Walking Into Murder by Joan Dahr Lambert Read Free Book Online

office.
    Coffee was served and Angelina passed the petit fours, taking care to eat one every time she offered the box to someone else. No one seemed to notice except Lottie, who looked too sick and miserable to object and finally excused herself, with many repetitious apologies, to go lie down.
    As if by unspoken agreement, no one in the family raised the subject that was uppermost in their minds: Lottie and her miraculous recovery. Laura suspected that the Baroness wouldn’t ask for explanations until her guests had retired for the night.
    She was right. “I am sure our guests must be tired,” the Baroness said, rising to her feet. Laura took the hint and stood up too.
    “Thank you for the dinner, Baroness Smythington,” she said politely. “Good night, everyone.”
    “You go first, darling, and use the bath,” Thomas suggested. “I’ll have a quick look at the weather and be right behind you.”
    Laura heard him saying his good nights as she headed down the hall. When he opened the front door to look outside, she heard thunder. Great, she told herself, an even wilder storm as well as everything else.
    Exhaustion hit the moment she looked at her bed. It was covered with a thick duvet encased in ivory fabric with tiny blue flowers, and soft pillows with the same pattern invited her to rest her weary head. Laura resisted until she had brushed her teeth and found a nightgown. Then she tumbled under the covers and closed her eyes.
    Perversely, sleep wouldn’t come. It often didn’t. Being alone at night was the worst part of being single. She’d become accustomed to a warm body beside her in the bed, even one who had long ago lost his appeal. Why had she married Donald anyway? Sex, she supposed. That was how the species kept going. The impulse to mate was as strong today as it had been thousands of years ago. It kept going even after the job of child-bearing was over. She often wished it didn’t. That empty ache never went away.
    Her mind moved on to the day’s events and then drifted to her children. Both were young adults now, but they still worried her. Donald’s defection had come at a terrible time. She had just started a demanding new job; Melinda had decided to get married despite multiple reservations about that patriarchal institution – now unpleasantly confirmed by her father. Mark had been in the sullen throes of adolescent rebellion and had refused to talk about anything. He had seemed most comfortable with Patti, which was hard to take, as were the sympathetic glances from faculty members who assumed that Laura had been ignominiously dumped. In fact, she had intended to ask Donald for a divorce as soon as Mark was a little older and had calmed down, but Donald had stolen her fire. That was what rankled most of all. That and the fact that he had gone straight to Patti’s after his perfidious announcement and stayed out of sight for weeks, leaving her to pay for the infamous dinner.
    Laura grinned, remembering her revenge. She had come home from that dinner in a rage so fierce that she had taken every article of Donald’s clothing she could find and tossed each piece triumphantly out the window into the pouring rain. The sight of his soggy trousers, his shirts, socks, ties, shoes and underwear hanging limply from bushes and trees had thrilled her.
    Donald had picked it all up the next day and gone back to Patti, oblivious both to her distress and to his children’s. Melinda opined that he had vanished into the self-absorbed state known as male menopause, which compelled middle-aged men to prove their manhood and show off to their friends by nabbing a sexy young wife. Laura wasn’t so sure. Donald had never been all that interested in sex. In her opinion, what he had wanted was an orderly life and a housewife who would uncomplainingly keep it that way. Patti seemed born for the role.
    Pounding her pillow into a more comfortable position, Laura pushed all thoughts of Donald and her children out of