'Til Death Do Us Part Read Online Free Page A

inch of its life in reds and golds, and there seemed to be a monkey theme happening—monkeys dancing on fabric, monkey lamps, a monkey on its back holding up a bowl of potpourri. “Did you do it yourself?”
    “Of course,”
she said in an impressive mix of exasperation and condescension. “I’m a
decorator
. Would you like something to drink?”
    “I’d kill for some coffee,” I said. She seemed to wince at my poor choice of words.
    “I only have those teabaglike things,” she informed me. I was desperate enough that I accepted the offer.
    She led me back to a small kitchen with a black-and-green granite countertop and shiny new appliances. There wasn’t a speck of dirt or grease anywhere, and nothing was out of place. It appeared that the only food that had been consumed there recently might have been a single Carr’s Table Water cracker.
    Ashley stubbed out her cigarette and filled a teakettle with water. Her movements as she lit the stove were jerky, and she seemed as wired today as she had been last night.
    “Ashley, you’ve got to try to calm down,” I said.
    “Last night, before I got together with you, I actually thought that if I talked to someone about my fears, they might suddenly seem silly to me. But that didn’t happen. I feel even more scared now than I did before.”
    “But this really could just be a coincidence.”
    “But what about that question Robin asked me—about whether anything had seemed strange at the wedding?”
    “She might not have even been thinking of Jamie’s death when she said it. Maybe something else was on her mind. Tell me, how is it that the two of them struck up a friendship?”
    “From what she told me, they just started talking,” she said. “You know, at the rehearsal dinner or the wedding. Jamie had recently broken up with someone, I guess, and Robin had just split with her husband. Robin indicated that they talked a lot about their situations. I guess you could say they bonded over bad men.”
    The teakettle whistled shrilly, making Ashley jump. She poured hot water into a bright red mug and then dipped the coffee bag into it several times with a squeamish expression on her face—you would have thought she was dunking a mouse.
    “Milk?” she asked.
    “Yes, please. Was that why Robin was taking MAO inhibitors? Because of her divorce?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “MAO inhibitors. They’re the type of antidepressant I believe she was taking.”
    “Robin had a depression problem since high school. She’d tried stuff like Prozac and Paxil, but nothing ever seemed to work for her—there were always these awful side effects. Last summer the doctor put her on this other drug—whatever you called it—and she really started to feel great.”
    “Was it hard for her to stay on the diet? I did a little research yesterday, and apparently an awful lot of foods are off-limits when you take this type of drug.”
    “I’m sure it
was
hard. Robin loved food. In fact, Peyton got furious with her because she gained a few pounds before the wedding. But none of that means she cheated. Like I told you yesterday, she was extremely careful about the foods she needed to avoid.”
    “Do you know who her psychiatrist was?”
    “No, but . . .” She strode jerkily across the kitchen and yanked open a drawer. From inside she took a wrinkled yellow Post-it note and handed it to me. The initials
C.B.
were written on it in pen, along with a phone number with an area code I didn’t recognize.
    “Robin had this on the refrigerator. When I asked her what it was, she said it was her
lifeline
.”
    “Is any of her other stuff still here?” I asked, copying down the phone number on a pad in my purse.
    “Very little. Her parents are both dead, but she’s got a brother in town. A few days after the funeral, he and his wife just dropped by out of the blue and took the clothes and jewelry and any papers that seemed important. They were borderline rude about it—I almost had the feeling