“Point taken,” I said, laughing. “Have you had lunch? Because if you haven’t, I could buy you a late one to make up for my regrettable assumption of traditional gender roles.” I’d eaten my peanut butter and jelly hours ago, and there was no reason I couldn’t eat a little something.

Tabitha looked at her wristwatch. “I had lunch at noon, but I wouldn’t mind a little snack.”

“Where have you been all my life?” I asked. “Okay, that was kind of a joke, but honestly, why haven’t we met until now?”

“Because while my husband is many things, he isn’t stupid. He knows the two of us would double-team him and ruin his life.”

I was pretty sure she was joking. At least I hoped she was joking. “Um, speaking of Hal,” I said. “The other day when I stopped in to talk to Ash about all this, I got the feeling that he was doing most of this investigation on his own. Is your husband working on something else?”

She laughed, but not in a way that sounded like she thought anything was actually funny. “You’re asking the wrong person, Minnie, remember? He does not talk to me about his work. At all.”

“I suppose,” I said slowly, trying to understand, “that he wants to leave all the violence and trouble and darkness behind him when he walks out of the office. That talking to you about it would bring it home. That making a kind of mental wall between home and work is his way to keep the two worlds from merging.”

“That’s one way to look at it.” Tabitha nodded toward Corner Coffee, a new place in town, which served an amazing coffee/muffin combination, and we headed in that direction. “The other way is he has created a barrier between us. An impermeable wall that might have come down when we moved to Chilson, but instead has grown higher, wider, and stronger.”

Finally I understood what was going on. When the Inwoods had moved north after Hal had retired from his big-city detective job, Tabitha had hoped for a change in their relationship, a change that hadn’t happened.

I suddenly wondered how much Hal and Tabitha had discussed his potential employment with the Tonedagana County Sheriff’s Office before he’d sent in his application. And, just as suddenly, I decided I would never ask.

“Say, isn’t that Drew what’s his name?” Tabitha asked, looking through the glass door of the coffee shop.

I was reaching in front of her for the door handle and paused to peer inside. Chilson’s city manager was indeed sitting at a table. He was in the far corner, frowning fiercely at a laptop computer and drumming his fingers on the table.

“Opportunity is presenting itself,” Tabitha said.

“It is indeed. But we should have a plan.”

“Planning is for sissies.” Tabitha smiled broadly.