Free Third Strike by Zoe Sharp Page A

the worst of me.”
    “O-kay,” Parker said, more of a drawl. “But if we disregard the possibility—for the moment, anyhow—that he’s gone totally off the rails, what makes you think this would have anything to do with your mother?”
    “Because, despite Bill’s skepticism, he’s always done everything he can to shelter her—from unpleasantness, from bad news, from blame. From life, come to that.”
    Parker frowned at the bitterness evident in my voice. “So, let me get this straight,” he said. “He’s confessed that he’s a drunk and a liar. And now, from what you’ve said, he couldn’t wait to get himself caught with a hooker. How is that protecting his wife?”
    “It could only be,” Sean murmured, “because he was afraid of something worse.”
    I snapped back into the here and now. “I need a phone,” I said, aware of the hollowness in my voice.
    Parker stared at me for a moment longer, then nodded to Bill, who sighed heavily but kept his continuing disgust to himself. He plugged a handset into the conference-call system that was a permanent fixture in the center of the table. It was clear from the way he practically threw the handset at me that he didn’t think much of Parker humoring us like this.
    I checked my watch and ran through the mental calculations. New York was five hours behind the UK. It was a little before one in the afternoon here, which meant it was nearly six in the evening back home.
    I dialed the number. As I listened to the line play out at the other end, I realized, on how few occasions I’d bothered to phone home.
    Sean leaned across and punched the button for the speaker. When I glanced at him, he merely said, “This I have to hear.”
    It took my mother a long time to answer. When she finally did, she gave her usual telephone greeting sounding strained to breaking point, as though under some unbearable pressure.
    No change from normal there, then.
    “Hello, Mother,” I said. “It’s me.”
    There was a long pause. Sean’s eyes flicked to mine and I saw his eyebrow quirk. It shouldn’t have been a trick question.
    “Darling … how lovely to hear from you,” she said at last, with that false brightness she always employed when speaking to her only daughter. “How are you? How’s your poor leg coming along?”
    The second bullet I’d taken had hit my back high up around my shoulder blade and had ended up planted somewhere in my right lung, which had then collapsed. My heart, so they’d told me, had temporarily stopped at the scene but I don’t remember too much about that.
    During the early stages of my recovery I’d had mobility problems with my right arm and hand. At the time, it had seemed that the through-and-through wound to my leg was minor by comparison, but it had proved to have longer-lasting effects, and now that was the part everyone focused on. My mother was no exception.
    “The leg’s fine,” I said, which was mostly true. “I’m fine.” I suppose that was mostly true, also.
    “Oh. Good,” she said. Another pause before a splintered little laugh. “Was there anything in particular you wanted, darling, only I’m rather in the middle of something right now. It’s the church fête next week and I’m making a batch of treacle tarts.”
    I could picture her, a blur of high-tension activity, in the tall kitchen of their Georgian house in the expensive part of Cheshire. She’d cajoled and bullied and eventually worn down my father into having a Smallbone of Devizes custom kitchen installed about ten years previously. I’d been in my teens but I could still remember the chaos and excitement of the transformation from 1950s ugliness to an expanse of blue pearl granite worktops and limed-oak cabinets under an array of halogen spots.
    She ruled her sparkling domain like the most temperamental celebrity chef, creating wonderful dishes that seemed to drive her so close to the brink of nervous exhaustion to produce, it took away the pleasure of