Free The Kiss of Death by Victor J. Banis Page B

already deserted. She might as well have been invisible.
    She parked down by the bridge, where no one was likely to see the car—though there was little enough traffic here—and walked up the curving drive. She’d have taken the path through the woods, which was shorter, but there was too much snow there and the driveway was clear. She didn’t want to leave prints. The wind fretted around her, whispering urgently, things she didn’t want to hear.
    Lisa was surprised to see her. Claire had sent her away that night, mere minutes after the sound of Jason’s car had disappeared down the driveway.
    “You’d better go,” she’d said, and Lisa had said, “Oh, honey, he won’t be back for hours.”
    “Get out.” Loud, curt, like slamming that door swinging in the wind, and Lisa, without another word, had gone, closing the door softly behind her.
    They hadn’t spoken since. What was there to say? Whatever it was that had existed between them, whatever it conceivably could have become, had died in that crash with Jason.
    “Claire,” Lisa said, eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t hear your car.”
    Claire offered no explanation for that. She walked wordlessly past her and into the front room without waiting for an invitation. A startled log cracked loudly on the hearth. A half-empty brandy snifter sat on a table near the fire. Frank Sinatra sang in the background, some song about loneliness. They were all about loneliness, weren’t they?
    After a moment’s pause, Lisa closed the front door and followed her. “Actually, I thought you’d left already,” she said. “I thought somebody told me that.”
    Claire turned to face her. Despite the fact that she was obviously alone, Lisa looked stunning. She always did. Hostess pants of a yellow so pale it was nearly white, the silk tunic, her raven hair perfectly coifed; she might have been entertaining a roomful of people, the best people. She had always made Claire feel dowdy. She made most women feel dowdy.
    “I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye, could I?” Claire said, only the slightest edge to her voice.
    “No, I guess not,” Lisa said, her tone, her manner, a bit uncertain. Lisa was rarely uncertain. They stood, regarding each other, the silence growing awkward. A turntable whirred and clicked, and Sinatra, too, went quiet, waiting.
    “You weren’t at Jason’s funeral,” Claire said.
    Lisa took a cigarette from a china dish, lit it with a silver lighter, made a show of exhaling slowly. “Actually, I hardly knew Jason,” she said, not looking at Claire.
    “You know me. I thought we were friends. You said often enough that we were.” Lisa’s shrug was pointed, deliberate. “If not friends, then what were we?” Claire insisted.
    “Can I get you a drink? Don’t you want to take off your coat?”
    “No. I want you to tell me what we were, Lisa. You and I. If not friends.”
    Lisa sighed, stubbed the barely smoked cigarette out in a crystal ashtray. “Christ, I hate scenes,” she said. She flicked a phantom bit of tobacco from a crimson lip. “If you really must know, darling, you were a challenge. You were so, oh, I don’t know, so married, so virtuous. I find innocence tempting. It’s a trait of mine. I never said I was a nice person.”
    “Is that all I was?” Claire asked. “A score?”
    The corners of Lisa’s mouth turned up a little and she cocked an eyebrow. “Well, of course, one doesn’t get a score for a fumble. Or were you planning to…?” She left the question unfinished, staring instead at the gun Claire had taken from the deep pocket of her coat. She looked from the gun into Claire’s face, saw there the answer to the question she’d been about to ask.
    “Ah,” she said, long and drawn out. Claire said nothing. “You can’t get away with it, you know. People get caught for murder. They never get away with it.”
    “Well, but, we wouldn’t hear about the successful ones, would we? If someone got away with it, I