Free Death at the Wheel by Kate Flora Page B

said. "She lives down in Massachusetts but she's very jealous. I don't think it would be a good idea."
    Just the sound of his voice made me want to crawl into the phone and snuggle up next to his ear. "Seriously, folk," I said. "Will you be home if I arrive on your doorstep around five?"
    "Make it six and you've got a deal."
    "You're a hard man, Lemieux."
    "Especially when I think of you."
    Yeah, right, I thought, though my pulse rate seemed to be increasing. "What should I bring?"
    "I'll cook, you bring wine and clean underwear."
    "Clean underwear?"
    "Didn't your mother ever tell you...?"
    "More times than I can count. So I'm invited to spend the night?"
    "It would give me great pleasure."
    "I'll bet. Say, have you got any connections with the Connecticut State Police?"
    "Why? You got a ticket?"
    "Nope. Dead body."
    "Theadora... you aren't...."
    "No. No way. It's for one of Mom's friends. I just need to know how this guy died. The details of the accident, I mean. He was taking a racing course...."
    "You're not going to do anything stupid?"
    "That's why I'm calling you, honey, instead of putting on my cloak and dagger."
    He sighed. "Give me the basics and I'll see what I can do. And, Thea—"
    "Yes, sweetie?"
    "Don't do anything stupid."
    "You already said that."
    "Come live with me."
    "I'll think about it." I was just irritated enough to suggest that that was stupid, but every day in every way I'm getting better at keeping my mouth shut. Besides, when he isn't being overprotective, he's a great companion. And in this case, he'd argue his concern wasn't overprotection, it was common sense. We shared some intimate details about what we planned to do with each other on the morrow and disconnected. I had a fatuous grin on my face, but what the heck. I was alone.
    I tried calling the number Sherry DuBose had given me for Rita, but the woman I reached was hysterical. She mumbled something about an angry call from Eliot Ramsay and papers missing from the files and being fired and hung up on me.
    I was deeply immersed in the trials of a bunch of homicide detectives when my mother called. She rambled on for a while about trying to locate Julie's friends and how difficult it seemed to be before she delivered her bombshell.
    "I heard a terrible thing from Mrs. Pulsifer today, that nasty old gossip." My mother might call Mrs. Pulsifer nasty, but she was the source of all my mother's rumors. "She says the talk at the hospital is that Dr. Durren was having an affair with Julie Bass, and that he's the father of her younger child."
    "Who is Dr. Durren?"
    "Oh, I forget you don't live here anymore. Dr. Thomas Durren. He's the ER physician over at the hospital. Isn't it dreadful what people will say about you when you're down? They were just as horrid about your sister, Carrie. At least you haven't done anything to be gossiped about. At least not here in Grantham." There was an implied "yet" at the end of the sentence.

 
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    Chapter 7

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    Wednesday dawned clear and cool. I carried my coffee out onto the deck and listened to the waves and the shriek of gulls and inhaled the salty tang of the air. It was one of those days when it felt good to be alive. I didn't even mind that I had a long drive ahead of me, midway up New Hampshire on the Maine-New Hampshire border, to the Northbrook School. It was good driving weather.
    I was meeting with the headmaster and his trustees at eleven to discuss a marketing study. Like many of our client schools, Northbrook was doing all right but getting nervous about their market niche. I wasn't nervous. I'd been through these meetings so many times now that there were few surprises. But it was all new to them, and in their honor I was wearing my most conservative consultant gear—navy suit with an executive blouse, plain jewelry, and shoes with only a suggestion of a heel. My independent hair was trying to pull loose from its confining barrette, but the barrette, like me, was tough and