LITMIR.BIZ

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dark here. Besides, nobody’s looking. They’re all satiated from their own dinner and wine, and they’re heading back to their inns to make love by a nice cozy fire.”

      “Sounds like a plan to me. Are you finished interrogating me yet?”

      His lips slide up to mine. “I guess I could think of a few more fine points to explore.”

      “Well, get on with it, then, young fella. I’m aging pretty fast.”

      “Feeling better?” Ben asks as we begin walking again, along Ocean Avenue. Most of the shops are closed, but brightly lit restaurants line the block. At one count, probably not the latest, there were eighty-seven restaurants in the square mile of Carmel Village, and more than a hundred art galleries.

      “Better?” I ask. “Could you clarify?”

      “Than you were when you were sitting at home alone, thinking.”

      “Oh, that. Sure. You’ve wined and dined me like all get out. Why wouldn’t I feel better? Like a fattened calf, in fact.”

      “Funny, you don’t look like a fattened calf.”

      “Yeah? Then why do I feel like some ax is about to fall?”

      “I never can fool you, can I?” my lover says.

      “Just remember that. So, what is it?”

      “I didn’t quite tell you everything.”

      “I never for a moment thought you did. Okay…so what is it?”

      “Mauro and Hillars. They want to talk to you again.”

      “Oh, God.” I groan, holding out my wrists as if for handcuffs. “What a way to end a day.”

      He contains a smile, but I see it toying with his lips. “Not now. I just wanted you to know that they mentioned it. Said they’d be in touch with you.”

      “Ben, what the hell is going on? Why the Secret Service?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Don’t give me that.”

      “Abby, I swear, they won’t tell any of us what they’re doing here. Between you and me, it’s driving me nuts. I thought maybe when they talked to you again, you might get some clue.”

      “Ah, I see. And share it with you?”

      We resume walking, and he takes my hand and tucks it into his pocket. “I thought you might. We do share a few good things, don’t we?”

      “A few.” Halfway down the block I pause, adding, “We’re gonna share a whole lot more if you don’t stop doing what you’re doing to my fingers.”

      “It’s my new interviewing technique,” Ben says.

      “Well, guess what? It’s working.”

      For the first time in the five months we’ve been together, Ben comes home with me. And, of course, it’s the one time Jeffrey decides to return early from a trip.

      We are under a nice warm comforter in my bedroom—the one only I sleep in now, though Jeffrey still shares the closets. A fire is crackling, and the French doors to the bedroom deck are open a few inches so we can hear the waves beating on the shore. There is soft music playing.

      Even so, I hear my husband’s footsteps on the stairs. No way to miss them, after all these years.

      Ben and I are both naked, and our clothes are strewn all over the floor, so there’s no time to grab something, throw it on and pretend we’re having a council meeting. Though I hear there are Carmel council members who have done just that, over the years.

      As Jeffrey walks in, I sit up, pulling the sheets to my neck and playing for time. “You’re home early,” I complain loudly, hoping to put the blame on him for catching us.

      He takes in the scene with one glance.

      “Well, if I’d known you were entertaining, I’d have called ahead,” he says mildly. Despite his attempt at indifference, I could swear his graying George Clooney hair is bristling—like a lion’s when he finds a strange male in his lair.

      Ben, for his part, struggles to maintain his dignity—a losing battle, given that he’s lying naked next to another man’s wife. I can hear the wheels rolling: Do I get out of bed and run into the bathroom while they duke it out, or do I grab my clothes and make a fast departure out the door?

      Ben hates confrontation of the personal kind. Give him a gun and a perp, and he’s a whole other guy.

      “Stay where you are, Ben,” I say firmly. “It’s not as if this is something new for Jeffrey, after all.”

      I feel him sliding down under the sheets inch by inch.

      “Hello, Ben,” Jeffrey says. “How’s the bid for promotion going? I hear you’re up for chief.”

      The threat to expose us is obvious. Whether Jeffrey will carry it out while I’ve got him and the bimbo as collateral is doubtful. Still, he must swagger a bit.

      “It’s going fine,” Ben says in a conversational voice that makes me proud. He has apparently decided to pretend he’s standing in our living room, dressed in a tux. “How are things with you, Jeffrey?”

      “Fine, fine.” Jeffrey heads for his walk-in closet. “Well, you two go on with what you were doing. I just came back for clean shirts.”

      Ben and I look at each other. Jeffrey gets his shirts. He stops at the bureau for cuff links and takes his time finding them. Ben and I are motionless in the bed, sheets to our necks, barely breathing.

      “I’ll be off now,” Jeffrey says a hundred years later, making his way to the door. He stops only momentarily on the landing as Murphy growls again. We hear his footsteps going down the stairs, then his car leaving.

      Ben groans and throws the comforter over his face. His voice comes muffled from under the pillowy down. “If he tells anyone, I’m a goner.”

      I crawl under the covers and reach for him. “Well, then, young fella, I say we make hay while the sun shines. Let’s see, what have we here…”

      5

      Marti is buried in a small Catholic cemetery south of Carmel, along the road to Big Sur. The burial site is on an old Spanish estate, and I have learned through Ben that the owner, Lydia Greyson, came forward to offer it. She would be honored, she said, to have Marti laid to rest along with her own ancestors. In addition, she pledged that Marti’s grave would be well protected from curiosity seekers, behind the high adobe walls of the estate.

      Who this woman is, or why she has offered a family burial plot to Marti, I don’t know. I can only suppose she must know Marti’s brother, Ned, or at least have talked to him, as he would have had to agree to the arrangements.

      A long line of black cars and limos winds southward along the twisting road. There are places where one can drive only fifteen miles per hour in the best of weather, and the best of weather has not graced us today. Fog creeps in on great big elephant feet, clomping up from the sea and over the road, where it smothers the hills.

      Jeffrey drives our black Mercedes, and we sit quietly beside each other, steeped in our individual thoughts. Ahead of us, in a limo, is Ned, whom I’ve never really met, despite the few times I saw him years ago with Marti. When we were in high school, Ned was away in college, and when we went to Joseph and Mary, the most he ever did was show up on visiting Sunday once or twice.

      With Ned are two women veiled in black. One seemed slightly familiar at the church, in the way she carried herself, but there was no way of knowing who she might be. Family, surely, to be veiled that way. This surprises me, as I had thought all of Marti’s other relatives had passed away.

      Behind us are limos filled with local residents,

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