Madigan's Wife

He leaned back in the booth and watched Grace walk away, and the smile he’d worn all through lunch faded. Her thick dark hair, longer than she used to wear it, bounced around her squared shoulders. She didn’t toss a glance back as she walked away; he didn’t expect her to. Gracie Madigan didn’t look back, ever.

In her silly moss green suit and sensible low-heeled shoes she looked joyless. Annoyed. And too damn good. His gaze lingered on her legs, well revealed beneath an almost too-short green skirt. She’d always had great legs, he mused as she disappeared from sight.

Well, he’d known she wouldn’t like the idea of him going back into narcotics, though he hadn’t expected her to lose her temper. After all, they weren’t married anymore, hadn’t been for six years now. As of two months ago, they’d been divorced as long as they’d been married.

He knew too well what Grace thought about his chosen profession. She hated it. After all, that was the reason she gave for leaving him. Yeah, she was real good at walking away when the going got tough.

“So that’s number one,” Tamara said as she began to efficiently clear the table, balancing plates and glasses on a small round tray. She flashed him a wicked smile; too wicked for one so young.

“Yep,” he said.

“She’s pretty,” Tamara said, careful to keep her tone conversational. Just a trace of curiosity crept into her soft voice to give away her interest.

“Yep.” Pretty and sexy, the kind of unforgettable pretty and sexy that got under a man’s skin and stayed there. Having Grace back in his life in such a platonic way was torture; a torture he wasn’t about to give up. A friendly lunch every two weeks or so was better than nothing, so he purposely refrained from talking about the past. He kept the conversation light and friendly and safe, so she wouldn’t run off again.

Until today.

Hellfire, this was getting complicated. The best thing he could do for himself would be to hurry back to the office, call Stan, and agree to be in Mobile on Monday.

He paid for his lunch and walked back to the office, trying to enjoy the sun on his face and the gentle breeze that wafted past. Spring in Alabama was always a reminder of why he stayed here, why he’d made Huntsville his home. Up north they were still fighting snow and ice in some places, but down south the girls had started sunbathing and the kids ran around in shorts and T-shirts after school. Dogwoods bloomed, birds flitted and chirped, summer was just around the corner.

And Mobile was just a hop, skip and a jump from Gulf Shores, the Redneck Riviera.

There wasn’t anything on his calendar that couldn’t be farmed out to another P.I.; an insurance fraud case he was about to close up and a couple of divorce cases—the least favorite and most profitable part of his business.

But beach or no beach, he wasn’t leaving just yet. Gracie was the one who did the running away, not him.

The modest offices of Madigan Investigations were situated on the ground floor of an old redbrick building in the heart of downtown Huntsville. The furniture was cheap, the sign painted on the glass door discreet and tasteful. He got a lot of his business from the lawyer on the second floor.

“You had two phone calls,” Doris said the minute he opened that door. She waved two pink slips of paper before her and then dropped them on the desk. “One about business, one from that second ex-wife of yours. She’s getting married again, and she wants you to give her away.” Doris showed her disapproval with a wrinkling of her nose and a pursing of lips. “Can I go to lunch now? I swear, every time you have lunch with that first ex-wife of yours I end up half starved before I get out of here.”

In Doris he’d found the perfect secretary. Built square and solid, she was old enough to be his mother, sassy one minute and mothering the next, more than competent where her secretarial duties were concerned, and—most important—he’d not been tempted even one time to ask her to marry him.

“Take the rest of the afternoon,” he said, well aware that his lunches with Grace usually ran long. “I can answer the phone for a couple of hours.”

Doris smiled as she walked by, stopping just long enough to reach up and give him a maternal pat on the cheek. “You’re a good boy, Ray.”

Rather than go into his own inner office, he sat at Doris’s desk to read his messages. One of his most persistent clients had called; a man who was certain his wife was cheating on him, even though Ray hadn’t been able to discover that the woman did anything more illicit than floor it through the occasional yellow light. When he read the other message he smiled.

He’d have to call Trish, wish her luck and decline her request. He hadn’t met her fiancé, but even the most saintly man would have to balk at having his bride walk down the aisle on the arm of her ex-husband.

