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  Up close, some details asserted themselves, like the string of small pearls at her neck and the single gold hoop on her wrist and, as I felt more than observed when she slid out of the booth and embraced my hand in both of hers, the diamond the size of a crouton on her third finger left hand. We kissed each other, briefly and aridly, careful to preclude contact at breast or pelvis, then backed away and took a more languorous inventory.

  “You’re looking good, boss,” Peggy said theatrically, a layer of brass masking whatever her urges were up to.

  “Same to you, sweetheart.” Whenever Peggy was around, I opted too often for Bogart.

  She reddened and waved her hand. “Have a seat. Order a drink. I’ve already started,” she added, pointing to the gold in her wineglass as we eased onto the benches.

  A waitress drifted by and Peggy corralled her. “He’ll have scotch on the rocks. Ballantine’s.” She looked at me.

  “Right.”

  “Double?”

  “Not unless I’m going to need it.”

  Peggy shook her head and the waitress drifted off. I leaned back against the padded booth and looked for ambiguity or ambivalence or even animosity. Thankfully, I didn’t find any of those things, which made my smile grow fatuous.

  Peggy was nervous, as was I, and in compensation was trying to be raucous and blasé. But behind her scripted sass was genuine pleasure, I decided, an unadulterated delight that we were together again, however clinical the occasion. That’s what I thought I saw, in any case, and what I wanted to see as well. I hoped she saw the same in me.

  I offered the cliché that came to mind. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Six years.”

  “Seems like longer.”

  “I know.”

  All of a sudden her lip began to tremble and her eyes glistened until she blinked away the polish that forecasts a rush of memory. This time when she spoke, the words didn’t come from a script.

  “I hurt you when I left,” she said softly. “I want you to know that I know that, Marsh; I’m sure it was a difficult time for you. Before we go further, I want to tell you I’m sorry.”

  I said what you say at such times. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. You did what you had to do, and justifiably so. I was a jerk there at the end.”

  She waved away the indictment. “Just so you know that’s not why I left. To hurt you, I mean. I just … everything was upside down. I’d done things that were inconceivable to me, things diametrically opposed to the way I wanted to live and the woman I thought I was, things that horrified and disgusted me. Disgusted both of us.”

  I started to object but she didn’t let me.

  “I could see it in your eyes. Your contempt. And worse, your disappointment. The bottom line was, I had no idea who I was or why I’d done the things I’d done, I just knew I had to get away so I could find out. And so I wouldn’t see my mistakes reflected in your eyes.”

  It was painful to be described as her persecutor. To reduce the urge to counterpunch or to indulge in self-reproach, I examined the decor for as long as I could, then wrenched the issue toward its end. “Did it work? Did you find out what you needed to know about yourself?”

  It took her a while to respond. “Not right away, but eventually. I’m not as bad as I feared or as good as I hoped, which I suppose is where most people come out if they bother to think about it. I think that who I am is pretty close to the person who applied for a job with you way back then, the one who told you she’d water your plants but wouldn’t make coffee. Famous last words.”

  I smiled. “I haven’t had a decent cup since you left.”

  We shared some mutual recollection and maybe a dollop of regret that issues were no longer that simple between us.

  In the echo of our implicit truce, we sipped our drinks and inspected our fellow diners and tried to recover our balance. I glanced at the menu without absorbing it. The waitress returned, lingered, and left. Time was glutinous and thick with memory, combined pain and pleasure in a simmering stew that was too problematic to sample. When I looked at Peggy she was crying.

  “There’s no need to rehash it,” I said softly. “It was a difficult time for both of us, but the good news is it’s over. You’re happy, right? That’s what’s important. What happened back then, and why, doesn’t matter anymore. The only way it can do more damage is if we let it.”

  “But it changed my life. Our lives. We might have been … you know what we might have been.”

  “Leave it, Peggy. Just leave it. It might have been great or it might have been awful, but now it’s just one more thing we’ll never know. Like what was on the Watergate tapes.”

  After enduring my wit and wisdom, Peggy sighed and shrugged and threw off her mood. “I’ll try to take your word for it.” She dredged up a grin and glanced at the menu. “I assume from the phone call that your tastes in food haven’t changed much.”

  “Not true. Sometimes I go gourmet.”

  “Which means?”

  “Fig Newtons instead of Oreos.”

  “Fat-free, I hope.”

  I made a face.

  She shook her head in exasperation and gestured with the menu. “I think you’ll like the chicken.”

  “Fine.”

  “And I’ll have the Walla Walla salad and salmon mousse.”

  “What are Walla Wallas?”

  “Sweet onions. Some people eat them like apples.”

  I summoned the waitress and gave her the order. She obtained some details, including my request for another round of drinks, then went off to start the process of overfeeding us.

  “Have you been in Seattle all this time?” I asked, just to be saying something.

  She nodded.

  “What made you pick it?”

  She shrugged. “A year full of rainy days seemed appropriate at the time.”

  “Is Allison still dancing?”

  Peggy shook her head. “Performance art. She adopts the roles of various people involved in the Hill-Thomas hearings, only reverses their race and gender.”

  “That could get to look a lot like a minstrel show, couldn’t it?”

  She laughed, though not quite on cue. “I’m afraid to ask. So have you gotten engaged or anything since I’ve seen you?”

  “No.”

  “Not even once?”

  “Nope.”

  “Must be a lot of broken hearts down there.”

  “Besides mine, you mean. Sorry,” I said quickly when I saw that I’d hurt her. “So tell me about your fiancé.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  She blinked as if her answer came in semaphore. “Ted’s a banker, sort of.”

  “What’s a ‘sort of’ banker do?”

  “He’s more like a venture capitalist.”

  “Venture capitalists tend to be rich, don’t they?”

  She couldn’t quite meet my eye. “Ted inherited a lot of money and he’s putting it to good use.”

  “Good for him. What’s he look like?”

  “He’s tall, gray, and handsome. He golfs and collects Native American artifacts; there was a big write-up on his collection in the Times a while back. And he’s very kind, Marsh. Conservative, and kind.”

  “That sounds like one trait too many.”

  She reddened as though I’d caught her shoplifting. “He’s okay as long as I forbid him to watch Rush Limbaugh.”

  The subject was hot so I dropped it. “He was married before?”

  She nodded. “He’s been divorced for twelve years.”

  “His doing or hers?”

  “His.”

  “Where’s the ex-wife?”

  She looked beyond me. “About four blocks from here. She’s got a dress shop down by the market. Her home is out on Phinney Ridge.”

  “What market is that?”

  “You don’t know the Pike Place Market? It’s our chief tourist attraction. I’d take you down there except I can’t think of a single thing y
ou’d find remotely interesting. Except maybe the bar at Il Bistro.”

  “Why that?”

  “They specialize in single-malt whiskeys.”

  I smiled. “I’ll check it out once I’ve finished the job. Which I can start as soon as I know what the hell it is.”

  Peggy wrinkled her nose and dabbed her lip with her napkin. “Can’t it wait till after dinner?”

  Buy Flesh Wounds Now!

  About the Author

  Stephen Greenleaf (b. 1942), a former lawyer and an alumnus of the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop, is a mystery and thriller writer best known for his series of novels starring PI John Marshall Tanner. Recognized for being both literate and highly entertaining, Greenleaf’s novels often deal with contemporary social and political issues.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1993 by Stephen Greenleaf

  Cover design by Drew Padrutt

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2760-1

  This 2016 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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