Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) Read Online Free Page A

can’t function.
    A pain I can live with.

CHAPTER 3
    When I’m not working, I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. The house is too empty, too quiet with Charlotte gone. The first time she left—a weeklong stay on the East Coast—I’d find myself opening drawers and checking that her things were still there. An hour later, one of her silk slips would still be clutched in my hand, or a little piece of jewelry, and I’d be sitting in the dark thinking about . . . nothing.
    “Go visit the Robbs,” Charlotte would say over the phone, sensing something wasn’t right, but not wanting to probe too deeply into what. Her new position made her happy, more than she’d ever anticipated, and by instinct she steered away from any conversation which might call the decision into question.
    In front of the muted television I try calling Charlotte. She’s in London now for some kind of high-level negotiation meant to last through the weekend, after which her plan is to pick up her sister Ann, Bridger’s wife, who’s flying into Heathrow for a couple of days of sightseeing. It’s hard to imagine what the two sisters will do alone together in a foreign land. They can hardly get through dinner together without some kind of argument flaring up. My call goes to voicemail, but I don’t leave a message. She’ll get back to me when she can.
    I check the time, then try to watch the History Channel for a while. Back when they ran Hitler documentaries all the time, I could tune out in front of the tube for hours. Now there are too many reality shows with only a tenuous connection to the past. I switch off the TV and go to the bookshelf, taking down the thick middle volume of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War , which I’ve been reading intermittently for about ten years, hoping to finish before I’m dead. Not tonight, though. After flipping a few pages, I put it back.
    In the old days on nights like this, when I wanted desperately to shrug off the pressures of work, I’d end up in the parking lot of a bar called the Paragon, wondering what it would be like to take a drink. Sometimes I’d go inside and order one, then let the glass sweat untouched on the table, testing myself. But the place changed hands a few times and finally closed. Now there’s just a darkened storefront.
    So I grab my car keys and the black gym bag I keep next to the gun safe. The weight feels good in my hand. In my new empty life, there is one way I’ve learned to forget everything. And it’s early enough in the evening for me to catch up.
    ———
    On the way I stop over to see the Robbs. The couple who used to live in our garage apartment started looking for a bigger place once Gina’s pregnancy started to show. They took their time, hoping to find something large enough for a growing family but not so expensive that Carter couldn’t afford it on his ministry salary, since Gina hoped to quit teaching once the baby was born. He worked in Montrose at something called an “outreach center,” splitting his time between helping the destitute and proselytizing the heathens. In his off-hours he’d try proselytizing me, too, but it’s not so easy when the heathen has a badge.
    With my wife’s help, the Robbs found a rental bungalow not far from Carter’s work, a tiny cottage of maybe nine hundred square feet, no garage, with a tear-down on one side and an incomplete glass-and-steel domicile on the other, the kind of place a Miami Vice drug lord would have been proud to call home. When the market tanked, the architect-builder went broke and left the site mothballed in temporary fencing and plastic wrap.
    I’d gone over to see them a few times, bearing gifts, but without Charlotte things were never as smooth. Any day now, that baby would arrive, throwing their lives into rhapsodic turmoil. The thought makes me a little sad. I guess I’m starting to miss them.
    Carter comes to the door in a T-shirt and shorts. He doesn’t look happy to see me.
    “Is