Nora Roberts - High Noon

"Affair."

"We are not only attractive public servants, but cynical ones."

"Hmm." Phoebe ran it through her head as they rode the elevator down. "I don't see the dead wife as the love of his life. Strikes me as he's more or less x'd her out like he might a canceled meeting. But if she had a lover… maybe one she was planning on running off with. Broke open that piggy bank."

"Wrong time, wrong place. Her shooter and his cohorts are doing life, but that might not be enough for a brokenhearted lover. Have to blame somebody."

"And everyone got out alive but her. I didn't get a medical team in, not in time."

"Couldn't," Liz corrected. "I read the file, too, Phoebe."

"If someone was in love with her, if someone was eaten up by guilt that she went to the bank because of him, 'couldn't' wouldn't mean squat. Let's track down Angela Brentine's friends, her hairdresser, her personal trainer. The kind of people an unhappy woman talks to. If she had a lover, one of them knows."

"I can get the best friend." Liz took out her phone as they crossed the lobby and stepped outside. "I've got a friend with the paper. I'll ask him to pull up the report on the Brentine wedding. Best friend was probably maid of honor, or certainly in the wedding party."

"Aren't you handy to have around?"

"The guy I used to live with thought so, until I showed him the door."

Glynis Colby was a long beanpole of a blonde in jeans and a linen shirt. Her photographer's studio claimed a corner of the third floor of a rehabbed house near Greene Square. Various props, including an enormous teacup and an army of stuffed animals, were stacked around the walls. She called her assistant-a little guy with a streaked ponytail and a cherubic smile-Dub when she asked him to get everyone a cold drink. "I still miss her. It's been three years and counting, and I'll see something and think, I've got to call Angie. But she's not here."

Here was the emotion Joshua Brentine had lacked. "You were friends a long time?" Phoebe asked her.

"Since we were fourteen. Glyn, Angie and Dub-the unholy trinity. We were going to be famous together."

"I know your work," Liz put in. "You took pregnancy photos of a cousin of mine. They were gorgeous. Then she came back with her little boy. You've got a good reputation-deservedly."

"We do pretty well, right, Dub?"

He gave her hand a squeeze after he'd set down glasses. "Angie? She was the sweet part of the heart."

"We had this concept," Glynis continued. "Angie specialized in wedding photography, I'd do pregnancy and children. A fun way, we thought, to generate repeat business. Plus, she just loved doing weddings, had such an eye for them. And Dub…"

"I'd run the business."

"I was under the impression that Angela wasn't working at the time of her death."

"No. Joshua didn't like it. Or us." Glynis slanted her gaze toward Dub, wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Bad influences."

"He hated me more," Dub put in. "Homophobe."

Glynis poked him in the arm. "Oh, you just like to be number one. He hated me just as much. I was the slut."

"I was the gay man slut. That trumps. He met her at a wedding she was working," Dub continued. "Big society deal and a huge coup for us."

"We'd only been in business for about eight months."

"She was beautiful. Really beautiful, and I meant it about the sweet."

"And she had enormous charm. Joshua swept her right off her feet." Using both hands, Glynis made a broad, swooping gesture. "Acres of flowers-heavy on the pink roses she liked best. Candlelight dinners, romantic getaways. Six weeks later, she was engaged. Three months after that she was Mrs. Joshua Brentine."

"Then it started." Dub's mouth tightened as he picked up the story. "He pressured her into quitting her work. How could she snap pictures-as he put it-at weddings when, if the wedding was important enough, she'd be a guest?"

"And she had a duty to blah, blah, blah," Glynis said with a shrug. "She gave it up, gave it all up for him. She adored him. He didn't like her socializing with us, so he made it difficult. Manipulating's a Bren tine specialty. So we'd grab lunch now and then, and she wouldn't tell him, or we'd have dinner when he was out of town."

"Dangerous liaisons," Dub added. "When did she start the affair?"

Glynis's eyes widened at Phoebe's question. "How do you know about that?"

"Why don't you tell us about it?"

"It wasn't sleazy. It wasn't like that, she wasn't like that. Joshua had to have everything his way. He wouldn't let her be, and she got more and more unhappy. He expected her to be available round the clock for him, but he could do whatever he damn well pleased."

"Easy tiger," Dub said as he rubbed Glynis's shoulder.

"All right." Glynis took a long breath. "All right. She was miserable, and he wouldn't give way on anything. He wouldn't consider counseling, and nixed therapy for her when she got depressed. She didn't have any money of her own by that time. Everything was in his name. When she came to realize divorce was going to be the only way, she'd come in here a couple times a week, more if she could manage it. She'd do setup, darkroom work, digital manipulation, anything we needed, and we paid her in cash."

"She met someone. She wouldn't say how or where or who, but she was happy." Dub pulled out a blue handkerchief, handed it to Glynis so she could wipe her eyes. "The light came back into her."

"When did the light come back?"

"About six months before she died. She called him Lancelot, her pet name for him."

"How'd they contact each other?"

"She bought a preloaded cell phone. His idea, right, Dub?"

"Yeah, she said that he knew how to do what had to be done. Listen, the men responsible for what happened to her are in prison. What's the point of dragging this out now?"

"It's going to help us on another case. Anything you can tell us about the man she was involved with could help."

"Well, I think he had a place on the west side where they'd hook up." Glynis glanced at Dub, got a nod. "I saw her the day before it happened. She was flying. She said she'd decided to move out, to get a di vorce. As soon as that was done, she and Lancelot were going to get married. She was going to take what money she had and move to Reno, establish the residency requirements for the divorce. She wanted it fast. She always wanted fast."

"Anything else that you know about him, anything she said about him? However minor a detail."

"I think he worked out-seriously. She talked about how he was really built, and worked at it. He was giving her tips on getting stronger physically."

"Blue eyes," Dub remembered. "She bought him a shirt one day, said it matched his eyes. Blue rugby style. Nice. And he cooked."

"That's right, that's right. She said how sexy it was to watch him cooking dinner. I remember it surprised me, because he didn't seem the type."

"Why not?"

"Everything else she said, or the impressions I got, said ultra machismo. To be honest, I was worried about her. We both were. He seemed like the polar opposite of Joshua, and we wondered if she didn't fall into all this as a kind of reaction. Hot-blooded, tough, physical. Blue collar."

"Why do you say blue collar?"

"Sometimes she called him her blue knight. Maybe it was the eyes, though. But I got the impression he was a working stiff, you know." Or maybe the blue was the uniform, Phoebe thought.

"He was really pushing her to leave Joshua. He didn't like the idea of her sleeping with another man, even though sex had become a nonissue between Angie and Joshua. She said it made Lancelot crazy to imagine it, and I think she liked that part. It made her feel sexy and vital again. But it felt like another kind of manipulation to me."

"She needed a breather," Dub said. "Some time to get Angie back.