Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

more filled-out Crawford and realized that he probably was just above the legal age, I hovered between devastated and horrified. I realized that I couldn’t carry on this charade of being a hip chinchilla or whatever they called women my age who dated younger men. I looked nervously toward the door of the restaurant, hoping against hope that Jane would be early and would rescue me from this most uncomfortable situation.
    “Well?” he asked, giving me a dazzling smile.
    “Well, I don’t need as much help as you might think,” I said, laughing nervously. “As a matter of fact,” I said, spotting Jane ambling toward the front door, “I’m not sure my girlfriend would approve.”
    He looked at me quizzically.
    “Would you have my drink brought to my table?” I asked, getting up from my bar stool. I wrapped Jane in a big hug and took her hand. “You’re early!” I said.
    Jane was shocked by my public display of affection and gently extricated herself from my grasp. “I am. I got out of work a little early tonight.”
    “I’ll explain everything when we sit down,” I whispered in her ear as we followed the hostess to our table, tucked into the front corner of the restaurant and thankfully out of view of the bartender. We sat down and she ordered the oaky chardonnay with the hint of blackberries after my martini had been delivered to the table.
    She studied her menu quickly and snapped it shut. “Try the scallops if you like seafood.” She unfolded her napkin and put it on her lap. “So what’s going on?”
    “Well, I’m your significant other if the bartender asks, and Crawford and I have broken up.” I had to spit the whole thing out; if I had spent more time thinking about how to phrase it, I might have broken down and become the mess that I had been the entire night before.
    She didn’t know where to start. “You? Me? Crawford?” She shook her head, her hair coming loose from the elastic band holding her blond hair in a low ponytail. “Start over.”
    I started with the Ring Pop, because that was the most logical place to start, and ended with Crawford hanging up on me. “Then, the bartender started hitting on me,” I said, holding up a hand when I saw the incredulous look on her face. “I know. Hard to believe, but true. So I told him you were my partner just to save face.”
    “His or yours?”
    I shrugged. “No clue. His, I guess.”
    Jane swallowed the rest of her chardonnay in one gulp and motioned for another one. “Well, that’s quite a story. And that’s not even taking into consideration your run-in with Carter and that guy from the DPW.”
    I touched my black eye instinctively.
    “Tough couple of days.”
    “That’s putting it mildly.”
    “So what do you want to do about Crawford?”
    “Marry him, I guess.”
    She smiled. “Doesn’t sound too convincing.”
    I put my head on the table, careful to avoid the bread basket. “I’m just not sure.”
    Jane put her hand over mine. “Listen, I had the great, good-looking husband, the nice house in Larchmont, the two great kids, and the dog and the picket fence, and it just wasn’t right.”
    “Yeah, but you’re gay.”
    “True,” she said, laughing, “but when something doesn’t feel right, you need to listen to your instincts.”
    “But what if your instincts have been proven to be consistently wrong?”
    “I know a thing or two about that, too, believe it or not,” she said.
    I bet she did, what with the twists and turns her romantic life had taken over the years. We focused on our new drinks and the salads we had ordered that had arrived while we were talking. After a few minutes of disconsolately munching field greens, I brought up another topic if only to get my mind off Crawford and the fact that I might never see him again, let alone be with him again. “Tell me about Lydia Wilmott.”
    Jane looked surprised. “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Just curious. We met the other day but that was under very tragic circumstances, obviously. What was she like when Carter was alive?”
    Jane chewed on that for a few minutes. “She was happy. She adored Carter. And they seemed to have a wonderful marriage.”
    “But …” The specter of a caveat hung heavy in the air.
    “But all I heard was her side of things. She always went on and on about how they were soul mates and perfectly suited to each other but I don’t think they spent that much time together. And she stays very busy with her volunteer activities so