She sagged back in her chair. It was always this way; you ran a case as long and as hard as you could, until you ran out of things to do. Then that case would go to the back burner,while you carried on with other cases, until hopefully something broke. What she could still do was check up a little bit more on the two husbands. She’d already checked their social media accounts, so next she did a Google search and checked at their offices. Neither had mentioned that they were great friends, but they obviously knew each other because their wives were great friends.
But how did she find out anything more about that? It was starting to feel too much like this one would go cold.
She finished off the report she was supposed to do, and, by the time she closed the file and set it off to the side of her desk, she realized she was alone in the office. Groaning, she stood, grabbed her keys and her wallet, and headed outside. She’d gone home after her earlier trip to the park and had walked back to work this afternoon, an impulse that she regretted right now. But, as she stood outside, catching her breath, a sports car drove up beside her. She stared in surprise as Simon hopped out. “Is this yours?” she asked.
He nodded. “Get in.”
She got in and said, “I should go home and get some extra sleep tonight.”
“Sounds fine to me,” he noted. “I’m all for it.”
She laughed. “But?”
“I just thought maybe we could go for a picnic at the beach first.”
She looked at him, smiling, then twisted around to see a large hamper in the back seat. Almost on cue her stomach growled.
He laughed. “So, was that a yes?”
“Sure. Whereabouts though?”
“How about Second Beach over at Stanley Park?”
“Perfect.” She was enormously pleased at the thought of something different. “Otherwise I would go home, grab some toast, and crash.” She checked her watch and winced. “I’m notsure how it got to be six-thirty, but that’s just the way it is. Have you been waiting for me very long?”
“No. I checked at the front desk, and they told me that you were still in, so I just sat in the car out here. The meter was actually running but whatever.”
She smiled. “I’m very happy that you did. Thank you.”
“You’ve got to look after yourself better than this,” he noted.
“I do look after myself,” she stated. “There’s nobetterabout it.”
At that, he let out a bark of laughter. Then he asked, “Any progress?”
“Hell no,” she said. “I thought I had a lead today, only it turned out to not be a lead at all.”
“Explain.”
She quietly told him about the confrontation between Jenna and a man named Kirby in the parking lot, and the end result of getting a hold of the Kirby guy.
“Interesting, so those women seem to have been quite aggressive.”
“Apparently the pair of them together was not great because they really egged each other on.”
“I’ve seen that a couple times before,” he stated. “The dynamic may be great for the two involved, but they aren’t better together in the sense that all friendships and relationships should be. They may, in fact, have brought out the worse in each other, and together they gave each other permission to behave badly. That’s the opposite of how it should be.”
“Do you believe that?”
He gave her a quick frown, as he maneuvered through the traffic and over the bridge to Stanley Park. “Of course I do.”
As soon as they arrived near Stanley Park, he pulled into a parking lot and slowly rolled down to the far end. He asked, “How about here?”
She nodded. “This looks great.” As they got out, he reached into the back seat and lifted the big picnic basket and a blanket. She smiled. “You at least thought ahead.”
“One of us has to,” he teased, with a smile. As they walked toward a nice grassy spot with picnic tables, he added, “And, yes, to answer your question again. I do succumb to that theory.”
She looked at him in surprise. “What? About two people together need to be better than they are apart?”