Free For Better or Worsted by Betty Hechtman Page B

she wasn’t alone. I checked out the house as they led us into the living room. It seemed to be all windows with a fabulous view of the valley. The furnishings were elegant without being gaudy, but it was a little too perfect for my taste. It didn’t look lived in.
    Jackson Kingsley was a little too perfect for my taste, too. He somehow managed to make a pair of jeans look stiff and formal. Maybe it was the tucked-in dress shirt or the belt. His wife, who introduced herself to me as Margo, was friendlier, but then Jonah wasn’t her son, so there was less baggage.
    “Why don’t you entertain Molly,” Jackson said to his wife, gesturing toward the living room. “Thursday and I can go into my office.” It was hard to read his voice, other than to notice how nice the deep quality was. He seemed cordial, but not kind. I looked to Thursday to see if she wanted me to stick with her.
    “It’s a good idea for us to talk alone,” she said as she followed Jackson across the house. I had to admire the way she handled herself. She seemed to be ready to face him head-on.
    Margo and I sat down in the living room. She poured herself a glass of red wine and offered me one. I declined, but noticed that she dropped several ice cubes in it. She saw me staring.
    “It’s a habit I picked up from Jackson. He absolutely insists on ice in his wine.” She sat back down and glanced in the direction Thursday and her husband had gone. “He’s doing a good job of keeping it together, but he’s still broken up. Jonah was his only child,” she said.
    “What about you? You’re Jonah’s stepmother?” I said, and she made a face.
    “Stepmother sounds so awful. I never really thought of myself that way. I never thought of being any kind of mother to him. And Jonah wasn’t looking for a replacement. In case you didn’t know, his mother died when he was small. Jackson and I have only been married for five years. Jonah never lived with us.” She moved closer to me. “Jonah and I never really hit it off. He tried to bust things up with his father and me.” She suddenly realized what she’d said. “I didn’t mean that. Please forget I said it. What I really meant to say was that Jonah and I had a polite relationship. He was a wonderful young man.”
    It was hard not to laugh when she called him a young man since I was pretty sure she was only ten years or so older than he was.
    She drank some of her wine and quickly changed the subject to the bad job the police were doing. “Jackson is pretty upset with the police work. He’s pretty upset with everything. He’s being okay to Thursday right now, but I have to tell you, he blames her and her family for what happened to Jonah.”
    “You mean he thinks that Thursday and her mother were involved in his son’s death?” I asked, and Margo nodded.
    I asked her what she remembered from that night. She started to recite it as though she’d repeated the same thing many times. Someone had just replaced Jackson’s boutonniere. He had a glass of merlot and asked one of the servers for some ice cubes. The clumsy server put the ice in his glass, and then as Jackson was about to drink it, knocked it out of his hand, spilling the red wine all over their shirt and gloves.
    “Then what happened?” I asked.
    “Jackson got another glass of merlot and a few minutes later all the screaming started.”
    I asked if she knew who had put the fresh flowers in the lapel of Jackson’s jacket and she shrugged. “I wasn’t really paying attention,” she said, “and all those people looked the same anyway.” She thought a moment. “It was probably the same person who put the first boutonniere in his lapel before the ceremony.” I looked at her expectantly. “It was whoever did all the flowers.”
    I wanted to ask her about Jonah’s job, but before I figured out how to segue into it, Thursday and Jackson returned. Neither of their expressions revealed how things had gone. Thursday just thanked him,