Free At the Stroke of Madness by Alex Kava

wondered why she didn’t remember the basic details from the phone call. Or was her mind simply already focused on her backyard retreat? Somehow he doubted that. His bet was that she was focused on the contents of those red-tabbed file folders, stuffed safely in her briefcase. “Here it is,” she finally said. “She was staying in Meriden, but the funeral was in Wallingford.”
    “Wallingford?”
    O’Dell double-checked. “Yes. Do you know anyone?”
    “No, but I’ve been through that area. It’s beautiful. You know who might be able to tell you who to call? Our buddy Detective Racine is from there.”
    “Our buddy? I think if you know where she’s from, she’s your buddy.”
    “Come on, O’Dell, I thought you two made nice…or at least called a truce.” The D.C. detective and O’Dell clashed like night and day, but on a case almost a year ago, Julia Racine ended up saving O’Dell’s mother. Whatever their differences, the two women now seemed to have what he’d call a healthy tolerance of each other.
    “You know my mother has lunch with Racine once a month?”
    “Really? That’s nice.”
    “ I don’t even have lunch with my mother once a month.”
    “Maybe you should.”
    O’Dell frowned at him and went back to the faxed pages. “I suppose I could just call the field office.”
    Tully shook his head. For a smart woman his partner could be annoyingly stubborn.
    “So what was this Begley woman seeing Dr. Patterson for?”
    O’Dell looked at him over the faxed pages. “You know Gwen can’t tell me that. Patient confidentiality.”
    “It might help to know how kooky she is.”
    “Kooky?” Another frown. He hated when she did that, especially when it made him feel like he was being unprofessional, even when she was right.
    “You know what I mean. It could help to know what she’s capable of doing. Like, for instance, is she suicidal?”
    “Gwen seemed concerned that she may have gotten involved with a man. Someone she met up there. And that she might actually be in some danger.”
    “She was there for how long?”
    O’Dell shuffled through the pages. “She left the District last Monday, so it’s been a week.”
    “How did she get involved with a man in less than a week? And you said she was there for a funeral? Who meets someone at a funeral? I can’t even pick up a woman at the Laundromat.”
    She smiled at him, quite an accomplishment. O’Dell hardly ever smiled at his attempts at humor. Which meant the good mood lurked close to the surface.
    “Let me know if you need any help, okay?” he offered, and now she looked at him with suspicion and he wondered, not for the first time, if Dr. Patterson had confided in O’Dell about their Boston tryst. Geez, tryst wasn’t right. That made it sound…tawdry. Tawdry wasn’t right, either. That made it sound…O’Dell was smiling at him again. “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    He got up to leave. Wanting her to believe his offer had been genuine, he added, “I’m serious, O’Dell. Let me know if you need any help. I mean with any of your cases, not with the backyard digging. Bad knee, remember?”
    “Thanks,” she said, but there was still a bit of a smile.
    Oh, yeah, she knew. She knew something.

CHAPTER 6
    Wallingford, Connecticut
    L illian Hobbs loved her Mondays. It was the one time she left Rosie alone during the busy rush hours, steaming milk for lattes, collecting sticky quarters for cheese Danishes and the New York Times. Not a problem. According to Rosie, the busier, the better. After all, it had been Rosie’s idea to add a coffee bar to their little bookstore.
    “It’ll bring in business,” Rosie had promised. “Foot traffic we might not get otherwise.”
    Foot traffic was just the thing Lillian had dreaded. And so at first she had revolted. Well, maybe revolted was too strong a word. Lillian Hobbs had never really revolted against anything in her forty-six years of life. She simply hadn’t seen the wisdom in Rosie’s