Kansas City Secrets. Julie Miller

thing he had to a friend here in KC. The younger detective dealt with his moods and attitude better than anybody since Jimmy. Nope. He wasn’t going there.

      “Bite me, junior.” Max pulled up to the curb in front of the white house with blue shutters and red rosebushes blooming along the front of the porch.

      “I know today is a rough one for you.” Trent pulled his notebook from beneath the seat before he clapped a hand on Max’s shoulder. “But seriously, brother. Did you get that shirt out of the laundry? You know you’re supposed to fold them or hang them up when you take them out of the dryer, right? Did you even shave this morning?”

      “You are not my mama.” Although part of him appreciated the concern behind Trent’s teasing, Max shrugged his hand away and killed the engine. “Get out of my car. And don’t scratch anything on your way out.”

      Max set his cigar in the ashtray and checked the rearview mirror, scrubbing his fingers over the gold-and-tan stubble that he probably should have attended to before leaving for work this morning. Although the crew cut was the same as it had been back in basic training, the wrinkled chambray of his short-sleeved shirt would have earned him a demerit and a lecture from Jimmy. What a mess. One beer too many and a sketchy night’s sleep had left him ill-equipped to deal with today.

      Swearing at the demons staring back at him, Max climbed out, tucking in the tails of his shirt and adjusting the badge and gun at the waist of his jeans as he surveyed up and down the street. Looked like a pretty ordinary summer morning here in middle-class America. Dogs barking out back. Flowers blooming. Kids playing in the yard. Royals baseball banners flying proudly. Didn’t look like the hoity-toity neighborhood where he expected a millionaire crackpot to live. Didn’t look much like a place where they could track down clues to a six-year-old murder, either.

      But he had to give Trent credit for dragging him out on this fool’s errand. Driving the Chevy and breathing in the fresh air beat being cooped up in the office with a bunch of paperwork and his gloomy thoughts. Max tipped his face to the sunshine for a few moments, locking down the bad memories before he took the steps two at a time and followed Trent up to the Marches’ front porch.

      “What is this? Fort Knox?” he drawled, eyeing the high-tech gadgetry of the alarm on the front door, along with the knob lock and dead bolt. “My grandma lives in a brand-new apartment complex and doesn’t have this kind of security.”

      “The woman does live alone,” Trent reminded him.

      Max peered in through the front bay window while Trent rang the doorbell. The front room was neat as a pin, if stacks of boxes and piles of papers on nearly every flat surface counted. But not a cat in sight. He refused to believe that the noise of dogs barking out back might in any way disprove his theory about crazy Rosemary March.

      “Yes?” Several seconds passed before the red steel door opened halfway. He could barely hear the woman’s soft voice through the glass storm door. “May I help you?”

      Trent flashed his badge and identified them. “KCPD, ma’am. I’m Detective Dixon and this is my partner, Max Krolikowski. We’re here to ask some questions. Are you Rosemary March?” She must have nodded. “Could you open the outside door, too?”

      “If you step back, I will. I’ll disable the alarm and come out.”

      Max moved to one side while Trent retreated to the requested distance between them.

      Max had expected that shriveled-up prune from his imagination to appear. He at least expected to see a homely plain Jane with pop-bottle glasses. He wasn’t expecting the generously built woman with flawless alabaster skin, dressed neck to knee in a gauzy white dress, exposing only her arms and calves to the summer heat. Although her hair, the color of a shiny copper penny, was drawn back into a bun so tight that words like spinster and schoolmarm danced on his tongue, he hadn’t expected Rosemary March to be so...feminine. So curvy. He wasn’t expecting to see signs of pretty.

      He wasn’t expecting the Colt automatic she held down in the folds of her skirt, either.