Witness To Kill (Change Of Life Book 1) (12 page)

“Nobody’s perfect, right?”

“Well, t…that’s sure true,” he smiled and nodded with his
head down.

“Besides . . . doesn’t that Ruggle have something wrong with
him
? His arm?”

Walker gazed at her hand like it was something precious. He
either didn’t hear, or didn’t answer.

“Why don’t you let me order for both of us?” She pulled her
hand away, changing her tone and the subject. “You picked the place, I’ll pick
the meal. Deal?”

He grinned and nodded, his face eased to almost comfortable
as he watched her silently as she selected antipasto and veal prepared for two,
a split of the house
Chianti
for herself,
Pellegrino
for the
on-duty agent.

Walker’s table manners were as easy and precise as his gait.
He ate neatly and in a pleasant silence, as if he relished using his mouth like
everyone else. Mary slyly regarded his mouth and for a fleeting moment wondered
how he kissed, smiled milkily into his shy eyes as she considered it.

As she did her
Mona Lisa
on him, she noticed the
other couple weren’t eating and were staring at she and Mark. She looked back.
The woman’s face was drawn back tight as if she’d just been startled, her skin
tanned to bronze under heavy silver and turquoise jewelry. The half-bald man
sat comfortably next to her with his salad untouched, his hands folded in front
of him with backs as smooth and white as polished bone.

Mary’s eyes returned to her earnest-looking companion and
she decided the two of them probably
did
make a handsome young couple,
an attractive couple worthy of being stared at by an older couple remembering
the bloom of their own youth. She felt relaxed with Clay Mark Walker, and she
was learning not to try to talk all the time—or she was working on learning it.
But his earlier question about Sherry lingered between them like an indistinct
stale odor.

“Is there a reason you guys don’t trust Sherry?”

They were the first words either had spoken for a time and
she saw the pained look sweep back across his face; his reaction only sharpened
the question.

“Uh. T..that’s, uh. I can’t, uh, t..talk . . .” His head
shook and his face colored has he began again. “Will you ask me that, uh,
another t..time?

Do you, ah . . . do you mind?”

“Sure,” she looked away and whispered quickly. “Another
time.”

After a long, awkward pause she pulled her eyes off the
ballerina and asked in a social voice. “So . . . is taking pictures your main
hobby?”

During his small self-conscious nods her thoughts drifted
back in time to her parents, then to her son watched over by an odd old woman
in a nondescript rented room five hundred miles away. Its muse fueled by the
second glass of Chianti and the candlelight, stirred by the music and the
moments of human brilliance replicated on the wall, her mind ventured to where
she never allowed it to go: Back to the time before Brian. Back to John. Back
to the time when art was alive.

Passengers with no one meeting them entered the terminal
wearing neutral, unfocused gazes; others emerged more expectantly, eyes open
and searching, mouths poised to smile. The serious-looking boy waiting in the
New
Orleans Jazz Festival
t-shirt holding the hand of a homberg-wearing man in
bib overalls would have been taken as grandson and grandfather by a casual
observer.

The boy’s face lighted when he spotted them walking down the
corridor partitioned by squares of wired glass, but he remained at the man’s
side. As they stepped into the lobby, the woman’s face broke into a surprised
grin when she saw the boy, her step quickened and she left the tall trim man
carrying the suitcases a pace behind. The boy’s brown eyes appraised the
younger man’s quick questioning glance at the older as they approached, but he
didn’t say anything before lunging into the woman’s spread arms, his tennis
shoes swept from the floor by her embrace. The younger man smiled politely at
the boy as he set the bags down during the greeting, one hand gripping the
strap of the briefcase slung over his shoulder as the two men exchanged
cautious nods.

“What a nice surprise!” The woman patted the older man’s
bare lower arm without letting go of the boy. “You get to miss some school this
afternoon, honey?”

He nodded, still clinging.

“G’wan, son,” the older man thumbed back his hat. “Tell ‘er
what we got planned.”

“Picnic,” came muffled from the face still buried in her
breast. “Picnic. Police picnic.”

The older man looked on with a pleased look on his face; the
younger watched too, but his eyes went past the boy and woman, scanning the
fast-walking, cell-phone talking, chair-lounging, luggage-hauling,
ipod-wearing, monitor-scrutinizing, magazine-reading, handshaking, eating and
drinking, harried-looking, laughing, kid-dragging, nonsmoking, hugging and
kissing stream of humanity spooling around them, squinting into the faces of
strangers.

A good observer might have noticed the two men regard each
other guardedly, or sensed that while the younger man and the woman got off the
plane together—they weren’t
together.

The woman with her arms still around the boy was in her late
twenties, fresh-faced and attractive without the need to add more than
lipstick, her only jewelry a small silver watch and a single strand of pearls.
She wore no rings. Her body was athlete-trim under sheening brown hair bobbed
close; she wore low-heeled sandals with toe-nails painted to match her fingers.

Her companion looked like he might have been a lawyer or
banker away from his duties—the kind of man who had trouble unwinding, the kind
of man whose idea of vacation-wear was a dark blue suit with a dark and light
blue checked button-down dress shirt and navy knit tie over wine-colored
leather loafers. The observer might have reasonably concluded that the yuppie
couple’s getaway was the kind couples sometimes take to
sort things out
during a rough spot in the marital road.

Based on the
appearances
of things, those would have
been logical conclusions to the casual observer, even a careful casual
observer. But one pair of observers watching facelessly were anything
but
casual: They understood that what faces struggle to keep secret is far more
significant than what they allow to be revealed.

These two watched the little meeting scene and knew better.

The
End of Book 1

If you enjoyed this book and want to continue reading the
Change
of Life
series, check out:

Book 2:
Cuba Rising

You can also grab the full series novel
here
.

Thank you for buying and reading my book.

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minute to write a brief blurb about this book on Amazon? Reviews are the best
way for independent authors (like me) to get noticed and sell more books. I
also read every review and use feedback to write future revisions—and future
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Thank you.

Kent Keefer
is new to the on-line publishing world
after a lifetime of writing in a wide variety of differing venues, ranging from
history to law to authoring business writing advice and technical tomes.

The
Change of Life
series is itself the result of a
decade of writing, studying, and traveling and has been continually revised and
updated throughout that period. Kent has worked in a range of occupations
ranging from teaching English to both native and foreign students to coaching
high-level swimmers and boxers following a lot of time spent in those arenas in
his own youth.

Living and working on several continents has informed his
writing, as well as his experience—particularly applicable to
Change of
Life
—as a father who very much loves his own daughter. When asked what he
hopes for the reader to experience, he answers that if they are entertained and
edified, and if they come to know (and sometimes) love the characters and care
about what happens to them, he will feel he has succeeded as a writer.

View Kent’s Amazon author page
here
.