Free Maximum Security by Rose Connors Page B

his elbows on the edge of the coffee table and grows serious. “He wants this back, you know,” he says.

    “Wants what back?”

    “This.” He gestures to our surroundings and I wonder for a moment if he thinks Ralph wants my cottage. “He wants this life back,” Harry continues. “You. His son. All of it. He’s feeling proprietary.”

    This is even funnier than the Roscoe comments. Ralph couldn’t keep his hands off his receptionist when we were married. He didn’t seem to remember that Luke and I lived on the same planet. The idea of his feeling proprietary makes me laugh out loud.

    “Trust me,” I tell Harry. “Ralph thrives in the fast lane. This is not the life he wants. And whatever woman he’s interested in at the moment is half my age, wearing a skirt the length of my jacket.”

    Luke rejoins us and settles into his spot on the floor again. This conversation is over—at least for now.

    “ You trust me ,” Harry finishes, nodding over Luke’s shoulder. “I’ve got a handle on old Roscoe.”

C HAPTER 11

    Sunday, October 15

    It’s a few minutes past nine when I pull up to Louisa Rawlings’s Easy Street antique home. The Kydd’s small, red pickup is parked at the far end of the oyster-shell driveway, near the house. True to form, he’s the first one at work—no matter where work happens to be. I align the Thunderbird next to his truck and cut the engine.

    I grab Louisa’s growing file from the passenger seat before slipping from behind the wheel. A manila accordion folder with a six-inch capacity, it was sand dollar–flat on Friday, housing only the sketchy notes from my initial interview. Now it’s swollen to about half its potential with the fruits of yesterday’s labors: the Kydd’s morning of legal research, his afternoon of copious note-taking. Let’s hope we close the damned thing tomorrow, before it mushrooms.

    I tuck the file under one arm as I slam my car door and head toward the house. Morning dew glistens on the roof and hood of the Kydd’s truck, tiny droplets merging and trickling like miniature rivers down the fogged windows. Through a gap in the mist on the passenger’s side, I see that the solitary bench inside is empty. He must have returned the files and books that cluttered it yesterday to the office. Good. I’ll make a point of telling him to leave them there. I want that busy brain of his focused on only one case for the next couple of days. This one.

    Louisa’s husky laughter tells me they’re on the back deck. I walk east of the house, climb a trio of wooden steps, and pass the seemingly never-used kitchen door on my way to the water side. They’re seated in Adirondack chairs facing the ocean, both cradling steaming mugs, their profiles toward me. They make quite a picture in the morning sunshine, both lean and long-limbed, their postures relaxed, carefree even. Gives a whole new meaning to Southern Comfort.

    Louisa twists in her chair as I approach, sends a slight wave in my direction, and then turns back to the Kydd to finish whatever she’s been telling him. The Kydd’s cheeks are flushed and I don’t think it’s because of the ocean wind. His attention to Louisa’s story is absolute, the kind a private first-class might pay if he were included in a meeting of four-star generals on the eve of war. It’s pretty clear that my arrival is lost on him.

    Leaning over a small table between their chairs without missing a beat in her tale—something about childhood summers spent on Ocracoke, an island off the coast of North Carolina—Louisa fills a mug with black coffee, hands it to me, and points to the empty chair across from hers. I’m grateful for the coffee—it’s my first cup of the day—but I decline the offer to sit. She doesn’t seem to notice.

    “And, of course, there ,” she continues, apparently still referring to the summer island of her youth, “a person can swim once in a while. The water actually warms up for a few months