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over her shoulder. The look on his face could scare the dead. Not that it scared her.
    “Are you sticking your nose into this case?”
    “Just asking some questions. Ken already had you convicted. I don’t want to see you railroaded.”
    He laughed. “So you do care.”
    She turned back to her work, shaking up the quart of paint in her hands. “I don’t want to see anyone railroaded.”
    Scott’s ego was the size of Pennsylvania. It hadn’t been dimmed by whatever had happened in the City of Brotherly Love.
    “Are you going to tell me about your husband?” he said.
    She’d expected it to come up sooner or later. Scott, the cop, would be curious. Scott, the man, would wonder if Greg was competition even in his absence. “You have access to the police reports.”
    “I do, but I want to hear it from you, first.”
    She sighed. The last two days hadn’t been fun. She didn’t want to rehash old news about Greg right now. She opened the paint can on the drop cloth she’d spread out. She took her favorite paintbrush out of her toolkit. Yes, she was stalling.
    “Katydid.”
    That nickname that used to make her melt. Some part of her melted a little, but she wasn’t going to let Scott know that. She didn’t need him to have a hold over her.
    “Scott.”
    “Tell me. It’s just two old friends catching up.”
    She laughed as she stroked paint onto the wall she’d fixed and put primer on. The paint would blend well. Hard to do when the walls were white. “We weren’t friends, Scott.”
    “No? I didn’t tell you all my hopes and dreams?”
    “We were lovers, and that brings with it more baggage than friends.”
    She had to get them back on the right footing or she wouldn’t be able to do this. She wouldn’t be able to run into him at the grocery store and be okay with it. That she wasn’t okay with it spoke to her loneliness, not any lingering feelings about an old boyfriend.
    Her painting finished, she packed up her things.
    “I don’t want you investigating or getting involved in this investigation, Katie,” Scott said finally. “Leave it to the experts. It’s Ken’s job, and even though Ken isn’t a fan, he’d have to prove a whole lot to prove that I killed my ex-wife.”
    “How long were you married?”
    Damn. That slipped out before she could run it through a filter again. She grimaced.
    “Eight years.”
    “No kids?”
    “No kids. Jackie didn’t want to ruin her figure.”
    “Are you sad she’s dead?” That was a deep question. She held up her hands. “Don’t answer that. None of my business.”
    He spread his arms out to his side. “My life is an open book, Katie. Ask me what you really want to know.”
    “And what is that?”
    Can he read her mind?
    “You want to know why I’ve come back. You want to know what happened in Philly that has me back in the hometown I swore I’d never come back to.”
    She cleared her throat. “I have some other jobs today. I can’t shoot the breeze with you all morning.”
    He laughed. “Running away? Not like you, Katydid. You always stood up to me. Toe-to-toe. You did that with any man, no matter the size.”
    She wasn’t that woman anymore. Her husband disappearing had taken something out of her. Something she thought was lost forever. Didn’t matter. She had a murder to solve and some more jobs today before she could hang up her tool belt.
    She ran through the rest of her day, prioritizing based on who she needed to talk to. “I have to make a living, Scott.”
    “What do I owe you?”
    “I’ll write up a bill.”
    She loaded her truck then wrote up a bill. She needed a moment to get away from the tension. To get away from Scott’s overwhelming presence. No matter what happened to him in Philly, he still had that aura of power about him.
    It would suit him well in leading the Rock Ridge Police Department. The power was no longer raw. Instead, it had a greater intensity and focus to it. She got the impression that would be directed at