Gloria stumbled and bumbled her way around the words. “It’s just … I saw … you know … every man does…”

He rolled the desk chair back between them, facing her. “Sit down,” he said.

She sat. He turned the chair around so it faced the computer, and stood behind her. “Show me how you know.”

She pointed to a group of boxes underneath the Google search line. Macy’s, one of the squares said. And there was Pompano Park where he was just looking. And Weather Channel. And Movie Tickets. And YouTube. And Facebook. And Sexy Girls. He had never noticed this before.

“See? It’s okay. It’s not like you were looking at children, or violence.” She turned to look up at him with a tone that was meant to encourage. “You’re just a red-blooded American male,” she said, and turned the chair slightly to nuzzle his crotch, which was at about cheek level. “They all do it.”

“So you looked at what I was looking at?”

“I just—”

“What do you do, click the cursor on that box and it takes you there?”

“Well yes, I—”

Jerry put his hands on her upper arms, which was more a gesture of get-out-of-my-chair than let’s-have-sex. There was no mistaking one for the other as he added, “Go to bed, honey.”

“But. Are you upset that I looked at your sites?”

His hands tightened, allowing no opposition. “Just go to bed. I’ll be there in a while.”

“But tell me you’re not angry at me,” she all but whimpered.

“If you insist, I’ve got this thing about people snooping around, watching what I do. I guess your life coach would call it a hot button. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He was tempted to say you certainly are, but refrained. She stood, more like heaved herself out of the desk chair, and dragged herself into the bedroom without looking at him. He was happy for a moment, thinking how much more manageable Gloria was than the priest’s wife.

When the bedroom light went out he went into the kitchen. From the cabinet under the counter next to the stove he took a bottle of bourbon from Gloria’s liquor stash and poured himself just a couple of fingers. He’d have to have sex with Gloria one of these days, he thought, but for the time being her wanting it would keep her in line better than satisfying her.

As for her being able to snoop on what he was doing on her computer, he realized he would have to be more careful, go down to the library to use their computers for his continued monitoring of Meadows’s progress on the Walker case. Close one.