Spring Break by Charlotte Douglas

Author:Charlotte Douglas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2006-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Adler lived in a southside Pelican Bay neighborhood in a gray clapboard house with black shutters and a wide front porch that stretched across the front like open arms. The porch light illuminated rocking chairs, an old-fashioned swing, pots of red geraniums and a toddler-size tricycle. Although the place was small—most cops couldn’t afford bigger— Adler and Sharon had done the renovating themselves and created an updated, cozy home.

Bill parked his new SUV, what I called his Macho Machine, at the front curb and looked around through the gathering twilight.

“This is a great neighborhood,” he said. “How’d you like to live here?”

Having visited the Adlers often, I was familiar with the area. “Lots of families with young children. It might be too noisy for a couple of old fogies like us.”

Bill laughed. “You’re barely forty-nine. In Florida, you’re not an old fogy until at least eighty-five.”

“But, you have to admit, we are accustomed to our peace and quiet.”

But only in our off-hours. Between us, we’d witnessed too much death, destruction and pain, with Deirdre Fisk and Carlton Branigan and the ripple effect of their murders on their families only the latest examples. Maybe that’s why I felt so old.

And maybe that’s why living in a neighborhood filled with young couples and children would be good for me. I’d promised myself when I’d agreed to marry Bill that I’d learn to lighten up. I decided to rethink my reservations about living in a subdivision. Surrounding myself with young lives and laughter might be a good start to adjusting my attitude.

“It wouldn’t hurt to check with a real-estate agent and find out what’s available,” I said.

He glanced at me in surprise. “You’re serious?”

“We have to live somewhere. This neighborhood is close to the office and the marina.”

I waited for the wave of panic that usually followed any thought of permanently blending my life with Bill’s, but tonight it didn’t come.

I did, however, jump in alarm when someone rapped on my window. Adler was standing beside the SUV, so I opened the door.

“You two coming in?” he asked, “or were you planning to sit here and neck like a couple of teenagers?”

“Not with an audience.” Bill climbed out, shut the door and, after I climbed out, keyed the lock. “That spoils the fun.”

We followed Adler up the walk, and Sharon, petite with green eyes and dark brown hair, met us at the door with a welcoming smile.

“Coffee’s almost ready,” she said. “Come into the kitchen.”

The Adlers had taken out a wall between two rooms at the back of the house, so their kitchen and family room flowed into one large space that opened onto the backyard through a wall of French doors. A pine table centered the eat-in kitchen that smelled of oranges, the same aroma that used to fill the air from the juice concentrate processing plant in Dunedin before the citrus groves’ demise.

Bill and I settled at the table across from Adler, and Sharon served mugs of coffee and thick

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