Free Love Kills by Edna Buchanan Page A

faces in group shots. Found one of her at bat in a softball game. He played football.
    Kendall McDonald and Kathleen Constance Riley, voted most glamorous couple, said the caption under a photo of them together.
    They wore the flirtatious electric glow of teenage sweethearts. I recognized the look. I’d seen it just hours ago in her office, in that fishing photo shot nearly two decades later.
    Under his picture it said Most likely to be found with Kathy. Beneath hers, Most likely to be found in Kendall’s convertible. I closed the book.
    My eyes flooded. How I envied all those years, all the history they had shared.
    I forgot the pizza, stuffed my miserable face with rugelach, brushed my teeth, and fell into bed. I stared at the ceiling and then tossed and turned, as dark shapes crept in between the sheets with me. Jumbled horrors I couldn’t quite recall ended in a flaming encore performance of my recurring dream. I woke up dazed and disoriented, a displaced person who didn’t belong here or anywhere.
    Without turning on the lights, I wandered outside with Bitsy and Billy and sat on a cold stone bench in the courtyard. The seductive scents of night-blooming jasmine, gardenias, and home filled the inky darkness before dawn. Home. My home. For how long? I wondered. Imagining this garden, this abode I loved, a denuded and barren construction site stung like a knife wound to my heart. Where will I go? I wondered. What can I do?
    I searched the sky for comfort, cat purring in my lap, little dog at my feet. Like people, earthbound landmarks age and disappear, despite our struggles to save them, I thought. Only the heavens remain constant.
    Venus, the morning star, rose in the northeast as I watched Aries the Ram pursue Pegasus, the winged horse, across the eastern sky. Eventually, familiar sounds returned me to earthly matters, the plop of morning papers hitting the ground.

COLD CASE SQUAD
    Â 
    MIAMI, FLORIDA
    â€œCould’ve knocked me over with a feather when she walked in here.” Corso grinned. “Who knew?”
    â€œNot Riley, that’s obvious,” Burch said. “See the look on her face? One look at that belly bump and she locked herself in her office. She was so hot to move on the York case, to find out what Montero knew, but she just turned around and closed her door.”
    â€œHave to hand it to Britt for coming back here. Took a lot of nerve,” Stone said quietly.
    â€œNobody ever said she didn’t have chutzpah,” Corso said. “Wonder what she and Riley talked about in there.”
    â€œDidn’t take long, whatever it was,” Burch said.
    â€œMcDonald sure had a way with the ladies,” Nazario said.
    â€œThe whole damn thing is awkward,” Burch said. “I’ve only seen that look on Riley’s face twice. The last time was when McDonald got killed. The other was way back when that dentist shotgunned his seven-year-old kid in the face to spite his ex-wife.
    â€œI drank for four straight days after that one myself. Couldn’t stop seeing it. When his father racked one into the chamber and aimed the gun at him, the kid was scared and covered his eyes with his hands. His little fingers wound up embedded in what was left of his face.”
    â€œUh-oh,” Nazario said.
    Riley had emerged from her office. “Did the reporter know anything?” she asked briskly.
    â€œNothing we didn’t already know,” Burch said. “She talked to York at the paper. He was alone, mentioned no names. His immediate plans were to find himself a cheap room and hit the law books. She didn’t think he’d run. He was high on publicity, couldn’t wait to play Perry Mason at his own trial. We’ll do a supplement.”
    The quiet Cuban-born detective is blessed with an uncanny talent invaluable to an investigator, even though it does not provide probable cause for arrest, or testimony admissible in court. His colleagues swear