Free Long Time Gone by J. A. Jance Page A

wrong,” he grumbled. “I am mad. With everything else going to hell around here, the last thing I needed was for her to go AWOL.”
    “She was scared,” I said.
    “Of what?”
    “She’s afraid you did it.”
    “Did what?”
    “She’s afraid you’re responsible for Rosemary’s death.”
    This stopped Ron cold. “Tracy thinks I killed her mother?” he asked after a long pause.
    “Evidently,” I responded.
    It was one thing for homicide detectives from Tacoma to hint around that they suspected Ron Peters of being a killer. Ron already understood that, as far as the investigation was concerned, he, as the ex-husband, was bound to be a prime suspect. I understood that, too. It was quite another thing for him to realize that his own daughter was drawing that same conclusion. The realization did nothing to improve Ron’s frame of mind.
    “Let her sleep then,” he said finally. “She isn’t going to school today anyway but when she wakes up, tell her from me that since she got herself down to your place, she can jolly well get herself home.”
    “That’s not going to work,” I said. “The snow accumulation wasn’t that bad when she got here, but she showed up dressed in a jogging suit and tennis shoes. She can’t walk home in that outfit in several inches of snow. I’d be glad to give her a ride, but I put off changing to winter tires too long, which makes my 928 pretty much worthless for driving in snow.”
    “Okay,” Ron said “I guess you’d better wake Tracy up after all, Amy’s outside now, putting chains on the Volvo. I’ll ask her to stop by your place before she goes to work.”
    “You’re not going in today?” I asked.
    “As of yesterday I’m on bereavement leave,” he answered. His tone was grim.
    We both knew that would change. If and when Ron became an acknowledged suspect in the homicide investigation, bereavement leave would become a thing of the past. Paid administrative leave would be more like it—if he was lucky. Unpaid if he wasn’t.
    “And it’s just as well,” he added. “I guess I need to start planning Rosemary’s funeral. She’s been estranged from her family for years, so there’s nobody else to do it. But with no way of knowing when the body will be released… Wait a sec. There’s another call coming in. Gotta go.”
    Expecting to waken Tracy, I ventured as far as the guest-room door. Before I could knock, I heard a toilet flush and the shower come on. With my houseguest already up and about, I returned to the kitchen and poured another cup of coffee.
    The showers in my condo are equipped with demand heaters, which means you can shower until hell freezes over without ever running out of hot water. Tracy, being a typical teenager, was nonetheless prepared to try exhausting the inexhaustible supply of hot water. The shower was still running sometime later when the phone rang again. This time Amy Peters was calling from the security phone on the first level of the parking garage.
    “Tracy’s still in the shower,” I told her.
    “That’s okay,” she returned. “I wanted to talk to you. Can I come up for a minute?”
    “Sure,” I said and buzzed her into the elevator lobby.
    After a car accident had left Ron Peters paralyzed from the waist down, he was pretty much lying in a bed of pain and wallowing in self-pity until Amy Fitzgerald walked into his hospital room and into his life. She was there to do physical therapy, but it turned out she performed mental therapy as well.
    In the years I had known her, I had never seen Amy Peters upset. She has always struck me as someone with a permanently positive attitude, and she’s mostly unflappable. When she stepped off the elevator that morning, though, I could see she was flapped. Clearly she’d been crying, and she wasn’t over it yet. Was it possible she was this upset over Rosemary’s death?
    No, I reasoned silently. More likely she and Ron have had some kind of quarrel.
    “Amy,” I said aloud.