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(Standard disclaimer is still in effect.)

Mort and Nadine spent the Saturday before Memorial Day digging up the garden so they could plant the tomatoes. It was a clear day, not too warm, and the calm lake reflected the billowy white clouds overhead. Mort spaded up the plot as Nadine tossed rocks over the low wall surrounding the garden. Near the wall, Rainey could see the squared-off block of granite that marked Chico's grave. He smiled ruefully as he thought of the old dog. He really had been man's best friend...he'd been Mort's only friend during those awful months after the break-up with Amy.

Now that he was regaining his memories of the bad times, he could remember what really happened to Chico -- not without a certain amount of guilt, but neither he nor Shooter had laid a hand on the dog. That was part of the problem; he'd been drunk on his ass when Chico had started to howl and convulse. There might have been something a vet could do, but Mort was in no shape to drive, and he'd had to watch the dog's final agonies.

"I think I'm gonna take your advice." Nadine's voice brought him back from the painful past.

Mort leaned on his shovel and looked over at her. "Which advice would that be?"

"I'm gonna revisit the town of Welton. You said it yourself, Faulkner did it all the time."

"Not saying it's a bad idea, but what brought that on?" Rainey loosened the soil, preparing the ground for the seedlings waiting in the shade of the porch.

"Oh, watching you wrestle with that monster of yours, I guess. It's a big job, but you're giving it your best shot. I never was really happy with 'Adele's Promise', you know?"

"You can't step in the same river twice, they say."

"Maybe not, but I've still got stories to tell."

"That's a good enough reason." They worked in companionable silence. Rainey was wearing the same blue chambray shirt he'd had on the first time she'd met him, unbuttoned to the waistband of his jeans, but today Shooter's hat was hanging on a peg in Nadine's living room and Mort was bare-headed.

The sound of a car coming down the drive made them both glance up. Of course, the driveway was on the far side of the cabin, so they could only look at each other. "The sheriff?" Rainey asked. He knew there was nothing for him to feel guilty about, but months of being under suspicion had taken their toll.

"What for? Naw, just listen...that's no cruiser. Probably some lost tourist."

A few minutes later, a woman walked around to the back of the cabin. Her blonde hair was cut in a dutch bob, and the fuschia suit clinging to her slender body was expensive. (Whatever she's selling, it must pay good. Real estate, maybe?) "Can I help you?" Rainey called to her.

"Mort?" It wasn't until she said his name that he recognized her.

Rainey stared. "Amy? What did you do to your hair? Never mind that, where the hell did you disappear to?"

"What do you mean, where did I disappear to? I was in Europe, Mort. I told you about that the day you signed the divorce papers."

"No, you didn't." Shooter's memories of that day a year ago came back vividly to Mort. "You came over, I signed your damn papers, and you left. You never even came in the house, Amy, you didn't say anything except sign here, here and here. And I did, just to have it all over and done with. Then you left. When I tried to call you later, your phone was disconnected, I never heard from you again -- do you have any idea how -- ?"

"Ted's company had an assignment for him in Belgium. It looks like it's going to be permanent, so I'm over here tying up some loose ends." (Did she just call me a loose end?) Nadine gave a little snort, and Amy seemed to notice her for the first time. "Oh, hi there, I'm Amy Milner, Mort's ex." She seemed to want to head off any more censure from Rainey.

"Nadine Cooper." Nadine offered her hand -- without bothering to wipe off the dirt first, Mort noticed.

"The Nadine Cooper? Really? Mort loves your work."

Rainey put an arm around Nadine's waist. "We're working on a book together," he told Amy. "Nadine lives just across the cove."

"I see." Amy's smile flickered, then she aimed it at Rainey like a weapon. "I've got tons of pictures, and I thought -- " (You thought what, thought you'd come around and tumble me for old times sake while your precious Ted is over in freaking Belgium? I can't believe the hell I put myself through for you. You aren't worth it.)

"You go right ahead, Rainey," Nadine said sweetly. "We can put in the tomatoes tomorrow. I'll just head home and rewrite the cemetary scene." It had taken five days for them to work out that pivotal installment; Nadine's casual declaration yanked Mort's attention from his unexpected visitor, as she had undoubtedly intended it to.

"The hell you will! What do you mean, you're going to rewrite it?"

"Because Russell didn't kill Florence. That lily-livered momma's boy doesn't have it in him."

Rainey clutched the shovel. "What do you mean, he didn't do it? If he didn't do it, who did?"

Nadine smiled. "Walter."

"Are you out of your mind? The milkman?"

"Exactly. He gets all over town, nobody would think twice about seeing him out and about before dawn, his truck is big enough to haul a body in, and remember the kitchen scene with him and Abigail?"

"That takes on a whole new meaning," Rainey said slowly.He was oblivious to Amy standing there, although he would've recognized the glazed expression she got when he engaged in too much shop talk.

"Uh-huh." Nadine was practically purring. "What if it was him that was blackmailing Ruby?"

"But wait -- what about the fire in the toolshed?"

"Red herring. We know Hubert keeps a bottle out there, right? Well, what if he's out there gettin' a nip and knocks over the paint thinner? It's a hot summer day, in a tin shed with the door closed back up, kaboom, spontaneous combustion when the fumes ignite, and of course, Hubert's not going to admit what happened, so he says he saw Bobbie over there."

"Huh...I like it." Mort was nodding. "You're right, the tomatoes can wait."

"Mort? Aren't we -- ?" The stranger he'd been married to was regarding him with perplexity.

"Amy, it's been great seeing you again. Have a nice life. Oh, if you want to show somebody your pictures, why don't you go into town and give Sheriff Dave a look? He asks about you all the time." Nadine giggled in his arms as he steered her up the porch steps. As the screen door banged shut behind them, Rainey kissed her thoroughly until well after the sound of Amy's departing car had faded away. "You are a dangerous woman, Miss Nadine."

"Shoot, you thought I was gonna leave you alone with Euro Barbie?"

He laughed at her barbed comment. "Let's go write down some of these brilliant ideas before they get away."

Nadine smiled back. With the long braid hanging down her back, tattered blue jeans and her "Tierney County Fair 1994" tee shirt, she couldn't have looked less like Amy -- or more beautiful. She wasn't impatient with his ideas, or his need to write. She understood his problems, sometimes better than he did himself. The part of him that had been John Shooter had been so right to bring them together. What would have happened if he hadn't? That was a mystery better left unsolved.

There was no mystery at all about why he loved her, Rainey thought, and kissed her again -- for both of them.

THE END

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