His Partner's Wife by Janice Kay Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

"What about you? Antique jewelry Stuart might have bragged
to someone else about?"
    Again she shook her head hopelessly. "The closest thing
to a valuable antique that I have is a set of early Nancy Drew mysteries. I
can't imagine that your drug dealer wanted The Secret of the Old Clock."
    "That does seem unlikely," he admitted.
    "Besides," she pointed out, "Stuart and I
hadn't even met five years ago. So they couldn't have chatted about my
collection of Nancy Drew. And how would they have run into each other since, if
this guy didn't get out of prison until after Stuart was dead?"
    "True enough." He rubbed the back of his neck.
"I'm groping here, Natalie."
    She nodded, understanding. It was a form of brainstorming,
like sessions they had at the paper.
    "What will you do next?" she asked.
    "Talk to Floyd's friends or relatives. I'm heading for Tacoma this morning to tell his parents about his death and find out whether they knew a
damn thing about what he was up to. Hell, maybe he wrote them letters about how
he intended to rifle Det. Stuart Reed's house when he was released. And, oh,
yeah, his buddy Bill Doe wanted to help. We should be so lucky."
    She nodded.
    "Then we'll wait for fingerprint ID," he
continued. "Take a harder look at your house." His tone changed, his
eyes softened. "I'm sorry, Natalie. We need to see if we can find
something Floyd might have been looking for."
    "I understand." Strangely, the idea of him
searching her possessions wasn't all that disturbing. She had always found him
a comfortable man.
    If she had been more self-conscious around him yesterday and
today, it was hardly surprising. Their roles had shifted; his job required him
to consider even her as a suspect.
    And somehow here in John's home, she was discovering
tensions she hadn't known existed. He clearly harbored some resentment
concerning his mother, for example. His protectiveness toward his children had
seemed both natural and misplaced—except that she didn't know why he was still
angry at his mother. Once she would have said she could ask him anything, but
the guard he'd snapped into place when she asked made her realize their
friendship had been more superficial than she'd realized. There was so much
about the inner man she didn't know. And so much about herself she had never
told him, including a biggie, considering he had been Stuart's friend first. He
had assumed her marriage was completely happy, Natalie knew, and she had never
disabused him.
    She came back to the present to realize that he was looking
at her strangely. Had she been staring? Had he said something?
    Rushing into speech to fill what must have been a peculiar
silence, she argued, "But mightn't the murderer have taken whatever it
was?"
    He grimaced. "Unfortunately, that's a possibility, too.
But what the hell could it have been?" Now he sounded frustrated.
"You've surely looked through the records Stuart left. The files in the
desk seemed orderly and totally uninteresting to anyone else. None of the boxes
in the closet had been ripped open. Your place wasn't ransacked. Had anything been
disturbed that you noticed?"
    "No." She pressed her lips together. "It was
strange, wasn't it? The house seemed so normal. Untouched. Only, there was this
dead man upstairs. It would almost have been easier if the house had been
tossed. You know?"
    "Violence should spread ripples," he said
unexpectedly.
    She blinked. "Yes. Exactly."
    "I need to be on my way." He didn't move.
"What are your plans today?"
    "I hadn't thought yet." She hesitated. "I
could watch your kids if that would free your mom to go home."
    His dark brows drew together. "I'm not going to use
you. You're a guest."
    Puzzled by the edge in his voice, Natalie said, "It's
nice of you to have me here, John, but it won't hurt me to help out a
little."
    "You always want to pay your way, don't you?"
    "Is that so bad?" she asked quietly.
    He got to his feet and looked down at her. "Just this
once," he said, almost harshly, "do