Cat Seeing Double by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

was very white, the blood on his neck and cheek dark and dry. His black hair was tossled and scattered with broken glass, as was the black stubble on his jaw and the black hair on his arm. His blood splattered the broken window and his shirt.
    Rupert. It was Rupert .
    Involuntarily she reached out a hand, but then drew back.
    Not quite believing that this was her husband, not quite believing that anyone at all lay there, she moved around the windows to an angle where she could see his face, and stood looking down at him.
    His skin was too white even for Rupert. He looked, in death, no more solemn than he had in life. His eyes were open and staring, his face grayish, like the melted paraffin that her mother had used long ago to seal jelly glasses.
    The wound in his chest was dark around the edges, the hole in his forehead dark and ragged. Surely both were gunshot wounds.
    When was he killed? She had heard no shots. Staring at the bone of his skull, her stomach turned. She badly wanted to heave.
    The drying blood that had run down his face and stained his blue polo shirt was so dark it must surely be mixed with the black residue of gunpowder. His ear against the shattered glass was covered with tiny blue fragments. His dark hair was so mussed he looked almost boyish, though in life Rupert had never lookedboyish. His broad gold watchband shone from his pale wrist pressing the white skin, nestled among thick black hairs. She thought of Rupert naked, the black hairs on his arms and chest and belly over the too-white flesh. She’d come to hate hairy men. She leaned to grab his feet to drag him out of there, get him away from the frail windows before his weight shattered them further but then, reaching, reality took hold and she backed away, chilled.
    But the next moment she knelt. She felt compelled to touch him, though she knew he was dead. Reaching to his thigh, she jerked her hand away again at the feel of lifelessness, at the icy chill that shocked her even through the cloth of his chinos.
    Kneeling over him, she didn’t know the fog was blowing away until the newly risen sun shot its rays in through the small high window at the back of the garage, a bolt of morning light that lay a glow across her hands and, gleaming through the colored glass, threw a rainbow of colors across Rupert’s shattered face. She rose, needing to be sick.
    Getting her stomach under control, she stood staring down at the man she’d spent nine years alternately loving and hating until the hate outdistanced all else. And she realized that even in death Rupert had the upper hand.
    That even in death, he had placed her in an impossibly compromising position.
    She had no witness. He was dead in her garage. She would be the first, prime suspect. Maybe the only suspect.
    Dallas could vouch for her until one o’clock thismorning. No one could speak for her after Dallas left. She’d seen no one; no one had been in her house. What time had Rupert died? How could he have been killed here in the garage, not ten feet from her, and she had not heard shots?
    And what was he doing in Molena Point? Why had he come down here from San Francisco? He had no friends here.
    Had he come to confront her in person over the lawsuit where she was claiming her half of the business? She’d started proceedings five months ago. And who had been with him, to kill him? Even if the shooter had used a silencer, why hadn’t she at least heard glass breaking when Rupert fell? That sound should have waked her, occurring just beneath the floor where her bed was placed.
    She glanced at the unlocked side door, trying to remember if she had locked it last night. Moments ago it had been unlocked. And she realized that when she turned the knob she had very likely destroyed fingerprints or perhaps a palm print.
    She had to call Dallas.
    The thought of calling the station, of calling for the police, of calling for Detective Dallas Garza, both comforted and sickened