The Homecoming Read Free Page B

better.”
    “You think?”
    “I do. Give it an hour. By then Marty Coors and Boonie Hackendorff will have talked it over. The picture will be clearer.”
    Nick took the advice.
    It was a call he didn’t want to make at all.
    “Okay. Good advice. Well, I’m gone.”
    “What are you gonna do?”
    “Go see Edgar Luckinbaugh at the Marriott.”
    “Take him a box of Krispy Kremes. The honey-glazed ones. He loves them.”

Love May Be Blind, but a Few Years of Marriage Will Fix That
    While Beau Norlett and Nick Kavanaugh were cruising over to the Marriott, Nick’s wife, Kate, and her sister, Beth, were sitting in the glassed-in conservatory at the back of Kate’s town house in Garrison Hills, a neighborhood of antebellum Spanish Colonial town homes with wrought-iron galleries and cloistered gardens. It was a pretty spring morning and they were alone. Beth’s two kids, Axel and Hannah, eight and four, were sound asleep in one of the guest bedrooms.
    Through the leaded glass of the sunroom Kate’s garden, a grassy slope which led down to a stand of pines and willows, was bright with marigolds and hydrangeas and roses. A soft dappled light played on the windows and the lawn, and on Beth’s drawn and weary face.
    Although Beth was only four years older than Kate, and had the same kind of pale skin and fine-boned Black Irish features, her expression hadhardened in the last few years and her eyes were wary and guarded. Kate was having an iced tea, but Beth was well into her fourth scotch and rocks. Her long red hair hung limply down her pale cheeks as she stared into the heavy crystal glass, gripping it so hard her fingers were white.
    “It started with the air-conditioning—”
    “The fight?”
    Beth gave Kate a wry smile.
    “Not much of a fight. He’s got a hundred and fifty pounds on me. The house was hot, the kids were whining, and Byron was all in a lather about something that happened at work. Something connected to that awful bank robbery on Friday.”
    “Did he say what?”
    “Only that the robbers got away with all of the payroll draw for everybody at Quantum Park, that it was all Thad Llewellyn’s fault, and since BD Securicom was responsible for security at Quantum Park he was going to get a lot of heat for it. I tried to tell him that wasn’t true, but he wasn’t going to hear it. He said I didn’t know what the bleep I was talking about and I never bleeping did, so how about I just shut the bleep up.”
    “In front of Axel and Hannah?”
    “No. They were in their rooms. But I’m sure they heard. When Byron goes off, I think they can hear him in Cap City. It wasn’t anything the kids hadn’t heard before.”
    “But last night was different?”
    Beth sighed, took a sip of scotch.
    “Not different. It was just, suddenly,
enough
. Maybe it was the heat. I just didn’t feel like trying to calm him down anymore.”
    “He hit you.”
    Not a question.
    Beth nodded.
    “Not the first time. But I think perhaps the last.”
    “Beth, do you have money of your own?”
    Beth nodded, not looking up.
    “Where is it, Beth? Because if Byron really believes you’re not going back, he’s the type of man who would drain the accounts and hide the assets.”
    Beth looked up at Kate.
    Her eyes were greener than Kate’s, and with the tears, they shone like emeralds. She had a fresh bruise along her left cheekbone, a raw purpleand green stain with a deep bloody scratch in the middle. From his FBI ring, Beth had explained, while Kate was dressing it.
    “Do you think he would? Really? What about the kids?”
    “Beth, I’m a lawyer in family practice. It happens all the time. I just wrapped up a case on Friday, a horrid creep named Tony Bock. He spent a year tormenting his ex-wife and—”
    “Tony Bock?”
    “Yes. Why? Do you know him?”
    Beth was looking a little shocked.
    “Well, in a way. The reason Byron was so cranky last night was because the air-conditioning had gone on the blink. NUC sent out a guy