Free Murder Came Second by Jessica Thomas Page B

through Provincetown’s snail-paced traffic. One could hardly blame him, but my friend Marcia Robby—also understandably— was not pleased to find his ancient and large Oldsmobile sitting in the front room of her antique shop. It had been my pleasure, as well as my job, to expedite repairs and to find her a place to live while repairs were made. I picked Green Mansions. I figured that Peter and the Wolf, combined with their Victorian décor, would make a good blend. And I had been right, she loved it there.
    Marcia made out well with the repairs, with a lovely big bow window replacing the three small ones that had been knocked out, and an inviting new walkway with neat landscaping leading up to the door. The interior was much brighter and seemed more spacious. She had presented Peter and the Wolf with a giant, kitschy Victorian lamp as a thank-you for their hospitality, and they were delighted. And she had given me a lovely small round table, which now sat under our dining room windows, providing an intimate little dining table when Cindy and I felt privately formal.
    I was using it at the moment to fill out some forms for a couple of insurance cases I had just closed. They were both straightforward and basically dull, which suited me fine.
    One was at an older B&B, where a young woman claimed to have tripped on a frayed rug and taken a header down the stairs, managing to break both her leg and her wrist. She was, unfortunately for the insured and insurer, quite right. I took photos, sent them in with a report and warned the owners to make repairs in a hurry before someone else took to the air.
    The other one was more fun, for me, anyway. A man in his forties had been walking up the driveway of a house advertising homemade fudge for sale. He claimed to have fallen over a tricycle that was blocking the driveway, and that he hadn’t seen. He claimed a painfully sprained back. I told the owners over the phone to make sure no one moved the tricycle until I could get down there to take photos. The way I saw it, the bright red trike was parked mostly on the lawn with one lone back wheel on the driveway, not even knocked over and leaving room to drive a small truck easily around it. And it was broad daylight.
    I caught up with the victim coming out of X-ray at the hospital, clad only in one of those little hospital gowns, which he was trying simultaneously to pull down in the front and hold together in the rear. Well, don’t we all? I cannot imagine anyone being a hero in these circumstances. I flashed my private investigator’s license, my thumb carefully concealing the word private and gave him the bad news.
    The insurance company would pay for whatever medical care he had received up to this minute . . . period. If he elected not to sign a release but to pursue the matter, the company would probably go after him for all medical and legal costs, plus my fee. When I showed him the Polaroids of the tricycle’s location, he signed.
    I went back to give the good news to the owners, and they gave me a small box of fudge in return. That night, when Cindy asked me where the candy came from, I told her I’d taken it from a baby.
    This morning I sat idly adding items to a grocery list Cindy had given me at breakfast, and realized that suddenly it was almost the beginning of August, past the halfway mark in our Season, and still Cindy and I had not had that conversation. My talk with Mom about it had come back to me sharply only last night.
    During dinner, Cindy had mentioned that the bathroom and the kitchen were strongly in need of painting, but somehow she had sounded tentative, as if she weren’t sure she should bring it up. Like maybe she figured it was my house and she had no right to be telling me about the décor?
    I felt awful. Had I made her feel she wasn’t a full-time partner? What the hell was the matter with me that I’d rather go chasing alligators and the fraudulently injured than have a plain and simple