Oddly enough, he wouldn’t actually mind giving Trish away. She was a sweet girl and he wanted to see her start a new, wonderful life. She deserved it. And if Patty ever married that doctor she’d been seeing for the past year, he’d be there with bells on, he’d toast the bride and groom and wish them a long and happy life together.

If Grace ever decided to get married again…his smile faded. Hellfire, no matter how nonchalant he tried to be about Gracie, he couldn’t quite pull it off. No matter how hard he tried—and dammit he gave it his best shot—he still thought of her as his wife.

To take his mind off of a subject he’d rather not ponder, he recalled a more pleasant memory; the look on Dr. Doolittle’s face when the dentist had opened the door to his fine home two weeks ago and found Ray standing there. The way the creep had paled when Ray had very calmly threatened to rip out his spleen if he ever harassed Grace again, and then threatened to do the same if he ever felt the need to share the details of their conversation.

Hell, a man could live without a spleen, Ray thought as he positioned his locked hands behind his head and leaned back in Doris’s chair.

Since the house she rented was situated near downtown Huntsville, Grace had the pleasure of taking her morning jog down quiet streets lined with old houses and even older trees. A small neighborhood park was especially beautiful in the spring, with the flowering dogwoods and pear trees in bloom growing gracefully around a small pond.

On occasion she’d see another runner, but most mornings she had the sidewalk and the park path to herself. It was worth getting up while the sky was still dark, leaving the house before the sun actually peeked over the horizon. She loved jogging in the gray light, watching the day come alive.

Ray lived close by, a fact she’d been well aware of when she chose her house. He rented an apartment over a garage, just a few streets north. She’d told herself, more than once, that knowing Ray was near had nothing to do with her decision. Living in Madison or South Huntsville would require driving every day in rush hour traffic on the Parkway or I-565. The house she rented, a rather small old house that had been recently remodeled, was convenient. And she liked the neighborhood. In order to convince herself of this truth, she never ran down Ray’s street. In fact, she made it a point to run in the opposite direction.

This morning she couldn’t completely clear her mind, as she usually did when she ran. She kept thinking about Ray, wondering if moving back to Huntsville had been such a good idea, after all. It had seemed so when she’d made the decision. The offer from Dr. Dearborne had been a good one, and besides, she needed to get over Ray, to put what they’d had in the past and move on. As long as she continued to make him more than he was, in her mind, that would never happen. A good dose of reality would remind her of the reasons she’d left him in the first place, and then she’d be able to get on with her life. Maybe with Ray finally in the past where he belonged, she’d be able to think about getting married again, having children, being happy.

So far it wasn’t working. Until yesterday, when he’d mentioned the job offer in Mobile, she’d been in serious danger of falling in love with him all over again. He could be charming, when it suited him, and there were times she forgot the problems that had driven her away and remembered the nights he’d come home to her.

The nights he’d come home after a hard day to forget all that had happened outside their house. Those times when he went undercover for weeks at a time, but sneaked into the house and the bedroom and the bed in the middle of the night on occasion. Just to hold her, he said. Because he couldn’t bear to be without her.

Some nights she still woke from a dream feeling the dip of the mattress as if Ray were climbing into the bed to lie beside her. For an instant, a heart-stopping, impossibly bright instant, she thought he’d come to her; that the years had rolled away and he had come to whisper in her ear, take her in his arms, and love her.

Some mornings she’d actually lie in bed and close her eyes and pretend she could hear Ray singing in the shower. Lyle Lovett songs, always. Off-key, but just a little. He hadn’t sung in the shower every morning, but usually, after a long, wonderful night when they’d gotten little sleep, she’d come awake to hear him singing. She knew his favorite Lyle Lovett songs by heart. “She’s No Lady.” “If I Had a Boat.” “Here I Am.” As she ran, an unwanted smile briefly crossed her face.

This was getting dangerous. She had to erase these thoughts and remember the bad days; like the first time Luther had come to the door to tell her Ray had been shot.

