More Bitter Than Death: An Emma Fielding Mystery - By Dana Cameron Page 0,126

own punishment.

I also told her what he’d said about Billy Griggs. She needed to know that, if anyone did. Just in case.

She listened gravely, her brow furrowing deeper and deeper. Finally she shook her head.

“I don’t buy it. I think that was the last salvo he had, and it blew up in his face.”

“But Duncan seemed so surprised by my reaction.” I still really wanted to believe her, desperately wanted her to be right.

She wasn’t bothered. “I’d be surprised too, if you reacted like that to anything I said! Face it, Emma, and I say this as a friend…” She looked at me, anxious that she wasn’t assuming anything.

I nodded. “Go ahead.”

“If he’s always been able to play you, use what he knew about you to get what he wanted, then why couldn’t this be the same thing?”

I considered it, hoping. “You mean, he’d found out about Billy and Tony and everything, and was just trying to play with my head?” I frowned. “It’s possible.”

“But he wasn’t expecting you to bite back, this time.” Her face cracked open in a smile of purely malicious glee. “I would have given money to see that.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, but thanks. And that other stuff”—I shook my head—“feels like it happened in someone else’s lifetime.”

“It did. Like you said: another life.”

I was quiet for a moment, then decided I was done with those thoughts for the moment. “And speaking of other lives…”

“Yeah?”

“I notice a bunch of you young’uns aren’t leaving until later tonight.”

She nodded. “We’ve got a couple of hours until we have to drive people to Manchester and Portland, to the airports. We’re camping out in the bar, until then.”

“You guys got any money?”

She snorted. “Are you kidding me? We’re graduate students. The ranks of the eternally impoverished.”

“Thing is, I’ve got a deck of cards and two friends who are dying to give me more of their hard-earned cash. I was thinking, what’s the point of having graduate students near at hand if you can’t exploit their labor and take away their drinking money?”

“You think you can beat me at cards?” She threw back her head and laughed. It was fabulous to hear, an epic laugh. “Emma, you know I spent most of my early life traveling between military bases. Poker was an integral part of my early childhood training.”

“Gosh, I’d think you’d have nothing to worry about, then. But if you’re scared…”

“Ha! Are you kidding me? You’re giving me a chance to take your money away from you, wipe the floor with you in front of my friends, in front of your friends, and you think I’m going to pass that up?” She laughed again. “When and where?”

“My room, I’ve got it until late. For some reason, the hotel is being very, very accommodating with me. Say three o’clock?”

“You got it.” She suddenly turned shy, in that stubborn way of hers; she might hesitate, she might be uncomfortable, but Meg would never back away from what she felt she had to do. “And Emma?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Epilogue

MONDAY MORNING, I WOKE UP AT HOME, IN MY own bed, to a marvelous quiet. Brian had left for work hours ago, and I’d fallen right back to sleep after he left. There was no hum of traffic or the inner working of hotels, no feet padding along carpeting outside my door, no slam of doors down distant hallways, and no omnipresent throb of climate control and plumbing that isn’t mine. No rumble of cocktail parties that grows into a roar as one draws near, no restaurant racket, muted voices, or discreet clink of cutlery. I luxuriated in the silence, the lack of things demanding memory or attention or anything of me at all.

That lasted about five minutes. Minnie the cat hopped up and marched across my head several times until she was satisfied that I was awake and aware of her presence, whereupon she betook herself to the far side of the bed and began to wash. I listened to the tranquil repetition of rasping tongue on fur, but when she got to making a production of chewing on her hind claws, teasing off the old shells, I relinquished the bed to her. I got dressed and went downstairs, loving the fact that I would not have needed to get dressed if I didn’t want, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was just below freezing outside. As the coffee dripped, I watched Quasimado licking his considerable belly—apparently it was bath time for all the Fielding-Chang