Safe at Home Read Free

crime-fighting schedule.”
    “Don’t, Kate, please,” he said, putting his arms around me and drawing me close. I kept my hands at my sides and turned my head away from his mouth.
    “This isn’t going to work,” I said.
    He sighed, let me go, and turned for the door.
    “I hope you’re wrong,” he said, “but I haven’t got time to discuss it now. I’ll call you when I can.”
    He shut the door quietly behind him, and I listened to his footsteps going down the stairs. I lit a cigarette and went to the front window. He was pacing on the sidewalk in front of the house. I almost went down to him to make it up, but his ride arrived before I could. As the car pulled away, his face turned towards my window.
    I was suddenly very tired. I put the champagne back into the fridge with a silver spoon, handle down, in the mouth of the bottle. That’s supposed to keep the bubbles. I’d never had enough left in a bottle to test the theory before.
    I washed the glasses, turned out the lights and got my comforting blue flannel nightie out of the bottom drawer. Satin sheets are cold to sleep in alone.
    Before I turned out the light, I whistled for Elwy. He came to the door, looked at me, and padded pointedly away.
    Welcome home, Kate.

Chapter 3
    It was almost dawn when Andy came back. I didn’t hear him. He was just suddenly there, with his arms around me and his whiskers scratching my neck. We had a spectacular reconciliation. I fell asleep again with tears on my cheeks. Not all of them were mine.
    When I woke up a few hours later, I found myself among friends. Elwy was on one side of me, purring in his sleep. Andy was on the other, snoring. I extricated myself gently, found my nightie, and went to the kitchen. It was still early, but I felt too cheerful to waste the morning in bed.
    I put on the kettle and went down for the papers. There was nothing about the latest murder, which had been discovered after the morning edition deadline, but the 7:00 CBC Radio news led with it.
    The victim was an eleven-year-old Chinese boy. His nude body had been found in an empty warehouse. Like the first two victims, he had been raped. A police spokesman—Andy, presumably—had not ruled out any connection with the murders of the two other children.
    Elwy, who can hear the tiniest of kitchen sounds from the deepest sleep, was butting my ankles and demanding food before the tea had steeped, but Andy didn’t stir until I’d finished my second cup. When I heard him in the shower, I started his coffee.
    By the time he emerged, wrapped in a towel, looking damp, groggy, and sexy, I had his cup poured, complete with a revolting three sugars. He mumbled his thanks, directed a kiss somewhere in the vicinity of my right ear and took the paper to the kitchen table.
    “Breakfast?” We’re seldom temperamentally compatible in the mornings. Because I was one hour and two cups of tea up on him, I was the brighter, for a change.
    “Maybe in a minute,” he said, blowing on his coffee to cool it enough to drink.
    There was no point trying for conversation. I took my good spirits into the shower. When I got out, Andy was up to speed.
    “Did you leave any hot water for me to shave?”
    “About as much as you left me to shower,” I said. “Wait twenty minutes and it will be fine.”
    “I haven’t got twenty minutes,” he said, wiping steam from the mirror. “You should have woken me earlier.”
    “Not my job, chief.”
    I went and poured another cup of tea, my own blend of Irish Breakfast and Earl Grey, ambrosia after the teabag slop from metal pots I’d been suffering in American hotels. I took it back and perched on the edge of the tub to watch him shave.
    “Another little boy, eh? Is it the same guy?”
    “It looks like it,” he said, through the lather, then paused and looked at me in the mirror.
    “Normal rules, right?”
    “Of course.”
    One way we’ve been able to get along as a couple has been to keep our conversations off the