Give First Place to Murder by Kathleen Delaney Page A

Irma, Susannah, murder, pirates, Dan. They refused to go away. The pirate. There was something about him-–more, lots more, than Dan was admitting. He was connected to all this, but how? And how did I find out? It was obvious Dan wasn’t going to tell me so who would?
    Thoroughly irritated, I sat up in bed, snapped on the light and grabbed my book. It was equally obvious I wasn't going to make any headway solving these problems tonight, so I might as well see if I could figure out how the heroine in my latest thriller solved hers. Maybe she’d give me some ideas about what to do next.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    The red light on my desk phone flashed. I looked at it in alarm. I’d made an appointment with an about to be transferred young couple to list their house. Surely this wasn't them calling back, changing their mind.
    It was Dan.
    "You sound surprised to hear from me. Are you?”
    “ Of course not.” I was, not to hear from him but because a hectic Monday morning had raced by so fast.
    “ It's lunch time. We are meeting for lunch? The Yum Yum?"
    "Sure.” I pushed papers back into a file. “Ten minutes all right?"
    "No more than. I'm starved." The line was dead.
    I smiled a little ruefully and started to shuffle more papers into priority piles. Of course we were having lunch. We had been to lunch almost every day in the week since the murder. The police station was only three blocks from my office and the Yum Yum was right in the middle, making it easy for both of us. Dinner was harder, but Dan had shown up at my house three evenings and had taken me out Saturday night. Sunday, we had packed a picnic and gone to the beach.
    I loved being with Dan, and I missed sleeping with him, waking up with him beside me, sharing coffee and the morning news. I was pretty sure where our relationship had been headed. until I’d stalled it at “friendship.” I had an uneasy feeling that it wasn’t going to stay stalled forever and pretty soon I was going to have to make up my mind what I wanted, and how I wanted it. But not this afternoon.
    A few months earlier I would have had all the time in the world for lunch, but as I learned my new business, I found my days filling up. I’d closed a few sales and had more than a few listings. My knowledge level rose with every transaction I closed and every listing I won, as did my confidence. I was actually having fun.
    Brian and I had married the summer before my senior year of college. Susannah and graduation had arrived together. As wife of an up and coming obstetrician, my "job" was hostess, charity bazaar volunteer, country club member and, of course, mother. Never anything that paid a salary. Brian made more than enough money, a fact he told me often, and as long as I spent it in ways that reflected his idea of our social position, he was generous. Gradually the idea of "wife" as "partner" faded, and "wife" as "job" took its place. It became more and more clear that the job didn't carry a lifetime guarantee, and one day Brian's lawyer informed me my husband wanted a divorce so that he could marry again. I had known about his affairs but had tried to ignore them, telling myself all kinds of lies. Down deep, I knew I was putting off the inevitable. The only part that came as a shock was my strong feeling of relief, mixed, of course, with fury that this last time he had been cheating with a blond piece of fluff not too much older than Susannah.
    My lawyer, a true barracuda, told me to be grateful. It opened up a whole range of settlement possibilities. I left it all to her, enrolled in real estate school, got my license, and headed north. Coming "home" to Santa Louisa had probably been my Linus blanket. If so, it was working.
    I had been afraid that moving into my parents home would make me feel like a child again, but they were happy in Scottsdale, my things settled into the old house as though they had been made for it, and I felt, for the first time, that I had a home truly mine. My life