The Ex. BEVERLY BARTON

Chad George was on his way up. By hook or crook. And it was also a well-known fact that Jimmy Norton was on a one-way street to nowhere. He’d be lucky if he could hang on to his job long enough to draw his pension.

      On his own, Chad was bound to screw up. Not because he was stupid. Quite the contrary. The guy was highly intelligent. Nah, he’d screw up because he was an inexperienced homicide detective who was too damn cocky to realize he had a lot to learn. It was Jim’s opinion that Chad was a know-it-all who needed taking down a peg or two. Not that he’d intentionally do anything to bring that about himself. Nah, he figured all he had to do was wait around and sooner or later Chad would shoot himself in the foot. Figuratively, of course.

      Jim chuckled softly.

      “What’s so funny, Dad?” Kevin asked.

      Jim glanced over at his eleven-year-old son sitting in the passenger seat of his battered, old truck and grinned. Kevin was the one good thing that had come out of his marriage to Mary Lee. He might regret all the wasted years he’d spent hung up on a woman who hadn’t loved him enough to stick with him through the bad times and had repeatedly betrayed their marriage vows, but he’d never regret fathering Kevin. On the really rough days, when nothing in his world seemed right, all Jim had to do was think of Kevin and he remembered he had a very good reason for living.

      “Just thinking about my partner,” Jim told his son.

      “Chad George?”

      “Yeah, you’ve met Chad. I introduced you to him a couple of months ago.”

      “I know Sergeant George.”

      Jim picked up on something in his son’s voice before he glanced at him and noticed Kevin had his head hung low and was staring at the floorboard.

      “What’s the matter?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Is it something about Chad? Did he say or do anything that—”

      “I’m not supposed to tell you.”

      “Who told you not to tell me?”

      “Mom did.”

      Don’t lose your cool. The last thing Kevin needs is to feel he’s caught between you and Mary Lee, even if he is. Whatever she told him not to tell you, don’t press him about it.

      Jim kept the truck on Highway 78, heading straight toward Holly Springs where his sister and her family lived. He’d planned this trip so they would arrive at Susan’s just about the time church let out and right before Sunday dinner. He needed to concentrate on the positive—on sharing a family day with his son. Grilling Kevin about Mary Lee’s secrets would ruin not only their day together, but also injure their already fragile relationship. Even though he couldn’t prove it, he knew his ex-wife worked at undermining his relationship with Kevin. And she did it just because she could, wanting to hurt Jim and not caring that their son was the one who’d be harmed the most.

      “Dad?”

      “Huh?”

      “You don’t care who Mom dates, do you?”

      “No, I don’t care,” Jim said. And he didn’t. Not now, although for years after their divorce he’d been jealous of every man she’d dated. But that was when he’d still been in love with her.

      “Then I don’t understand why Mom doesn’t want you to know that she’s dating Sergeant George.”

      Jim grasped the steering wheel with white-knuckled tension. Mary Lee and Chad? Goddamn son of a bitch. He couldn’t help wondering which one of them had instigated their affair. Six of one and half dozen of the other. Them’s the odds. Mary Lee would love for him to find out she’d been screwing his young partner. She actually thought he still cared. And Chad—God how he must love fucking Jim’s ex-wife. At least four other officers had told Jim to watch his back where Chad was concerned.

      “Your mom’s dating Chad, huh?”

      “Yeah, for about a couple of weeks now. But it’s no big deal, right? I mean, you don’t care, do you?”

      “Your mother and I are divorced,” Jim said. “We both have the right to date anybody we want to. It’s fine with me if Mary Lee is dating Chad.”

      Dating? Maybe they were dating—dinner, movies, dancing, that sort of thing. But Jim figured their dates were spent in bed, doing the horizontal. That was the only kind of relationship Mary Lee was any good at. And he hated like hell that he could remember so vividly just how good she’d been.

      * * *

      Annabelle had expected to spend a quiet day at the apartment, catching up on work-related e-mails and making plans for Lulu’s funeral. Although the plans couldn’t proceed until the autopsy had been completed and Lulu’s body released, Annabelle didn’t want to leave things until the last minute. The family expected her to handle all the details and see to it that Louisa Margaret Vanderley’s funeral would impress everyone in attendance. The Vanderleys always arrived and departed this life in grand style. It was a family tradition.

      Annabelle had slept later this morning than she intended. She was, by nature, a creature of habit and hated to alter her sleep schedule. But she’d tossed and turned half the night, not able to rest until sometime after four. If only she could have turned off her thoughts and disconnected her mind. Thoughts of Lulu tormented her. She wondered if she had tried harder to maintain a close relationship with Lulu, would her cousin still be alive? If she had looked after Lulu a little more closely, would it have made any difference? Don’t be silly. You couldn’t have done anything to prevent what happened.

      For most of her life, Annabelle had been a caretaker. Perhaps she’d been born an old soul with the need to nurture everyone around her. She’d always had a deep-rooted need to please others, to keep everyone happy. Being a spoiled only child could have turned her into a self-centered, demanding bitch, but instead being the center of her parents’ universe had placed a heavy burden on her young shoulders. She’d actually believed that it was her duty to make her parents happy, and by the time she reached adulthood that feeling had transmitted itself to everyone around her.

      “You care so deeply about everyone and everything,” Aunt Perdita had once told her. “Your devotion to Christopher is quite admirable, my dear child, but you must occasionally think of yourself. You’re a healthy young woman, with a woman’s needs. And what you need is a man.”

      Her aunt had been half right about her needing a man. She had needed the man she loved to be whole again, for Chris to be as he’d once been—her friend and lover. But that had been an impossible dream. Her darling Chris had been a paraplegic for nine years before his death, completely paralyzed from the waist down and unable to function sexually. And two very brief and completely secret affairs had shown her that sex for the sake of sex was not what she wanted or needed.

      There had been times when she’d wished she could be more like Lulu, who could so easily go from man to man with no regrets. She doubted that Lulu’s conscience had ever bothered her. What must that be like? Annabelle wondered.

      After setting her cup of chocolate caramel coffee beside her laptop on the desk, Annabelle pulled out the chair. When the telephone rang, she jumped. Her nerves were shot. Not only had memories of Lulu as well as concerns about her cousin’s death and all that entailed kept her awake, but so had thoughts about Quinn Cortez. Ever since agreeing to become partners with the man in hiring Griffin Powell, she’d had a million and one second thoughts.

      On the third ring, Annabelle lifted the receiver from the base on the desk. “Hello.”

      “Ms. Vanderley?” a man’s voice asked.

      “Yes, this is she.”

      “This is Sergeant George, ma’am. I was wondering if I could come by and talk to you?”

      “I—er—when?”

      “Right now, if that’s convenient. I can be there in no