Public Secrets

her reaction when he’d come up behind her in the airport. “Amicably?”
“I hope so.” She shuddered. “Lord, they keep it cold in here.”
He opened his mouth to question. It wasn’t his place to pry, he reminded himself. Not into her marriage, or the ending of it. “How long do you plan to be in town?”
“I’m really not sure.”
“How about some lunch, or a drink?”
“I can’t. I have an appointment in an hour.”
“Have dinner with me, then.”
Her lips curved a little. She would have liked to have had dinner with a friend. “I’m trying to keep a low profile while I’m here. I haven’t been going to restaurants.”
“How about a backyard barbecue at my place?”
“Well, I—”

“Look, here’s my address.” Because he didn’t want to give her time to say no, he took out a card and scribbled on the back. “You can come by around seven and we’ll throw a couple of steaks on. Very low profile.”
She hadn’t realized how much she’d been dreading sitting in her room, picking at a room service meal, flipping channels on the television for company. “All right.”
He started to offer her a lift, but caught sight of a big white limo at the curb.
“Seven o’clock,” he repeated.
She sent him a last smile before they went their separate ways. Michael wondered if he could find a cleaning service at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Emma walked past the limo and took her place on line for cabs. Idly, she turned the card over.
D ETECTIVE M. K ESSELRING
H OMICIDE
With a shiver, she slipped it into her bag. Odd, she’d forgotten he was a cop. Like his father.

M ICHAEL STUFFED TWO weeks’ worth of newspapers in the bedroom closet. His two twenty-gallon trash cans were already bulging. It was hard for him to believe that one man and one dog could accumulate so much garbage. And he was appalled that in a city like Los Angeles there wasn’t a single cleaning service to be had on a Friday afternoon.
He tackled the kitchen first with the bottle of Top Job he’d borrowed from a neighbor. The house smelled like a pine forest, but it couldn’t be helped. Then Michael lured Conroy into the bathroom with a slice of bologna. When he stepped naked into the tub and dangled it, the dog hesitated. They both knew bologna was a weakness. The moment the dog leaped into the tub, Michael slid the glass doors closed.
“Grin and bear it, pal,” Michael suggested as Conroy bristled with indignation.
It took a half bottle of shampoo, but Conroy bore up like a soldier. He did howl occasionally, but that could have been in response to Michael’s singing. When they were both wrapped in towels, Michael searched through the linen closet for his hair dryer. He found it, and a frying pan he’d given up for lost.

He dried Conroy first, though the dog had yet to forgive him. “You ought to thank me for this,” Michael told him. “One whiff of you and slut dog’s going to crumble like an oatmeal cookie. She won’t even look at that stuck-up German shepherd.”
It took Michael thirty minutes to mop up the flood of water and dog hair. He was about to try his hand at salad making when he heard a car pull up. He hadn’t expected her to take a cab. He’d imagined her arriving in a limo, or some spiffy rental car. As he watched, she passed bills to the driver.
There was a breeze to ruffle her hair and the boxy cotton shirt she wore. Its size and mannish style made her appear smaller and only more feminine. He watched her draw a hand through her hair, brush it out of her face as she looked toward the house. She’d lost weight. He’d noticed that at the airport. Too much weight, Michael thought now. She’d gone from looking slender to almost unbearably fragile.
There was a hesitation in her he’d never noticed before, in the way she walked, in the nervous glances she sent over her shoulder. He’d been a cop long enough to have seen that same kind of controlled panic many times. In suspects. And in victims. Because she looked as though she might bolt, he opened the door.
“So you found it.”
She stopped dead, then shielding her eyes from the sun, saw him in the doorway. “Yes.” Her stomach muscles slowly unknotted. “You’ve bought a house,” she said and felt foolish immediately. “It’s a pretty neighborhood.”
Before she could step inside, Conroy raced to the door. He intended to bolt, to roll around in the din and grass until he’d rid himself of the undignified and all too human scent of