Chapter One
It was a Wednesday morning in mid-November, and despite my best intentions, I was failing hard at minding my own business.
“Daniel took you to dinner at Fidelio’s?”
I meant to keep my tone carefully neutral, but even I could hear the shrillness leak through. Zachary, who was over on the sofa playing with Edwina the Boston Terrier, winced. It didn’t help when I added, “Does he know that that’s where David had his last meal, or was it just the luck of the draw?”
Rachel’s cheeks turned pink, from anger as much as embarrassment, I’m sure. David was my late husband—which he became just in time to avoid becoming my ex—and Rachel had been his administrative assistant for a few years at that point. Now she was my business partner, partly as penance for not telling me about David’s mistress (the nubile Jackie-with-a-q) sooner, and partly because she had needed a job after the murder and subsequent mess of a scandal.
Most of the time she feels bad enough about it that we get along without much friction. However, it seemed that criticizing Daniel Kelly, my erstwhile brother-in-law and Rachel’s new beau, was too far over the line.
“I don’t know, Gina,” she told me, dangerously. “It didn’t seem like something I ought to bring up over Spaghetti Bolognese.”
“You might have brought it up beforehand, though. Like, when he invited you there.”
“He didn’t invite me there,” Rachel said. “He picked me up, and that’s where he drove me.”
“When you pulled up outside, then.”
“And say what?” Rachel wanted to know. “It’s not like the food killed David. It was the brake cables that did that.”
“I’m well aware of it,” I said stiffly, “thank you. It just seems a bit… callous. Doesn’t it?”
I glanced at Zachary for support. He shrugged.
Rachel narrowed her eyes. “Are you telling me you haven’t been back to Fidelio’s since David died? Or that you’d refuse to go if someone—the writer, say—invited you?”
“Greg is on tour,” I said automatically. And added, “No, of course not. But it’s a little different for Daniel. David was his brother.”
“And he was your husband.”
I scoffed. “Barely. And by the time he died I was wishing him dead myself. Not that I would have done anything about it, of course.”
“Of course not, “Rachel agreed. “He was a bastard, no question. I won’t say he deserved what he got?—”
No, I wouldn’t say that, either, at least not where anyone could hear me.
“—but he wasn’t who I thought he was when I went to work for him.”
No, me either. Although in my defense, I had been twenty-two when I met and married David, and as such pretty easily impressed. Now I was forty and jaded.
“I’m just concerned,” I said. “I spent eighteen years watching my husband slip his brother money and bail him out of one half-baked scheme after another. I don’t like you getting involved in that.”
And not only because she was my business partner and whatever was going on with her would inevitably spill over into what was going on with me. But I knew, from having done it, that the emotional toll of catering to another self-centered bastard would be high.
Then again, so did Rachel. She had survived a less-than-stellar marriage of her own, before having to deal with her boss’s murder and his partner’s embezzlement. And she must have known Daniel’s deeds and misdeeds almost as well as, or perhaps better than, me. David probably slipped his brother money from the business accounts, too.
So I said, not for the first time (and probably not the last), “If he makes you happy, then I’m happy for you.”
Rachel snorted, as if she knew full well that I was trying to convince myself as much as her.
From his spot on the floor, Zachary made the toy Lambchop in his hand squeak before tossing it across the reception area. “Go get it, Edwina!”
The Boston Terrier’s eyes lit up and she scampered after it, tiny paws scrambling on the old hardwoods.
“And Kenny’s excited about the bar,” Rachel continued blithely. “He’s really invested in making it work.”
I looked up at that. Kenny Kelly was Daniel’s nephew, but more than that, he was David’s son and my stepson. I was intimately familiar with Kenny’s failings, even more so than I was with Daniel’s.
