Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

her cup and placed it on the table. She stared at me and whispered, “He’s dead? Hank is dead? How?”

I handed her the death certificate.

Original Certificate of Death, Henry James Wagner, Male, Pronounced Dead December 29, 2016 3:15 AM, Age 42, DOA-From Nur. Hm., Hospital or Nursing Home-Padua Manor, Marital Status-Never Married

Manner of Death-Natural, Immediate Cause-Liver Failure, Cirrhosis

Funeral Service Licensee-Figgs Funeral Home

“Liver failure,” I said.

Marcy’s eyes went wide. “Hank didn’t drink or smoke. He was only forty-two. How would he get cirrhosis? And why didn’t he call me? I would have helped him, even after what he did. He didn’t have to die alone.” She began to cry, softly at first, then louder and harder. I put my arms around her and held her until she quieted and then handed her a tissue from my purse.

With a gulp, she sat back, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Then she took a slow sip from her coffee cup. It had to be lukewarm by now, but it seemed to steady her. “I always thought he’d come back, Angie. That, one day, he’d get in touch and come home and tell me why he left. That he’d ask to be part of the family again. That I’d let him.” Her eyes held so much sadness, so much want. “He was a good husband, a good father, a good man. I never understood how he could walk out the way he did, in the middle of the day, before his classes were even over. That wasn’t Hank, that wasn’t the kind of man he was.” She took a ragged breath. “Now I’ll never know. Unless … was there a letter?”

“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath and pointed to the marital status on the paper she held. “The death certificate lists him as ‘Never Married.’ I’ll call the nursing home and funeral director tomorrow morning.”

At that, she straightened and her head snapped up. “Never married?” She gazed back to the death certificate. When she spoke, her words were low and mournful. “So he abandoned us even in death. He didn’t want us, even then.”

I didn’t have a response to that. “Can I call someone to come and stay with you?”

“My mom hates Hank for what he did. She’ll do the ‘good riddance’ routine. I don’t want to hear that right now. You can’t live with a man, love a man, for twelve years and not feel grief when he dies.” She paused and then said, “I’ll call my older sister. She’ll come over.” Marcy stopped twisting the tissue. “And what do I tell the kids? We should probably have a funeral, for their sakes. Where is his … body?”

“I’ll find out.” Even though she knew how to contact me, I gave her a card. People get scattered during a time of shock. I assured her that I would be available any time she needed to talk and headed back to my car.

My high-rise condo was empty when I arrived home. Wukowski and I don’t live together, but we gave each other keys in November, right after we finally got around to saying the L-word to each other. Although we didn’t see each other every night, tonight I missed having him greet me with a kiss.

After my marriage of twenty-five years ended, I dated sporadically, but never settled into a stable relationship until I met homicide detective Wenceslas Tadeusz Wukowski. Ven-chess-louse Ta-doosh. Polish names are quite common in Milwaukee, but not the Christmas carol king! Small wonder he goes by Ted. We started out as adversaries on a prior case. By the time we admitted our attraction for each other, I’d gotten used to calling him by his last name. When I told him I didn’t sleep with men unless I knew their real names, he ’fessed up. His mom, the MPD’s HR people and I might be the only ones who knew the truth.

In his capacity as a Milwaukee homicide detective, Wukowski deals with violent death on a regular basis and has an almost irrational fear about women in danger. His sister was attacked and killed while in her teens—hence his mother’s dread of strangers—and his partner, Liz White, was savagely murdered during a drug investigation some years ago. He and I reached a tenuous balance concerning my PI work. I don’t take cases that might involve violence—none of them had, before I met Wukowski—and he respects my right to act according to my principles. Since my work generally centers on employee background checks, spouses wanting to know if their partners are unfaithful, and locating missing people when the police have given up, it isn’t much of a problem.

As I headed for the bedroom to shuck my work clothes, I got a text from him: Don’t expect me tonight. I texted him back: Be careful out there. It was a standard line we both said to each other. I hadn’t seen much of him since Thanksgiving Day, when Wukowski was called away to investigate a body on the lakefront bike path. Since then, two other bodies were found in areas used by joggers and bikers. The Journal Sentinel christened it the Bike Path Murders. I promised him that I’d use the treadmill in the condo gym until the killer was found.

I brewed a cup of herbal tea and settled on the sofa, watching the lights twinkle on Lake Drive, seeing the occasional steady beam from the breakwater’s edge. My ex was a cheater. Wukowski’s wife left him because she couldn’t handle the stress of his job and his mother’s agoraphobic reliance on him. Marcy’s husband simply disappeared. My intern Bobbie recently confessed that he was worried about his partner’s fidelity. Examples of good marriages—even good relationships—were few and far between, in my experience. As for Wukowski and me, it was early days. Was this a strong and steady kind of love, or one that twinkled in and out of existence like the lights along the lake shore? Time would tell. I