Free Never Let Them See You Cry by Edna Buchanan

four-door sedan with a KATHI-K personalized license tag.
    The marriage survived a separation in 1980. At about the same time, Jerry Russell and his wife, his next-door childhood sweetheart, were divorced. His famous actor father flew to Miami half a dozen times to persuade the couple to stay together. “It was one of the failures of my life,” the father said.
    The romance between Jerry Russell and Kathi Anderson began in 1978 and continued after her husband moved back into the house. Although Kathi lived with Lance, she and Jerry attended concerts and plays and dined at fine restaurants. On Valentine’s Day, Jerry sent Kathi and her daughter roses and took them to dinner. The child signed Kathi’s valentine card to Russell. While Lance piloted an Eastern flight on Thanksgiving, Jerry cooked a turkey for Kathi and her daughter.
    Russell’s father met Kathi at that family dinner. “She seemed like an airline stewardess, a girl in a uniform who serves the drinks and is nice and polite.” At his son’s request, he autographed for Kathi a copy of his latest book, The Best Years of My Life .
    Jerry’s friends knew about his obsession with Kathi. Perhaps her husband also knew. Relatives said that for a time, Lance had a private detective “monitor” his wife’s relationship with Jerry.
    Though his marriage was troubled, Lance’s businesses flourished. His brother Erik, forty-seven, had sold his Alamonte Springs funeral home and intended to move to Miami to be a partner. Erik admired his brother’s cool-headed style. In January they were aloft in a small plane when the single engine quit. Lance smoothly glided the aircraft into a pasture, repaired a clogged fuel line and off they soared again.
    After delivery of his new Mercedes on February 16, Lance decided to put a gun in the car for protection. He discovered his .357 Magnum missing from his study, an employee said. “He thought maybe Kathi had borrowed it, or he may have mislaid it.”
    The weapon was the third of Lance’s guns to apparently go astray in recent weeks. The first, a .38 Arminius Titan revolver he had owned for years, seemed to have disappeared from his car, parked in the Eastern employees’ lot. The second was a derringer. He did not report the guns stolen, believing they were just misplaced. He took another two-shot derringer, which he had bought for Kathi, and placed it in his briefcase.
    On Wednesday, February 24, 1982, the day of the killing, a friend of Kathi’s skirmished with her husband, a Delta Airlines pilot. He ripped the phone out of the wall and left for work. So after a dental appointment, Kathi drove her new Mercedes Benz to Jerry Russell’s townhouse, and together they went to the Delta pilot’s home. Jerry repaired the phone, then took Kathi to lunch. Lance was at work, exhibiting marine supplies at a boat show in Miami Beach.
    From seven to nine P.M ., Jerry played tennis with the usual Wednesday-night crowd at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. In a foursome with insurance agent Alex Soto, a real estate agent and a travel agent, Jerry played his usual game.
    â€œHe’s a hacker,” said Soto, thirty-three, “but he played a pretty good game, for him.” Jerry appeared to have been drinking, but not enough to affect his game. “He was kidding around, very calm, relaxed, a typical, average, laid back, normal individual. He was not plotting or planning a murder that night—or I know nothing about human nature.”
    After the boat show, Lance picked up Frank Armstrong, twenty-one. Armstrong had recently moved to Miami from Bradenton to work for Lance. He was staying in an office-study in a barn behind Lance’s house. They headed home. “We were joking and talking and having a good old time,” Armstrong said. “Lance was telling me how well the boat show went for him.”
    Earlier that night Jerry was at his own home with his