Ron Base - Sanibel Sunset Detective 01 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective Read Free Page A

of Fredericka Stayner. Not that he believed in destiny—except where Freddie was concerned. That had to be destiny. It could be nothing else.
    Friends introduced them at a Gold Coast dinner party. She was a high-powered, hard-driving, department store executive, stunning in Ralph Lauren. As soon as Tree laid eyes on her, he wanted to marry her. That, Freddie said later, was part of his problem. Tree saw a car he liked, he wanted to marry it.
    They chatted over pompano and crunchy asparagus. She hadn’t seen the Matisse exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Had he? No, hadn’t had a chance. Was he even intending to go? he thought to himself. No, but what difference did that make? He suggested they meet the next afternoon. They could look at it together. She delivered what was to be one of many cool, green-eyed appraisals. Green is the rarest eye color, he thought inanely. Where had he read that? He held his breath. She nodded. Two o’clock? Two o’clock would be fine.
    He counted the moments until he met her on the steps of the Art Institute. They wandered together through the exhibit, not saying much. Matisse must have been in a particularly slap-dash and simple mood in the period following his return from Morocco but before heading off to the South of France, all the while bemoaning the work that went into his painting. Not only was comedy hard, but according to the never-happy Matisse, so was painting.
    Tree marveled at how self-contained Matisse was. His art was all, nothing else existed, not even the world war in progress down the road from his Paris studio. It never seemed to occur to Matisse that the public might not care for his images. What difference did that make? No focus groups in Matisse’s world, Tree observed. Freddie laughed and said she didn’t much care for this part of Matisse.
    They wandered down to American Art Before 1900. Unlike the Matisse exhibit, which was so crowded people jostled for position in front of the paintings, here they were alone except for a bored-looking guard, and even he disappeared after a few minutes.
    Nobody gave a hoot about American art before 1900, Tree supposed. Not even for Frederic Remington’s stuff which Tree loved because Remington evoked the John Ford westerns he grew up with. Westerns? Freddie groaned. She hated westerns. Who even thought about westerns these days? Tree was willing to forgive her that particular shortcoming. He was willing to forgive her anything. They kissed in front of Remington’s “End of the Trail” bronze. Tree kept an eye on the lone Indian warrior astride his horse, head bowed in defeat. Today, he was the warrior victorious, if only briefly. After that, they couldn’t stop kissing. They had been kissing ever since.
    Freddie had been married twice before. The starter marriage was packaged with all the traditional trimmings: the bride in white, the bridesmaids in pink; the groom and best man in baby-blue tuxedos; the band at the Palmer House reception with featured accordions playing “Welcome to My World.” The new husband got too drunk on the wedding night to do anything but throw up in the bridal suite.
    The second marriage, as second marriages tend to be, was more serious business. The guy was ten years older, well-to-do, with boutique hotels in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. They had a daughter together, Emma. Glenn—that was number two’s name—was a controlling drunk who, when things didn’t go his way, threatened to kill his wife. Freddie could never be sure if he was serious, but she wasn’t taking any chances and got out of the marriage, taking Emma with her.
    Tree had to work on Freddie, behave himself in ways he had never before behaved, court her properly, show up when he said he would. None of that was a problem. All the things he could never achieve in his other relationships, were achieved effortlessly with Freddie.
    She finally agreed to marry him, commenting that the last thing she expected was to marry