Two Times Murder by Adam Oyebanji

Author:Adam Oyebanji [Oyebanji, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2024-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

5:05 P.M.

Lynn Spargo’s office was downtown, in the tall, modernist heights of the US Steel Building. Which is why Greg found himself sitting on weird, curvy furniture that looked like it had escaped from a 1960s acid trip on the building’s second floor, Starbucks coffee in hand. Looking down on the plaza outside, it was easy to see the dark current of people leaking out of the tower and heading for home, each and every one of them wrapped up against the biting wind.

‘I hope you’re not suggesting that’s one of mine,’ Lynn said, eyeing the Louboutin pump with distaste. ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead in that thing.’ She gave vent to a slightly unhappy smile. ‘I’m well past the age when I could carry it off.’

Conscious that a number of customers were looking at him curiously, Greg slipped the shoe back into the Whole Foods grocery bag.

‘Do you think it belongs to someone he was seeing?’

‘How could it not be?’ The smile turned full-on bitter. ‘The older he got, the younger he liked them. I think he thought he was some kind of benevolent sugar daddy. That way, he could kid himself that he wasn’t paying for whores.’ She paused for a moment, shaking with anger. ‘I don’t know when it started, but I sure know when I found out. This would have been eleven, no, twelve years ago now. Halloween, if you can believe that. He’d set up some entitled little redhead in an off-the-books apartment. He’d sneak over there when he was “working late”, or she’d come to him at our Fifth Avenue place, when he thought I wasn’t around – which is how he got caught, by the way.’ Lynn’s eyes sparkled with tears. ‘Whatever. He was ashamed and remorseful and begged for forgiveness. And like a fool, I tried to overlook it. He got rid of her, let the lease run out on her apartment – which she had the nerve to complain about, if you can believe that – and it was almost like old times again. I even got to thinking it was going to be like old times again.’ She looked past Greg and out to the plaza below. The tower’s cathedral-like windows were spattered with spots of rain. ‘But, of course, it never was. He did it again, and again, and again until … well. You know the rest.’ She nodded at the grocery bag. ‘Do you think she did it? Whoever owned that shoe? What a stupid, stupid man!’

She was crying now. Quietly. With dignity. No one but Greg noticed. She waved away his proffered handkerchief, producing a tissue from the depth of her purse.

‘It must be awful,’ he said gently. ‘To love someone who doesn’t love you back.’

‘That’s not it at all.’ Lynn looked at him with an expression bordering on surprise. ‘He loved me. I’m sure of it. It’s just I couldn’t … fulfill his needs anymore.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I couldn’t age backwards, is all.

‘That shoe,’ she added briskly.

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