out, ask for a divorce or start acting like a husband again. More likely he just needed a clean shirt before he went wherever it was he went after work nowadays. If he’d done his laundry, he might even find one.
She was wiping the counters when the door opened and he stepped inside the little utility room that led into the kitchen. She ignored him until he was standing right beside her.
“Evening,” he said.
“You got the time right, that’s for sure.”
“Sorry I didn’t make it home for supper.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t make you any. A waste of good food.”
“I have more paperwork now than I had at Metro. If I didn’t stay late, it would never get done.”
Ken still referred to the Miami-Dade Police Department as Metro. All the old cops did. She wondered if he did that on purpose, so he could remember it the way it had been in the beginning, before everything had changed for him.
“If you didn’t stay late, you might have to remember you’re married,” she said. “And we can’t have that.”
“Don’t start on me, Wanda.”
“Don’t worry, the sun sapped all my energy.” She rinsed out her dishrag, squeezed it like it was a certain cop’s neck, then hung it over the faucet to dry.
“Herb Krause was found dead in his house this afternoon. Landlady found him.”
“Yeah. I heard from the sheriff’s department.”
She studied her husband. He had changed out of his uniform, and wore dark jeans and a subdued Hawaiian-style shirt their daughter had given him. Ken was still a good-looking man. That never seemed fair to her. Men aged differently than women. At fifty-seven, Ken’s hair was classic salt-and-pepper, and his tanned skin was lined from sun and wind. But he held himself tall the way he always had, and he hadn’t drunk himself a beer belly or eaten his way to an extra chin. Even though his nose had been broken twice in the line of duty, it was still straight. Women continued to look at him with interest, while more and more men looked the other way when she walked by. She had fallen in love with that face, that body, almost on first sight.
Which just went to show that a woman could be swayed by the darnedest things.
“He was a nice old coot,” she said.
“They’re planning a funeral?”
“Doesn’t seem to be a they. You don’t know anything about a family, do you?”
“I never said more than hello to him.”
She didn’t repeat the obvious, that these days hello was the most anybody could expect from Ken. “There’s lunch meat in the fridge if you want a sandwich. I made myself potato salad yesterday, and there’s some left.” She held up her bottle. “More of these, too.”
“I ate lunch late. I need a walk more than I need food.”
“Well, have at it. There’s a whole beach out there waiting for you.”
He didn’t leave, the way she expected him to. “Except for the old man dying, you have a good day off?”
She was surprised he remembered she hadn’t had to work. “Nothing special.” She thought about her encounter with Tracy Deloche. Once upon a time the story would have made him smile, but Ken’s gaze was already restless, like he was hoping to find something in the kitchen to think about besides her.
“You get out for a little sun?” he asked.
“I mostly stayed off my feet.”
He didn’t leave. He looked as if he wanted to say more, but she didn’t have a clue what it might be.
“Something happen at work?” she prompted.
“Nothing ever happens.”
“I don’t know why you sound disappointed. Isn’t that why we moved to Palmetto Grove?”
“I was just telling you about my day.”
“What else do you want to tell me?”
“Nothing, Wanda. I’m just making conversation. You always say we don’t talk anymore.”
“Maybe I’m just imagining things changed. Maybe all the years of our marriage were as lonely and miserable as the last two, and I just forgot.”
He had looked tired when he came in, and now he looked even more so. “I’m going to take that walk now.”
“You do that, Kenny. I won’t wait up.”
He stood there for a moment, as if he did have more to say. For a moment—fool that she was—she was actually hopeful. Three little words could start their marriage back on the right track.
Come with me.
Despite what she’d said, their marriage had been good, the kind of marriage a woman never dares to hope for. That marriage could still be saved—if both of