Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 Read Online Free Page A

them loose and floppy. Clean trousers I couldn’t provide.
    I’d not brought provisions for visitors, and I incline to a rather spartan breakfast—cereal, applesauce, and coffee. It isn’t that I hoard fat grams, but life is a trade-off, and I’lltake a hot fudge sundae later in the day over buttered toast anytime.
    When Craig joined me, he looked a good deal better than the night before. He still wore the stained trousers, but the sweatshirt was a great improvement over the bloodied shirt. Yet, even freshly shaven and after a few hours of sleep, he still had the air of a stunned survivor.
    It didn’t, given the fare, take us long to eat.
    I refilled our coffee cups.
    “It’s all so crazy,” he blurted out. “I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe what happened to …”
    I looked sympathetic. I wondered if I was serving as a practice session.
    “I was at the store.”
    “Store?”
    “Patty Kay’s bookstore.”
    Hmm. Not
our
bookstore.
Patty Kay’s
bookstore.
    “Where?”
    He looked at me blankly.
    “What town?”
    “Oh. Yeah. Sure. We live”—He paused, I knew, because Patty Kay no longer lived—“in Fair Haven.”
    I was familiar with it. Fair Haven is some twenty miles south of Nashville on Hillsboro Pike. It is not only one of Tennessee’s loveliest old towns, it is one of its wealthiest. There is a great deal of old money in Fair Haven, and lots of new.
    I glanced again at his slacks. Stained or not, they were expensive and well cut.
    “Is that how you earn your living? Running the bookstore?”
    It shouldn’t have been a difficult question.
    “Well … I mean, I run it for Patty Kay. I used to teach but … Actually, she has—
had
lots of investments.”
    “So the bookstore doesn’t have to make money.” I know those kinds of booksellers, wealthy people who love books.
    “Oh, no. Patty Kay wants”—another sober pause—“always wanted to make money.”
    Certainly. No one appreciates money more than the rich. But they can afford to indulge hobbies until they become profitable.
    “So you were at the bookstore. When?”
    “Yesterday afternoon. It was a regular Saturday. Busy. I answered the phone a dozen times. Then somebody hung up when I answered. I didn’t think anything about it. A wrong number. Happens sometimes. It rang again. Another hangup. Then I was waiting on a customer. One of the clerks—Amy—answered the next ring. After I made the sale, Amy came over. She said Patty Kay wanted me to pick up a basket of fruit at a shop in Green Hills, then hurry home. So I drove to the shop—”
    “Just like that? No, ‘Will you please’ or ‘Could you …’ Did Patty Kay order you around all the time?”
    He didn’t like that. His voice became defensive. “She didn’t order me around. But, sure, she asked me to do things.”
    “And you did them.”
    “Sure. I mean, why not?”
    That wasn’t for me to say. But, despite all the lip service to androgynous work roles in today’s liberated marriages, from my observations most women still handle the domestic chores, and, when they don’t, there is a good deal of charm exercised in shifting them. I didn’t hear any echoes of charm here.
    So what kind of marriage did Craig and Patty Kay Matthews have?
    The police would want to know.
    I was beginning to have some ideas.
    “All right. You went to pick up the fruit.”
    Puzzlement puckered his face. That, or some artful Method acting. “They didn’t have an order. I thought there was maybe a mixup. So I called home—”
    Ah, what a dutiful errand boy—
    “—and the machine came on.” His eyes brightened. “Listen, they’ll remember that at the deli, won’t they? Patty Kay must have already—” He broke off.
    Because he didn’t want to remember? Or did he remember only too well?
    “So you started home?”
    “Well, I had them fix up a fruit basket. Just in case.”
    This fellow didn’t want to face his wife without a basket of fruit. Not if she wanted a