“I suppose the funeral date will be in the obituary in tomorrow’s paper?” my mother persisted.
He looked blank.
“I’m sure it will be,” he said.
We didn’t believe him for a minute.
“Jack Junior and Romney had better get home quick,” my mother said darkly as she slid her elegant legs into her car.
I drove home slowly, more questions in my mind than I’d had when I’d set out.
Chapter Two
“I think Dryden and Pope-I mean, O’Riley-were some kind of federal agents,” I told Martin as he pulled on his maroon pajama bottoms that night. He just uses the bottoms, except on very cold nights, and we don’t get too many of those in Lawrenceton. I’ve never figured out what to do with the tops. Sometimes I wear them. “FBI or CIA or federal marshals.”
“As long as they weren’t interested in me,” Martin said.
“You’re out of all that now. Jack’s death couldn’t have anything to do with you, no matter who’s investigating it.”
Discovering Martin’s secret life had been the most terrible blow I’d ever sustained. Martin was born to be a buccaneer. For a while his love of danger had been satisfied by a brief stint working for a shadowy CIA-funded company following the war. After he’d begun working for Pan-Am Agra, he’d been approached again, and had resumed his clandestine activities. Only his complete withdrawal from the gun smuggling he’d been facilitating on his legitimate business trips to Central America had made our marriage workable.
I had just about recovered from the fact that he hadn’t told me anything about it before we married; but it had taken a while. For a couple of months, separation had been a real possibility.
I didn’t like remembering that time.