Free Dying to Read by Lorena McCourtney

broken hip, or that Joe was in the hospital. What did she know about Mitch Berenski anyway, except that he had a strong right arm and a suspicious nature? Well, so did she. The suspicious nature anyway. She unwrapped her sandwich.
    “Horseradish sauce?” He held up a packet of sauce.
    “Sure.” She opened the sandwich and doused the roast beef liberally. He did the same. “Have you been a painter long?” she asked, mostly to make polite small talk.
    He, apparently feeling no need for tactful tiptoeing, said bluntly, “Longer than you’ve been an assistant private investigator.”
    She rejected an impulse to aim the packet of horseradish sauce at him and squirt. “What makes you think that?”
    “You didn’t ask for a description of the missing ring. Someone with experience would have done that.”
    And she hadn’t. And a description of the ring was something she should know, wasn’t it? Groan. Reluctantly, somehow already knowing the answer, she asked, “Do you know what it looks like?”
    “I asked Beverly.” Smug.
    He pulled another scrap of paper out of his pocket. A sketch showed a wedding band with two rows of diamonds, four stones in each row. “She said the stones aren’t large, but they add up to about one carat total weight. Enough to make it worth something in a pawn shop. There’s nothing strikingly individual about the design, but she says the inside of the ring is engraved with ‘Love you always, G.’ Which should make it easily identifiable.”
    “G was her husband?”
    “Right. Gerald. He died of a heart attack about ten years ago. They’d been married forty-two years.”
    Cate forgot her annoyance with Mitch in a rush of sympathy for Beverly. “No wonder the ring means so much to her.” And you’d better not have taken it, Willow Bishop , she thought with sudden vehemence. “I appreciate your, um, thoroughness. Getting a sketch of the ring was very clever.” Right at the head of the one-upmanship parade.
    “I read some detective novels.”
    Which meant he probably knew more about PI work than she did, Cate had to admit. She changed the subject. “Did you take Beverly to church this morning?”
    “Yes. Then out for spaghetti afterward.”
    “But you don’t usually go to church?”
    “I go sometimes.” He sounded defensive. “That’s how I got the painting job for Beverly.”
    “So basically, when you go to church, it’s so you can pick up painting jobs?” she suggested.
    “I do other stuff besides painting. Yard work. Minor repair jobs.”
    He’d answered a question she hadn’t asked, and skipped the one she had asked, but she let it go. “A general handyman, then.”
    “I guess you could say that.”
    She thought about Uncle Joe and the uncleaned gutters and his broken hip. “My uncle may be needing some handyman help before long, if you’re available.”
    He blinked in mild surprise. “I don’t usually do outside jobs, but . . . yeah, sure, if he needs something done, I could do it.”
    “You have references?”
    “References? You saw my work at Beverly’s. I did her kitchen. And you want references saying . . . what? That I can tell white paint from green, or I won’t paint the family dog by mistake?”
    “It wasn’t necessarily your painting expertise I was concerned about. It’s best to be careful about letting strangers into your home.” She realized that sounded prim and huffy, but being careful about strangers was something her dad had drilled into her when she left small-town Gold Hill in southern Oregon. “You didn’t answer my question about how long you’ve been painting.”
    “When I was a teenager back in Tennessee, my uncle had a construction business. I was dangerous with a hammer or saw, and a major menace with a jackhammer, but I did learn to paint. And I picked up a few skills with plumbing and roofing eventually.”
    How old was he now? Thirty, thirty-one, somewhere in there, she guessed. So he’d been painting quite awhile.