A Welcome Grave

Lincoln.”

I said goodbye and walked back out to the street, unlocked my truck, climbed inside, and started the engine. Good luck. Same thing I’d said to Karen the previous night. Before I’d walked away and left her to deal with her problems on her own. Coincidence? Sure it was. Sure.

10

The day passed slowly. We had some work, but nothing that required a particularly high level of effort or thought. Computer jobs, mostly, a few skip traces and some property records research. I cut out at five, drove back to my building, changed clothes, and went down to the gym.

After an hour of work with the weights, I left and went for a run. October is one of my favorite months for running, the air cool enough to feel energizing but not cold enough to squeeze your lungs. I ran for about thirty minutes, across Rocky River Drive and down the hill into the park, then up to the bridge. I touched one of the iron arches on the bridge lightly with my hand, as I did every time I crossed it: a recognition of the time my partner almost died in the river beneath; a thank-you that he didn’t. I made it back to the gym with a good sweat going, breathing hard, and rounded the corner of the building to see Amy’s car in the parking lot.

I slowed to a walk, my heart thumping and chest heaving. I was happy to see her, but I was also immediately on edge, too. The last time I’d seen her she’d been angry—frustrated, at least—and we hadn’t spoken since.

She must have been watching the mirrors, because she opened the door and stepped out of the Acura before I reached it. She was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt over a white tank top, looking small and trim, as always. Looking good, as always.

“Hey,” I said. I’ve got a knack for slick opening lines.

“Hi.” She was holding a piece of paper in her hand, watching me with a frown. “Sounds like I made the right call passing on the Indiana trip, huh?”

“You talk to Joe?”

“No.”

“So what’ve you heard, then?”

“This.” She passed the paper to me. It was a printout with ASSOCIATED PRESS across the top. A dateline said “Morgantown, Ind.” There was no headline, but the lead sentence gave a clear idea of the article.

The only witness to a violent suicide near Morgantown Thursday night was a private investigator from Ohio who has ties to the victim’s recently murdered father.

I looked up at her, matched her frown. “Where’d you get this?”

“It’s on the wire, Lincoln. We’re running the story tomorrow.”

“What?”

She nodded. “I knew you’d be upset, but there’s no way I could talk my editor out of running this. Not with Jefferson’s murder being such big news. This reporter from Indiana must be in good with the cops down there, because she got a lot of information. Hell, suicides usually aren’t news, unless the victim was famous or an elected official or something. It’s one of the few areas where we media types have any respect for privacy.”

I groaned and read through the rest of the article as we stood there in the parking lot. Yes, some reporter from Indiana was in good with the cops, indeed. There weren’t any quotes, just a lot of generic “police said” attribution, but I knew the source had to be Brewer. The story named me and explained that I’d been detained overnight and cited for operating without an Indiana PI license, but that could have come from anyone in the department. The details about my relationship with Karen and my assault on her husband, though, reeked of Brewer’s personal touch.

“He probably asked her to make sure the AP spread it around.” I crumpled the paper. “He wants me to feel the heat. The asshole actually thinks I’m involved in this.”

“What asshole?”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, I’ve got to catch you up on all of it, I guess. Let’s go inside.”

We went up to my apartment, and I told her what had happened while I drank a bottle of water, leaning against the wall while she sat on the couch. She listened with interest, but she was too quiet, offering no questions when usually I would’ve had to shut her up just to finish my story.

“You mind if I take a shower real quick?” I said when I was done. The sweat from my workout and run was drying, and I wanted to get cleaned up and into fresh clothes.

“Go ahead.”

I went. When I came back, she was still on the couch. The television was on with the volume turned off, but she wasn’t watching it, choosing instead to stare at the wall.

I walked over to the couch, but there was an aura there, a kind of pulsing defense field that told me I probably shouldn’t sit down right beside her. Instead, I sat on the floor and put my back against the couch, tilted my head so I could see her face.

“You all right?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I probably owe you an apology, though. I needed to let some things out the other day, but I don’t know if I went about it in the right way.”

“It’s okay, Amy.”

She shrugged but didn’t say anything else.

“You need to say what’s on your mind, when it’s on your mind,” I said. “That’s the only way to live, Ace.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why don’t I ever know what’s on your mind?”

“Because I’m a shallow, stupid man. Nothing’s ever there.”

She laughed. “Good argument.”

It was quiet for a minute. I wondered if she was hoping I’d take the lead, direct things back to the conversation she’d started in the parking lot the morning I’d left for Indiana. I didn’t say anything, though. If there’s one thing I’m worse at than handling a relationship, it’s discussing a relationship. A conversationalist who doesn’t want to converse about the real important things. So what did that make me? A shallow, stupid man? Uh-oh, maybe I hadn’t been joking.

“Rough couple of days for you,” Amy said then, probably just to fill the silence.

“Oh, yeah.” I sat with my head down and took a long, deep breath. It had been a hell of a couple of days, at that.

She reached down to me, her cool fingers sliding across my neck, and began to massage the spot where my upper back muscles joined my neck muscles. I sighed gratefully and tilted my head back and to the side, feeling tension drain away. Her hands were small and delicate, but strong. Every other part of my body seemed to disappear, and I existed only in about one square inch just above my shoulder blade. That slight touch was reminding me—not for the first time, or even the five hundredth—just how bad I wanted her.

Do you know what it means when your friendship starts making a thwackity thwack sound that progresses to a clankity clank? Yes. It means you screwed up. And how to fix it? Stop being scared.

She worked on my back for a few more minutes, then stopped, running her nails gently up my neck before pulling her hand away. I twisted my head and looked up at her.

“Thank you.”

“Sure. Looked like you needed it.”

“More than you know.”

I put the heels of my hands against the floor, pushed myself upright, and slid onto the couch beside her. She was curled up against the armrest, watching me. I looked back at her and tried to remember why I’d always avoided making a move with her, what I’d been waiting for. My basic logic had seemed sound enough at first: My track record of sustaining romantic relationships was poor at best, and Amy was too good a friend to risk losing. Maybe Grace had a point, though. Maybe I should stop worrying about what could go wrong with it and see what could go right. Maybe the moment was now.

I’d actually started to lean toward her when she said, “I’ve got to stop thinking of you as a relationship