Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

crappy, and poisonous, brew. I had watched Greg clean out the coffee urn the night that I had followed him to the river and he was pretty thorough so it was unlikely that we’d ever find out what the true story was.
    All I knew was that I was grinding my own beans from now on.
    As to who had wanted to blow Carter to smithereens, no one knew. I thought back to Tony and his Korean War exploits but decided that I would keep them to myself. The list of potential suspects was so extensive that I expected that Detective Madden would be busy for a long, long time.
    Kathy and Jane popped in on Saturday to check on me and to say good-bye to Kevin and Queen, who interestingly, and not surprisingly, had become more a part of the neighborhood in the several days they had lived with me than I had in the many years I had resided there. They were disappointed to find out that both were gone, but they were glad they would see Queen in town, given the proximity of her new dwelling to our neighborhood.
    I was out back, playing tug-of-war with Trixie, when they came up the driveway. They wrapped their arms around me at the same time and Trixie joined in, the warmest group hug that I had ever experienced. When we separated, Jane held me at arm’s length.
    “You don’t look any worse for wear,” she said. “And listen, we’re going to teach you to swim.”
    Kathy did a dry-land American crawl. “Really. How do you get this far in life and not know how to swim?”
    I shrugged. “Don’t know. But I can fence. And I can make a wicked scrapbook.”
    Kathy snorted. “And that’s going to help you a lot. Seriously, sister, we’ve got to get you into the pool.”
    “Deal,” I said, starting for the house. “And I’ll teach you how to order off a French menu without sounding like a foreigner. That’ll come in handy if the two of you ever get to Paris.”
    “You’re on. Paris has always been a dream of mine,” Kathy said.
    We took seats around my patio table, Trixie resting at my feet, thankful that it was just the two of us again. Although she got walked more than she ever had while we had Queen and Kevin around, when it came down to it, she wanted to be with me and me alone. She wasn’t all that enthusiastic about house guests, with the exception of Crawford. And that’s only because he fed her steak when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew what went on; I just pretended not to notice.
    I served Kathy and Jane some wine and made a plate of cheese and crackers to nosh on while we visited. We finished one bottle of sauvignon blanc and started a bottle of Sancerre. After a couple of glasses of wine, I finally got the courage to ask Kathy and Jane the question that had been niggling at me since we had last been together.
    “Why are you so negative about Lydia Wilmott?” I asked Kathy.
    Jane shot her a look that transmitted her discomfort with this conversation. Kathy ignored her, emboldened by the white wine or tired of staying silent on the subject.
    Kathy looked at Jane. “You know I’m conflicted about this,” she said to her. Jane looked down. “If it wasn’t for Lydia and her crackpot ideas, we wouldn’t be together.” Kathy turned to me. “It’s like this. Lydia did the same number on Jane as she did on you, thinking that Jane’s complaints about her ex, Stu, were veiled hints at abuse. She’s the one that convinced Jane to get out of the marriage, thinking that Jane’s well-being was at stake. But Jane wasn’t abused. She was gay. And Lydia misread the entire situation, just like she did with you, and created all of this conflict where there was none.”
    Jane was silent, staring into her wineglass.
    “You just didn’t know who you were when you married him,” Kathy said softly, putting a hand on Jane’s knee. It sounded as if they had had this conversation many times before and it wasn’t a pleasant one. “I like Stu. He’s a good guy. Actually, he’s a great guy. He just had the unfortunate luck to marry a gay woman who befriended a woman who did everything in her power to make him seem like a really bad guy.” Kathy squeezed Jane’s hand. “Listen, if I were straight, I would have fallen for the guy. He’s handsome, he’s smart, and he makes a lot of money,” she said, laughing at the last part of her description. “But he’s not an abuser. And Lydia caused a lot of trouble for him unnecessarily, making him have to deny something that he never did.” She looked at me intently.