Full House: A Laid-Back Bay Area Mystery (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 3) by Shelley Singer Page B

night?”
    He laughed. “No. She’s coming home at midnight. But we’re staying.”
    “I’ve got work to do tomorrow. But I could stick around for a while, maybe leave when she comes home.”
    He shook his head. “Can’t have people running in and out of here at that hour. That’s prime time. If he’s around tonight, he’ll be out there somewhere around then, for sure.”
    “What if he mugs her on the street?”
    “Not his M.O. He likes houses, likes to take what’s inside. Besides,” he grinned, “we’ll be watching out there, too.”
    “The night has a thousand eyes,” I muttered.
    “But mostly I can’t let you stay because you’re not trained.”
    I gave up. We shook hands and I slipped out the front door to my car.
    Driving home, I thought about some of the things he’d said. He really seemed to care about Marjorie, but I couldn’t forget what he’d said about the other woman who’d left him. Even though it sounded like he’d had plenty of reason, the fact remained that his feelings about her, and her boyfriend, were pretty ferocious. Murderous.
    He’d asked me if I’d ever felt that way and I hadn’t answered him. Had I? I’d had a hard time getting over a sleazy marriage to someone who had, like his girlfriend, lied and cheated. But had I ever felt like killing her, or the slime she’d been sneaking around with?
    I remembered the day I went back to talk about possessions— which ones I would take right then, which ones she could have, which ones I’d want when I settled in somewhere.
    It had been only two weeks since I’d walked out. I remember thinking, two weeks ago this woman was still my wife, still the woman I’d married and lived with and loved. In that two weeks, I’d sworn to leave her to her lovers, gotten scared of the loss and decided to forgive her, and discovered that she didn’t want my forgiveness, didn’t want me to come back. I sat there in our living room, across from her. She was sitting in my favorite chair; I was on the couch.
    She had that look. The one that means, “I can’t wait to get this over with and get you out of here and get on with my life.” The look that is so hard to believe, so impossible to take in, when it comes from someone who used to love you. The look that always makes you wonder if they ever really did. It’s the final look. There’s no coming back from it. She was talking to me and she was completely inside herself, protecting herself from my pain but not really caring about it, just wanting it away somewhere. I wondered if her face had always been that large and flat and square. Because she was different, now, I could really see her. The charm was gone; she wasn’t turning it on for me any more. The illusion was gone. There was nothing looking at me but her naked face, and it was not a face I loved.
    I hadn’t wanted to kill her then. But months later, when the shock had worn off and the anger had set in, I might have had one or two little moments…

– 8 –
    Yellow Brick Farms occupied an old dairy near Boyes Hot Springs, just north of the town of Sonoma, in the eastern part of the county of Sonoma. I drove north along 80 to Vallejo, up through Napa County, and over the line. I was remembering that a decade or more ago, there’d been an ark in this area, too, but an ark of a different kind.
    It was a huge old hotel-restaurant that looked like the world’s biggest riverboat, owned and run by an ex-madam. The place always seemed to be surrounded by animals— dogs, cats, chickens, even a goat or two— and was decorated inside like you’d expect an old-style whorehouse to be decorated. The ex-madam, a huge woman who inspired both fear and loyalty in her employees, could sometimes be seen lolling on her bed through the open door of a draperied room just inside the entrance. She could always be seen somewhere in that hotel, yelling at a waiter, watching a bartender, casting a businesslike eye over the clientele. It was a great