Even running and working up a sweat, she went cold at the memory. Luther had assured her, that night, that Ray would be all right, that the wound wasn’t serious. She hadn’t believed him, not for a second. She’d thrown a coat on over her nightgown, stepped into a pair of tennis shoes, and as Luther drove her to the hospital she wondered how she’d ever survive without Ray.

She couldn’t, and she knew it. Ray was too much a part of who she was, and without him she was nothing. Nothing. Riding in Luther’s silent car she’d tried to imagine her life without Ray in it. Long before they reached the hospital she’d felt hollow and achy, like someone had reached inside and ripped out her heart. When she’d sniffled and wiped away a few relentless tears, Luther had tried to assure her that Ray was all right. She hadn’t believed him, not until she walked into the hospital room and saw Ray sitting up, his shoulder bandaged, a couple of buddies laughing at some joke she’d missed.

He’d been pale, she remembered, and his hands trembled a little; something no one else seemed to notice. When he’d seen her he’d smiled. Smiled! Suddenly her untied shoes and her nightgown peeking out from the knee-length coat seemed ridiculous, her tears seemed silly. But even though Ray was fine, the emptiness didn’t quite go away. She had a new and very real fear to deal with, now: losing Ray to a job he loved.

She rounded the corner, her mind a million miles away. The squealing of tires brought her to the present.

A car jerked to a stop at the curb as a man rolled from the open passenger door, over the grass, onto the sidewalk. She jogged in that direction to see if she could be of any help.

The man who’d fallen tried to get up but couldn’t. Even from here she could see that he shook, and she heard what could be crying. He was apparently badly hurt. Someone else, a rather large man in a baseball cap and a wrinkled tan trench coat, stepped from the driver’s side of the car. His attention was on the man on the sidewalk as he ran around the idling car.

Grace was still a good distance away, in the shadows of the trees that lined and shaded the sidewalk. The man on the sidewalk lifted his head as the driver approached and reached down to help him up. Some friend he was, Grace thought as she drew closer. The poor man who’d fallen from the car was jerked to his feet, and the driver wrapped an arm around his neck in a way that had to hurt, and then reached up to lay his hand on the side of the injured man’s head. He quickly executed a powerful wrench, twisting the head unnaturally.

She heard the crack, and the bone-crushing sound brought her to a halt. The man who’d fallen from the car…no, she realized with a chill, he hadn’t fallen, he’d jumped…went limp and silent. The big man had broken his neck.

Grace stood on the sidewalk, no more than eighty feet away and frozen to the spot. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen, and her mind searched rapidly for an alternate explanation she couldn’t find.

The big man in the tan coat lifted his head and saw her. For a split second their eyes held; she held her breath as she met the murderous gaze of a cold-blooded killer. He dropped his victim, and the dead man crumpled to the sidewalk.

Grace turned and ran. She didn’t jog, not this time, she ran as fast as she could away from the murder she’d witnessed. Her feet barely touched the ground; her heart pounded fast and hard. It wasn’t long before she heard footsteps behind her, heavy footsteps that gained on her too quickly.

The killer wore hard-soled shoes. His steps clipped heavy and loud against the sidewalk. She hoped the shoes would be a disadvantage, but that hope died quickly. He continued to draw closer.

Her right hand settled over the canister at her waist. Bless Ray for insisting that if she was going to jog alone she carry this spray. For dogs, he’d said, but she knew Ray too well, she knew how he thought. He saw danger everywhere, and this time he was right.

If she waited much longer it would be too late. If the man in the trench coat caught her from behind he could very well snap her neck just as he had that poor man who lay on the sidewalk. If she turned too soon, he’d have time to prepare. She waited—a few more steps, let him come a little closer—and then she plucked the pepper spray from her waistband and turned to face her pursuer.

The move surprised the killer, she could tell by the way he suddenly slowed his step, and by the startled widening of his eyes. No time to think about those pale eyes, she thought as she raised the canister and sprayed directly into his face.

The murderer came to a halt with a howl, covering his face with two beefy, strong hands. While he had his hands over his eyes, Grace kicked him between the legs, as hard as she could. He screamed again, louder, and hunched down to shield the newly attacked area with both hands. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her knee and snapped her foot out to kick him once more, in the face this time. The big man went down hard.