A Welcome Grave Read Free Page A

ex-wives.
    “Good to see you, Karen,” I said.
    “So good,” she said and stepped forward to embrace me. I remembered the fit of her body perfectly—the top of her shoulders sliding just beneath the rise of mine, her chin slipping alongside the bottom of my neck. Her hair smelled different, though. Expensive perfume where the hint of apples from some cheap shampoo belonged.
    She pulled away but kept her hands on my biceps. “Thank you for coming. I understand—really, I do—that you don’t want to be here. But I need to talk to you about something. I
have
to talk to you about something.”
    “Okay.”
    “Come in.” Her eyes dropped to the flowers I was still holding. “Oh, Lincoln, thank you. You didn’t need to—”
    “I didn’t. They were at the door.”
    “Oh.” She let go of my arms, took the flowers, and led me inside. The front door opened into a wide entryway with a clear view of the lower level of the house—blond wood, white trim, more windows than I’d ever seen in a house before. I followed her past a room on my left that was filled with books—none of the spines cracked—and a room on my right with a desk and a fireplace that might have been used as an office by someone who actually worked at home but instead had the look of a showroom. Hell, the whole house had that look. When we went past the kitchen and into the living room, I noted that there wasn’t so much as a juice glass on the counter or a salt shaker on the table. Everything felt sterile, as if it had been thrown together for a photo shoot. Flowers and cards had been delivered by the dozens, but I saw as we passed that all of them had been placed in another room on our right, tastefully arranged around a piano.
    Karen moved into a living room at the rear of the house and sat on a walnut-colored leather chair with her back to the row of windows looking out on theyard. I settled into a matching couch across from it and sank about a foot into the damn thing.
    “Comfortable,” I said, wondering if anyone had ever actually sat on it before.
    She didn’t say anything, just sat and stared at me. She looked more tired than I’d ever seen her, more tired than I would’ve imagined a woman with her energy and life ever could. Beautiful, yes, but tired in a way that came from deep within. Better than her husband, though.
    “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.
    “No.” I didn’t bother to mention that it wasn’t even eleven. She’d already lifted a glass of wine from the table beside her.
    “My nerves are shot,” she said, following my look. “It keeps me calm.”
    “Sure.”
    She sipped it, and it was so early for wine that I felt like I should look away, as if she were changing clothes across from me instead of taking a drink.
    “Are you alone here?” I asked.
    “My family just left. My mother isn’t well.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “About the police,” she said, but I interrupted.
    “You already apologized, and there was no need for it then. They’re just doing their job as well as they know how to do it, Karen. I would have been more surprised if they
hadn’t
come to see me when your husband was murdered.”
    The word made her wince. She lifted the glass to her lips, had it in her hand when the phone rang, a long, shrill chirp. She jerked at the sound, not a slight motion but a violent one, and the glass fell from her hand and shattered on the pale wood floor. The wine pooled, then found the cracks between the boards and ran down them, toward the stone ledge in front of the fireplace.
    There was a phone on the table beside me. I picked up the handset and leaned forward, offering it to her. She pushed back into her chair, eyes wide, and held her hand out as if she were warding the phone off.
    “No. Not now, please.”
    I gave her a long look, still with the phone outstretched, before dropping the handset back on its base. One ring later, it went silent, and only then did she pick up the stem of