Trick Or Treat Murder. Leslie Meier

to have her own way. She wouldn’t listen to me. Oh, no! If this was anybody’s fault, it was hers.”

      “Her fault?” Lucy was puzzled. The conversation seemed to have taken a strange turn. Perhaps Roland wasn’t quite as distraught as she had first thought.

      “She took one look and went running off—wouldn’t even wait for an explanation. That would have required rationality, something Monica didn’t have a great deal of.”

      “She was upset about something?”

      “You could say that. What the hell? Everybody has fights, right? We’d been married for a long time. Thirty years.”

      “That is a long time,” agreed Lucy.

      “Hey, murder only gets you twenty, twenty-five years in this state, right?” It was an old joke, one he told automatically.

      “I guess,” said Lucy, trying not to be judgmental. Grief took everyone differently, she reminded herself.

      “I gotta get going. Hey, I almost forgot. I stopped by to give you this,” he said, rising and shoving the package across the table. “It’s a scrapbook Monica kept during the renovation.”

      “Really?” Lucy was delighted, and deeply moved. “How thoughtful of you to think of us. We’ll treasure it always.”

      “What was I gonna do with it?” he said, as she opened the door for him. “Right now, the fewer reminders I’ve got to deal with, the better.”