Read Online Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_03 by Death in Lovers' Lane - Free Book Online

ago.”
    I understood the agony in his statement.
    My son Bobby died twenty-seven years ago.
    I looked at the photograph in a leather folder on my desk. Bobby is running toward me in Chapultepec Park, his face alight with an exuberant grin. I remembered the laughter in his voice—“Mom, hey, Mom!”—and the way he skidded into my arms, alive and eager and happy. It was his tenth birthday.
    The emptiness is as great today as it was then, a void that nothing will ever fill, a grief that will never ease.
    I had to believe that somewhere, on a far distant, sunnier shore, Bobby and now Richard awaited me. I had to believe that or sink into numb despair in an empty, meaningless world.
    Dennis groaned.
    I reached out, gently touched my son’s picture.
    Dennis’s voice shook. “And she thought, Rita thought—” He broke off; his face crumpled.
    Rita thought he was being unfaithful yet again ona day that was forever seared into her soul.
    â€œWere you?” My words dropped like ice pellets.
    â€œNo.” He almost shouted it. “No way. God, no.”
    I straightened the stack of papers on the Rosen-Voss case. “Where were you last night?”
    He groaned again, pressed his palms against his temples. “No place. I’d told Eric to handle it. There was probably a late story coming in on that hotel explosion in Cairo, but nothing else. The front page was ready to put to bed. I just wanted—I couldn’t sit there any longer. I got in my car. I drove around.”
    â€œYou didn’t stop anywhere, talk to anybody?”
    â€œNo.” He rubbed his face wearily.
    â€œYou didn’t see Maggie anytime during the evening?”
    His head jerked up. “No. Absolutely not.” He stared straight at me.
    Like the barely heard rattle of a snake on a hot, still day, a warning flickered in my mind. Such a straight-from-the-shoulder, honest, sincere gaze…
    Dennis’s yellow-gray eyes were opaque.
    â€œWhere did you drive around?”
    He flipped over his hands. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”
    â€œDid you go over to Maggie’s apartment?”
    â€œI might have gone that way. It’s a small town, Henrie O.”
    I let it drop, but the buzz continued in my mind. Maybe he didn’t see Maggie. But I’d bet he looked for her. So what price to put on his soulful protestations of innocence? “What time did you get home?”
    â€œMidnight, I guess. About that.”
    â€œWas Rita there?”
    â€œYeah.” His voice was empty.
    â€œWhat did she say? What happened?”
    â€œThe bedroom door was locked. She wouldn’t let me in. She screamed about Maggie. She wouldn’t listen.”
    â€œWhat did you try to tell her?”
    â€œThat it was bullshit. Bullshit.” His voice rose. “I ended up standing there by that goddamned locked door, yelling that I hadn’t fucked Maggie, but I sure as hell was going to give it a try.”
    â€œAre you telling me you weren’t having an affair with Maggie?”
    â€œYou got it the first time.” His tone had an echo of its old flippancy.
    â€œSo what gave Rita the idea? Why should she think so?”
    Dennis’s putty-colored eyes slid away.
    My sympathy curled a little around the edges.
    He lifted his hands in elaborate bewilderment. “Hell, I don’t know. I had drinks with Maggie a couple of times. I don’t know, maybe somebody told Rita about it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He looked blank.
    I spelled it out. “Why did you have drinks with Maggie? That’s not part of the curriculum, Dennis.”
    â€œYeah, well.” He grew sad. “Maggie was a gorgeous girl. You know? And sexy as hell. So, I gave it a try. Goddamn.”
    Dennis was too jowly to be called handsome, but it wasn’t hard to trace the good-looking young man he had been. His ebullience and hard-driving aggressiveness would make him sexually appealing tomost