4th of July (Women's Murder Club 4)

Carolee clapped her hands together, laughing gaily.

“Give Lindsay a break,” she said. “Let the poor woman eat her dinner. She’s our guest, not something for you to devour along with your food.”

As she got up to bring a liter of cola from the sideboard, Carolee put her hand on my shoulder and leaned down to say, “Do you mind? They love you.”

“I love them, too.”

When the dishes were cleared and the children had gone upstairs for their study hour, Carolee and I took our coffee mugs out to the screened-in porch facing the playground. We sat in matching rockers and listened to the crickets singing in the darkening night. It was good to have a friend in town, and I felt especially close to Carolee that night.

“Any news on whoever shot up Cat’s house?” Carolee asked, concern edging into her voice.

“Nope. But you remember that guy we had a run-in with at the Cormorant?”

“Dennis Agnew?”

“Yeah. He’s been harassing me, Carolee. And the chief isn’t making a secret of the fact that he likes Agnew for the murders.”

Carolee looked surprised, even shocked. “Really? I’m having a hard time imagining that. I mean, he’s a creep, all right,” she said, pausing. “But I don’t see him as a murderer.”

“Just what they said about Jeffrey Dahmer.” I laughed.

Then I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair; Carolee crossed her arms over her chest, and I imagined we’d both gone inside our heads to think about killers in the wind.

“It’s pretty quiet here, huh?” said Carolee at last.

“Remarkably. I love it.”

“Hurry up and catch that maniac, okay?”

“Listen, if you ever get nervous about anything, Carolee—even if you think it’s just your imagination—call nine-one-one. Then call me.”

“Sure, thanks. I will.” After a moment of silence, Carolee said, “They always get caught eventually, don’t they, Lindsay?”

“Almost always,” I answered, though that wasn’t exactly the truth. The really smart ones not only didn’t get caught, they weren’t even noticed.

Chapter 126r />

I HAD A ROUGH night’s sleep, riding my nightmares on a steeplechase of drive-by shootings and whipped corpses and faceless killers with no names. I awoke to a dismal, gray morning, the kind that makes you want to stay in bed.

But Martha and I needed exercise, so I dressed in my blue tracksuit, tucked my gun into its shoulder holster, and put my cell phone in the pocket of my denim jacket.

Then Sweet Martha and I took off to the beach.

Thunderheads were moving in from the west, bringing the sky so low to the bay that seabirds coasting through the clouds looked like airships in newsreels about the Second World War.

I noticed a few hardy souls jogging or meandering far ahead and behind us, so I let Martha off her lead. She trotted after a little flock of plovers, making them scatter, and I headed south at a moderate clip.

I’d only gone about a quarter of a mile when the rain started to fall. Soon, the intermittent drops thickened, pockmarking the sand and firming my running surface.

I turned to check on Martha, running backward long enough to see that she was right behind a man in a hooded yellow slicker, maybe a hundred yards back.

I put my face into the slanting rain and was hitting my stride when Martha’s yipping bark grabbed my attention. She was nipping at the heels of the guy behind me. She was herding him!

“Martha,” I shouted, “that’ll do.”

That was the command to return to my side, but Martha totally ignored me. Instead, she drove the guy at a right angle away from me, uphill toward the grassy tops of the dunes.

That’s when I realized that Martha wasn’t fooling around with him. She was protecting me.