Free Dying in the Dark by Valerie Wilson Wesley Page B

budget.
    “No, I'm fine,” I said.
    He grinned, dimple showing. “That's what you told me yesterday. When aren't you ‘fine,’ Tamara Hayle? Is there ever a time when you aren't self-sufficient and self-reliant?”
    “I'm fine then, and I'm fine now.” I hadn't meant to sound so snappish, but it came out that way, and I didn't bother to apologize. Larry shrugged as if it didn't matter and bit into a biscuit. Neither of us spoke until he'd finished eating, and I asked the question that had been bothering me since yesterday afternoon.
    “So why were you at both of their funerals?”
    He took a sip of coffee, placed the cup carefully down on the table, and looked me in the eye.
    “You mean Celia and her son?”
    “Why else are we here?”
    “Because I knew Celia.”
    “In the biblical sense?” I asked, hurled into nastiness by three cups of coffee on an empty stomach. “So just how close were you?”
    “Close enough so I cared about her and Cecil. Close enough so that if I had ten minutes alone with the son of a bitch who killed her, they'd put me in jail for life,” he said in a way that told me more than he knew. “I was at loose ends for a while. Marva, my wife, and I werestill together, but I was very lonely, and being lonely in a bad marriage is the worst kind of loneliness. I was looking for someone to help me through a bad time. I needed some fun, and my relationship with Celia supplied both.”
    “So basically, you just fucked her,” I said, using the “F” word to both shock and bluntly define what I suspected was at the core of their relationship. It had the desired effect: He blushed and dropped his gaze for a moment before returning his eyes to mine.
    “I suppose that some people might put it like that, but Celia was very vulnerable and kinder than anybody I've met in a very long time,” he said, implying with a slightly raised eyebrow that she had it on me in the kindness department. “Celia Jones was a decent woman who never got a break, and during the time I was with her, I treated her like a queen because beneath all that tough bravado, that's what she was.
    “I wasn't in love with Celia, and she certainly wasn't in love with me, she had too many other men in her life for that, and she made no secret of it, but I respected and liked her, and I hope she felt the same about me. Fucking her, as you put it, was a very small part of our relationship.”
    It was my turn to blush. For a minute, I thought he was going to stand up and stomp out of the place. Instead, he politely asked if I'd like some more coffee, and ordered another cup for himself, keeping me on tenterhooks as he added cream and sugar and leisurely stirred it.
    “So do you still play chess?” I asked, sick of the strained silence and trying for neutral ground.
    He was surprised by the question. “Yes, once a chess player always a chess player. It's a game that influences your life.”
    I couldn't think of a follow-up to that so I asked the obvious. “Why did you invite me to brunch?”
    “When I saw you yesterday, I remembered you'd been Celia's friend in high school. I figured you'd cut her out of your life like everybody else, so I didn't bring her name up, but when you came to her son's funeral I knew that at least you'd cared enough about the two of them to show up. I asked you out because I wanted to find out if you had any idea who could have killed her or her son. Will you tell me what you know?”
    It's always tough to tell if somebody is leveling with you or simply tossing out a bunch of crap to see how much you know about a given situation. That was one thing I learned in my short stint as a cop: Never immediately believe what somebody says, search for the forgotten detail that will point to the truth, don't take anyone at his word. My bullshit meter is usually pretty accurate, but the needle was jumping all over the place this morning. The only person who could verify what Larry'd told me about him and Celia was