don't want to bother you with it, you've got enough on your plate right now."
"Alex, with what I've got on my plate, don't you think anything would be a welcome diversion?"
"Not this, love." He sipped his drink, savoring its warm spice. He wished he could channel all his consciousness into appreciating the wine and lose touch with everything that ailed him. "Some things are better left."
"Why am I having trouble believing you?" Lynn leaned her head against his shoulder. "Come on, spill. You know you'll feel better."
"Actually, I'm not at all sure that I would." He sighed again. "I don't know, maybe I should tell you. You're the sensible one, after all."
"Which is not something any of us could ever have said about Weird," Lynn said dryly.
And so he told her about the funeral wreaths, making as light of it as he could. To his surprise, Lynn made no attempt to dismiss the story as Weird's paranoia. "That's why you're trying to convince yourself Jackie hired a hitman," she said. "I don't like this one little bit. Weird's right to take this seriously."
"Look, it could have a simple explanation," Alex protested. "Maybe somebody that knew them both."
"The way Mondo cut himself off from his past? The only people who could reasonably have known them both must come from Kirkcaldy or St. Andrews. And everybody there knew about the Rosie Duff case. You couldn't forget something like that. Not if you knew them well enough to be sending a wreath to funerals where the announcements said 'family flowers only,' " Lynn pointed out.
"Even so, it doesn't mean somebody's out to get us," Alex said. "OK, someone wanted to get a dig in. That's no reason to suppose that the same person has committed cold-blooded murder twice."
Lynn shook her head in disbelief. "Alex, what planet are you on? I can just about credit that somebody who wanted to get a dig in might have seen the reports of Mondo's death. At least that happened in the same country as Rosie Duff's murder. But how would they have heard about Ziggy's death in time to get flowers to his funeral unless they were involved somehow?"
"I don't know. But it's a small world these days. Maybe whoever sent the wreath had a contact in Seattle. Maybe somebody from St. Andrews moved there and ran across Ziggy through the clinic. It's not exactly a common name, and it's not like Ziggy was Mr. Nobody. You know yourself?whenever we ate out with Ziggy and Paul in Seattle, somebody always came over to say hello. People don't forget the doctor who treated their kid. And if that's how it happened, what would be more natural than to e-mail somebody back home when Ziggy died? A place like St. Andrews, news like that would spread like wildfire. It's not so far-fetched, is it?" Alex's voice grew agitated as he struggled to find something that would mean he didn't have to believe what Weird had suggested.
"It's stretching it a bit, but I suppose you could be right. But you can't just leave it at that. You can't rely on a faint possibility. You've got to do something, Alex." Lynn put down her glass and hugged him. "You can't take risks, not with Davina coming home any day now."
Alex drained his glass, paying no attention to the quality of the wine. "What am I supposed to do? Go into hiding with you and Davina? Where would we go? And what about the business? I can't just walk away from my livelihood, not with a child to support."
Lynn stroked his head. "Alex, take it easy. I'm not suggesting we jump off the deep end like Weird. You told me earlier that Lawson was at the funeral today. Why don't you go and talk to him?"
Alex snorted. "Lawson? The man who tried to con me with lentil soup and sympathy? The man who's carried the torch so long that he came along to see one of us cremated? You think he's going to give me a sympathetic hearing?"
"Lawson might have had his suspicions, but at least he stopped you getting a kicking." Alex slid down the bed, nestling his head against Lynn's stomach. She winced and pulled away. "Mind my wound," she said. He shifted back, settling against her arm.
"He'd laugh in my face."
"Alternatively, he might take you seriously enough to make some inquiries. It's not in his interest to turn a blind eye to vigilante justice, if that's what this is.