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Back We Were Killers Once Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty–one
  25. Twenty–two
  26. Twenty–three
  27. Twenty–four
  28. Twenty–five
  29. Twenty–six
  30. Twenty–seven
  31. Twenty–eight
  32. Twenty–nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty–one
  35. Thirty–two
  36. Thirty–three
  37. Thirty–four
  38. Thirty–five
  39. Thirty–six
  40. Thirty–seven
  41. Thirty–eight
  42. Thirty–nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty–one
  45. Forty–two
  46. Forty–three
  47. Forty–four
  48. Forty–five
  49. Forty–six
  50. Forty–seven
  51. Forty–eight
  52. Forty–nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty–one
  55. Fifty–two
  56. Fifty–three
  57. Fifty–four
  58. Fifty–five
  59. Fifty–six
  60. Fifty–seven
  61. Author’s Note
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. Also by Becky Masterman
  64. About the Author
  65. Newsletter Sign-up

You want me to confess? Okay, God’s honest truth. Of course, yes, I was going to Sarasota to see what I could dig up on Jeremiah Beaufort. And while I was there I’d talk to Meadows, too, about him and his investigations into Hickock’s and Smith’s DNA. But I also needed to get away for a bit, to wrangle my feelings for Carlo.

I need to be perfectly clear here, and forgive me if I’m repeating myself but that’s post-menopause for you. It wasn’t Carlo leaving the priesthood that stuck in my craw. It wasn’t even about him boffing Jane; I wouldn’t care if he’d done it in one of the church’s pews. I’m not a self-righteous prude. This was sheer jealousy over another woman, didn’t matter whether she was living or dead. Why oh why couldn’t it have ended in divorce rather than death. I would have felt better. Jealousy, simple but hardly pure.

I thought about this. Okay, I didn’t just think, I obsessed about it, and wished there was someone I could talk to about girl stuff. A female friend? I had one once but that hadn’t worked out so well.

Sigmund? He wasn’t so good at relationships himself. Plus I knew him well enough that I knew what he would say if I told him I was feeling like a second-string wife. What he would tell me:

Try not to think about it.

The stinking fact that was smacking me in the face like a rotting mackerel was that if I couldn’t talk to Carlo about something, I was pretty much alone.

But then I realized I had been alone for most of my life. I didn’t need anybody.

Instead, I focused on things that couldn’t threaten the equilibrium of my marriage. “I want to draw out Beaufort, and I’m trying to decide if it’s better to tip my hand and let him know I’m going to be in that area ‘asking some questions,’ or whether it’s wiser to go first, see what I find out, and then surprise him,” I said.

“That’s your expertise,” Carlo said. He seemed to have lost interest.

It was the afternoon before my trip to Sarasota, and I had an early flight the next morning. I made a decent dinner, chili, something I could count on because I’d made it before. But something drove me to do things I hadn’t tried since the earlier days of our marriage. I opened one of Jane’s cookbooks that were usually out of sight in one of the kitchen cupboards, and rather than choose something at random, I paged through until I found a page with a spot on it. Something she had made for Carlo, I was sure of it. Strawberries in a meringue cloud.