Deadly Row, A - By Casey Mayes Page 0,23

a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

“See that you do,” he said.

I left my husband with his head buried in a police file. If I’d stayed, I’d be nothing more than a distraction for him, and he had serious work to do. Not that my job wasn’t important in its own way, but nobody was going to die if I didn’t get my puzzle in on time, whereas he had a great deal more serious things at stake.

As I walked out into the hallway, I found Steve standing there. “You didn’t have to wait out here,” I said. “We’ve been finished for a few minutes.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt anything,” he said with a smile.

“Don’t worry, if we’re canoodling, I’ll leave a tie on the door.”

“That would be greatly appreciated. I’d hate to walk in on the Chief and do something to merit a chewing out. If you don’t mind me saying so, your husband can really drop a hammer on someone if he wants to.”

“I’ve been married to him forever,” I said. “Do you honestly think you’re telling me anything I don’t already know?”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

“Go on in,” I said as I headed for the elevator. I wasn’t sure what Steve could do to help Zach any more than I had, and if that was the case, I knew my husband wouldn’t hesitate getting rid of him as quickly as he’d dispatched me.

THOUGH I’D TOLD ZACH I WANTED TO GET BACK TO THE Belmont so I could create another puzzle, there was somewhere else I wanted to go first. I drove to our old Dilsworth neighborhood on autopilot, amazed by how familiar and yet foreign the drive had become. A few shops had closed along the way, and I saw that new tenants had taken their place. An old oak tree I’d always admired had been taken down, and a sapling put in its place. I had to wonder if an ice storm or a lightning bolt had felled it, or if it had been something more mundane, and man-made. Things change, and life goes on, whether I was there to witness it or not. Seeing that tree gone gave me an irrational fear that the house I’d shared with my husband was gone as well. I wasn’t sure what kind of catastrophe I was imagining, but in my mind, it was total and complete: where our quaint place had once stood, there was now nothing more than overgrown rubble, from what, I couldn’t imagine. The image in my mind was so real that I nearly overlaid it onto the truth when I drove down our street and saw that it hadn’t been touched. That wasn’t exactly true. The trim was now painted robin’s egg blue instead of the moss green I’d preferred, and a few of the bushes in front of the Colonial had been cut back to the point of mutilation, at least in my mind. Still, the house stood just as strong and proud as the day we’d handed the keys over to the Realtor.

I parked on the other side of the street and tried to take it all in. It was the first time I’d been back since we’d sold it, and while I wasn’t ordinarily all that sentimental, I was surprised to realize that I was crying softly as I looked at it.

My reverie and introspection were broken when there was a sudden tapping on the passenger window of my car.

I looked up to see the smiling face of Sherry Watts, my longtime neighbor and best friend in Charlotte. Her smile vanished as she saw my tears.

“Savannah, are you all right?”

I wiped the tears from my face, feeling foolish the entire time I was doing it. “Sorry, I just got caught up in it all.”

“Well, come out here and give me a hug.”

I did as she commanded, and soon found myself wrapped in her embrace. Sherry was what some would call pleasingly plump, with just enough softness around the edges to make her look like someone’s mom, which she was, three times over. She had bright red hair, a complexion like milk, and a sharp wit that I’d cherished over the years of our friendship.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said after she pulled away and studied me.

“Trust me, you’re wrong.”

She shook her head slightly. “Savannah, I know what I’m talking about. The country air must be good for you. How’s life treating you?”

“We love it,” I said.

Sherry frowned for a moment.