described the scene, right down to the bare feet.
“None of your friends are missing a man, are they?”
he asked.
“Not like that,” I said. “Although K.C. was grumbling
29
MARGARET MARON
about Terry being gone all week to teach some training
seminar up in Chicago.”
Terry Wilson’s an SBI agent, a man who could make
me laugh so hard that I seriously considered hooking
up with him a few years ago. He was between wives at
the time, still working undercover. While I was almost
willing to take second place to his son, no way was I
going to take third behind the job. These days, though,
he’s a field supervisor working from a desk and K.C.’s
come in off the streets, too. She used to work under-
cover narcotics, one of the most successful agents the
State Bureau of Investigation ever had. She was abso-
lutely fearless and so blonde and beautiful that dealers
fell all over themselves to give her drugs. Somewhat to
my surprise, they had gotten together late last summer
and he had moved into her lake house.
“She keeps swearing it’s just for laughs,” I told
Dwight, “but this may be fourth time lucky for Terry.”
“That would be nice,” said Dwight, who likes Terry
as much as I do.
I smiled in the darkness. “Now that you’re an old mar-
ried man, you want everybody else to settle down?”
“Beats sleeping single in a double bed,” he said as his
arms tightened around me.
Next morning, after breakfast, our kitchen filled up
with short people. During the week, Cal goes home on
the schoolbus with Mary Pat, the young orphaned ward
of Dwight’s sister-in-law Kate, who keeps him for the
hour or so till Dwight or I get home. In return, we
usually take Mary Pat and Kate’s four-year-old son Jake
30
HARD ROW
for a few hours on Saturday so that Kate can have some
time alone with Rob and their new baby boy.
It was raining that morning, a cold chill rain that
threatened to turn to sleet, so I kept them indoors and
let them help me make cookies. I’m no gourmet chef,
my biscuits aren’t as tender and flaky as some, and my
piecrusts come out so soggy and tough that I long ago
gave up and now buy the frozen ones, but I’ll put my
chocolate chip cookies up against anybody’s. (The secret
is to add a little extra sweet butter and then take them
out of the oven before the center’s fully set. Black wal-
