only similarity with my shack on the river was the quiet. Ever since I’d left the constant background noise of the city I had developed a deep appreciation of quiet. I went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee in the drip coffeemaker—a blessed upgrade from my tin pot on the wood-burning stove on the river. Once it was started I sat on the wooden stool at the counter and finally dug the beeper out of my pocket to see which of Billy’s numbers I needed to call. I stared at the digits for several seconds, not recognizing them at first, and then letting my memory work. It brought a scent of careful perfume, a flash of blond hair, eyes a shade of green, no, gray. I had not seen Detective Sherry Richards in several months. The number in front of me was to her cell phone. The last time we had spoken it had been on that phone and I distinctly remembered it had been late at night and it had been dark.
“Yes. This is Max Freeman. Uh, returning Detective Richards’s page. I will be available, uh, well, I’ll be up most of the night if she needs me, uh, if this is an urgent matter.”
Shit, I thought, and then left the number of the new cell phone Billy had given me on the answering machine.
Richards and I had a history. Hell, the woman had saved my life when she pulled the trigger on a calculating asshole who had me at the business end of a 9mm during a case Billy had put me into. The guy had miscalculated that time, believing that a woman cop wouldn’t drop the hammer on him. Sherry Richards was not the kind of woman afraid to drop the hammer.
We’d had a relationship. But I had slept with her in a bed left empty by a punk kid who shot her cop husband while he was still shaking his head in disbelief at the child’s age. My own short marriage to a Philadelphia officer had ended when she had, well, moved on to other challenges. Even though Richards and I had carefully eased into something good, I’d opened a bit of myself to her and was dumbfounded when her heart seemed to clack shut like a vault. She didn’t like the endings either of us had witnessed. They scared her, so she left the show early. I had not seen her in several months.
Now it was past midnight and I was sitting out on my porch reading a new biography Billy had loaned me on John Adams. The old fart was fascinating, innovative, maybe damn brilliant, but he was also ambitious and I am not a fan of ambitious. I’d moved a free- standing lamp with an old yellowed shade outside and run the cord through one of the jalousie windows. In between pages I was staring out at the black ocean. A night breeze had come up and the brush of waves on the sand had turned to a harder, ripping sound, like fine cloth being torn. The sharp scent of decay that came with low tide was in each breath and it created an odd mixture with the aroma of my fourth cup of coffee. My eyes were closed when the chirp of my cell phone snapped them open. I punched it on with my thumb.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” she said. “Well, your phone etiquette hasn’t changed, Freeman.”
“What can I say? Evolution is a creeping process.”
“Let me guess. You’re reading with your feet up on that old gouged-up table and you’re still working on the last pot of coffee for the night.”
“You’re a psychic,” I said.
“You’re a dinosaur.”
“Thank you.”
Her voice was warm and light. I was relieved, but a little set back by her ability to call after months and be so damned giddy.
“Actually, I’m not out at the shack. I’m in town on the beach.”
“Billy’s?”
“Sort of. It’s a little oceanfront place he keeps to hide clients when they’re trying to avoid subpoenas and officers of the court.”
“Sounds perfect for you, Max,” she said, and we both let that sit for a quiet beat.
“So, you’re close by. How busy are you?” she said, her voice shifting up into a tighter, business mode. OK, it was not a social call.
“Busier than I have a right to be, but just finishing up a job with Billy. What’s up?”
“I’ve got a case I’m working on, Max,” she started. “The disappearance of some women bartenders here in