12th of Never

promising life just … over. Had someone taken her life? Or had she killed herself?
    I kept reading.
    The article went on to say that Faye Farmer lived with football great Jeffrey Kennedy, who was not a suspect and was cooperating fully with the police.
    I’d watched Jeff Kennedy many times from the stands at Candlestick Park. At twenty-five, he was already the NFL’s best outside linebacker. His defensive skills and movie-star looks had made him an immediate fan favorite, and at a guaranteed thirteen million dollars a year, he was the league’s fifth-highest earner.
    Faye Farmer had been photographed with Kennedy frequently over the last couple of years and had been quoted as saying she was going to be married—“to someone.” The way it sounded, she wanted to get married to Kennedy, but he wasn’t at the until-death-do-us-part stage.
    I was dying for more information. This was what’s termed a suspicious death, and my mind just cannot rest until a puzzle is solved. Of course, from where I was sitting at the kitchen counter, I had no more information than anyone else who had read the
Chronicle
’s front page this morning.
    I was just going to have to tamp down my curiosity and get over it.
    I put down the paper, then dressed quickly and quietly. I leashed Martha and went down the stairs, thinking I’d start off slowly, see if I could run a half mile, melt off a little of the twenty-five pounds of baby fat I’d added to my 5-foot-10-inch frame. I’d always been a bit hippy. Now I was a bit hippo.
    Not a good thing for a cop.
    The sun was still coming up over the skyline when I locked the front door behind me. But as I was about to set out, my attention was caught by a woman who was sitting behind the wheel of a rental car parked at the curb. She spotted me, too, got out of the driver’s seat, and called my name.
    I had never met her, never wanted to.
    And now she’d waylaid me.
    There was no place to go. So I stood my ground.

Chapter 11
    I DIDN’T KNOW June Freundorfer, but I knew who she was. My eyeballs got small and hard just looking at her in the flesh.
    She wore a slim gray custom-tailored suit, had perfect wavy brown hair, and a smile as bright as if she soaked her teeth in Clorox. In brief, she was an attractive forty-five-year-old power babe and she had history with my husband.
    Here’s the history.
    Agent Freundorfer had been Joe’s partner at the FBI. She was promoted to the FBI’s Washington field office about the same time Joe was hired as deputy director of Homeland Security, also in Washington, DC.
    June still lived in DC and until recently, Joe had been flying there regularly to see his government-agency client.
    I hadn’t known about June, but a few months ago, while I was pregnant with Julie, a photo of Joe and June appeared in the
Washington Post
’s society page. June was looking up at Joe with twinkling eyes, a flirty look, and they were both in evening wear.
    Joe insisted that there was nothing to the photo, just a charity benefit he’d gone to under pressure. He’d caught a flight back to San Francisco that same evening.
    Then June called Joe’s cell phone and I picked up. I announced myself, asked a couple of pointed questions, and June admitted that she was involved with Joe, but that Joe really did love me.
    I went bug-nuts.
    Joe said that June was lying, that she was trying to make trouble for us out of jealousy, and I can honestly say she wasn’t just trying, she succeeded.
    I threw Joe out of the house and changed the locks. He slept in his car, which he parked outside the apartment, just about where June’s car was parked now.
    It took a while for me to believe in Joe again, but I love him and I had to trust him. And I totally do.
    But now, those old suspicions returned as the beautiful Ms. Freundorfer came toward me, carrying a little turquoise shopping bag from Tiffany.
    Martha read my body language and stood at my feet with her head lowered and ears back, ready to spring.
    “Lindsay? You are Lindsay, aren’t you?”
    “Joe isn’t around, June. Did you call?”
    “So I don’t have to introduce myself. Joe always said you were smart. Anyway, I brought a gift for the baby,” she said. “Did you have a boy or girl?”
    “We have a daughter.”
    June smiled graciously and handed me the bag. And I took it because to keep my hands at my sides would have been childish. I even thanked her for the gift, a thank-you that was less than sincere and wouldn’t