Death by Pride - Mark McNease Page 0,3

in much more detail than Linda had been able to on her last visit. That was in late April a year ago, and she and Kyle had been caught up trying to stop the killer Kieran Stipling as he murdered his way through a list of people connected to the Katherine Pride Gallery. Whatever sightseeing Linda had planned that visit was abandoned in the race to end the killing. Kyle intended to make up for it this time.

Danny walked in wearing the plush brown robe Kyle gave him the previous Christmas. The smell of morning coffee always brought him out of the bedroom, trailed moments later by their cats, Smelly and Leonard.

“Linda awake yet?” he asked, heading straight to the coffee pot and taking a cup from the cabinet above it. The cats took up position at his feet, expecting early morning treats.

“I doubt it,” Kyle said. “I think she was up late, I heard her talking on the phone just before I fell asleep.”

“It’s terrible about Kirsten’s mother. I wish we could see her again.”

“I’m sure Linda wishes it, too. We’re at that age, Danny …”

“I know, I know, let’s not talk about it.”

Time did not take sides, it only passed in a constant flow, and eventually the people we ride the stream with begin to fall off to the shore. Kyle’s father had been gone over fifteen years. Margaret was heading off soon for a few good years in Florida before she, too, slipped from the stream. It wouldn’t be long before their parents were gone and they took their place at the head of the line, saying goodbye to friends one by one—or perhaps saying goodbye themselves. Life makes no guarantees and takes no reservations.

Linda’s wife Kirsten was in Phoenix with her dying mother. The women had hastily flown her to New Jersey in March and married in a very small ceremony in Stockton with just Kyle, Danny, and the women’s mothers in attendance. It was the kind of wedding Kyle envied after the ordeal of his own. The next day Kirsten flew back with her mother and had been spending weeks at a time travelling back and forth. Her mother, Dot McClellan, had cancer metastasized throughout her body and was not expected to see the end of July. Linda’s plan was to enjoy this weekend in the city with Kyle and Danny, then head to Phoenix. It had taken a serious toll on both women, and Kyle noticed how much thinner Linda was when she’d arrived yesterday afternoon.

They’d met Detective Linda Sikorsky a year and a half ago during Halloween weekend at Pride Lodge. The Lodge sat on twenty-five acres near the Delaware River, on the Pennsylvania side. Kyle’s friend and lodge handyman, Teddy Pembroke, had been found dead at the bottom of the lodge’s empty pool, and Linda was the homicide detective investigating the death, which proved to be deliberate. Murder, it seemed, was their first commonality, but since then they’d found many more. Kyle and Linda spoke every few days, and last fall he and Danny spent a week at her small house in the woods in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. Linda had inherited the house from her aunt Celeste and, with some reluctance, moved from her longtime home in New Hope to take up residence with the deer, rabbits and strange sounds nature makes when it has no competition. The highlights of the visit were supposed to be a week of sightseeing, country living and good food at fine local restaurants; instead, it became a hunt for the killer of Abigail Creek, matriarch of CrossCreek Farm and victim of a vicious hit-and-run. Their time together always seemed to attract murderers—or the other way around—and sometimes Kyle wondered if they should just maintain a long-distance friendship, in the interest of keeping people alive.

“Did you see Vinnie when you picked up the mail this morning?” Danny asked, stirring creamer into his coffee and taking it to the table. He sat next to Kyle and picked up the mail, flipping through it so see what was his. Leonard stayed in the kitchen, staring up at the coffee pot as if he could not understand there were no treats in it for him. Smelly, the wiser of the two, followed Danny to the table and perched at his feet, knowing he would eventually relent and get the pouch of fish-flavored nuggets for her.

“Come to think of it, no. The relief guy was on duty, what’s his name?”

“Dayton.”

“Dayton?