Read In Self Defense for Free Online Page A

that’s why we’re going to go right on being good friends.”
    “In that case,” Nina said, “you should have told them.”
    “Who?  What?”
    “Those two detectives.”
    “I should have told them what?”
    “About the water.”
    “The water?”  Clare looked at her friend with a puzzled frown.  “Why should I have told them about the water?  That was last spring.  How could it possibly have anything to do with what’s going on now.”
    “How do you know it doesn’t?” Nina countered.
    “Well, I guess I don’t know for sure,” Clare had to admit.  “But I don’t see how it could.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Nina told her.  “You should tell the police everything.  Isn’t that what Detective Hall said?  You should tell them everything, and then it’s their job to figure out what has to do with what, and what doesn’t.”
    ***
    “Clare, where’s my blue pinstripe?” Richard called over the intercom from the master bedroom of their spacious home, a little after nine o’clock that evening.
    Clare was in Peter’s room, at the other end of the second floor, reading to the ten-year-old.  The children had long since outgrown bedtime stories, but the ritual had hung on, Rumpelstiltskin having given way to the likes of Harry Potter, and the half hour she spent with each of them at the end of the day had become a pleasant little interlude that all three of them looked forward to.
    “It went to the cleaner’s last week, but it should be back by now,” she responded to her husband, pressing the little button on the wall-mounted gadget he had insisted on installing in every room of the house.  “Have you looked in the closet?”
    “Of course I looked in the closet, and it isn’t there,” he replied.  “That’s why I’m asking you.”
    Clare gave Peter a quick hug.  “You remember where we were, and I’ll be right back,” she told him.
    She stood up, set the book on the nightstand, and padded down the carpeted hallway of the fifteen-room Laurelhurst dwelling that had been her home for the past ten years.
    North of downtown and east of the University district, the lakeside part of Laurelhurst was a quiet and relatively crime-free enclave of elegance.  It may not have been The Highlands, but it nevertheless offered rolling hills and winding roads and well-tended gardens and estate-sized lakefront homes, occupied by families who didn’t mind parting with some of their wealth if it brought them peace of mind, a good investment, and the neighbors of their choice.
    The Durant home was no exception.  The timbered stucco and stone structure sat graciously amidst two-plus acres of velvet lawns, dotted with flowering gardens, sculptured hedges, and splendid conifers, that rose ever so slightly from the road, and then sloped gently down to the lake.  The house was reached by means of a long circular driveway, and featured a three-car garage and a swimming pool.
    It was not Clare’s style to live like this, in such lavish surroundings, separated from neighbors by high privacy hedges, and privy to the awe-inspiring backdrop of Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains beyond.  She had been raised in a modest area of Ballard, by parents who taught her the value of saving money rather than spending it.  But it was Richard’s style.  Or rather, it was the style to which he had long aspired and then rapidly become accustomed.
    Entering the mauve and gray bedroom suite, she turned right and walked into the room-sized closet, reached to her left, and pulled a plastic-covered suit off the rack.
    “Is this the one you’re looking for?” she asked.
    “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see it,” Richard said, a little sheepishly, as he searched through the drawers of his dresser.  “Set it aside for me, will you?  I want to wear it tomorrow.”
    Clare hung the suit back on the rack in the closet and retraced her steps down the hall to Peter’s room, picking up the book and settling herself once again