rims.”
“Right.”
“An erosion describes what happened to us. Paul took meeting after meeting in his early years, chatting up creative ideas with marketers and meeting with CPAs about money. Always on the go. We got used to seeing each other but not interacting. I began hating Hollywood and Los Angeles, but I didn’t hate him. And obviously, he didn’t hate me.”
“But you couldn’t get back together?”
“No. We couldn’t face each other. It was like we had nothing to say because we lived in different worlds and spoke different languages. We erected a barrier between us and we couldn’t figure out how to break it down.”
Lisa’s voice trailed and her energy dipped. Regret and guilt were heavy burdens to bear.
Stone took his notes and was lost in thought, but there was no clear motive. Somebody killed him, but why?
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