Read Murder on the Potomac for Free Online

and touched his arm. “Want to hear something silly? I mean,
really
silly?”
    “Silly? You? Sure.”
    “I have this fantasy—and that’s all it is, a fantasy—a silly one, too, because I know it could never be a reality, not with you—I have this silly fantasy that when you take Rufus for a
long
walk, you’re meeting some mystery woman with whom you’re having a torrid affair.”
    He sat up and turned on the light. “An affair? On a street corner with Rufus standing guard? Tough to betorrid with ol’ Rufe looking on. More likely he’d be having an affair.”
    She giggled. “I told you it was silly.”
    “It isn’t silly. It’s—it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    “It isn’t dumb. It’s
silly
. You used to be silly sometimes. At least you enjoyed it when
I
was silly.”
    “I still do.”
    “Then laugh at my fantasy.”
    Instead, his face turned even more serious. “Sure it’s just a fantasy? I mean, it doesn’t represent a deep, dark suspicion about my fidelity, does it?”
    “No, it does not. Sorry I brought it up. Good night.”
    “Good.”
    “Huh?”
    “Good. I’m glad it’s just a fantasy. Come to think of it, a pretty funny one, too.” He chuckled as the room went to black.

6
    Very Early the Next Morning
    National Park Service ranger Lloyd Mayes sat at the base of the seventeen-foot bronze Paul Manship statue of T.R. He wasn’t due to conduct his first nature walk until ten, wasn’t even supposed to report for work until eight. But here it was five-thirty, the sun poised beyond the brightening horizon.
    It wasn’t a heightened sense of duty that had brought Mayes this early to Theodore Roosevelt Island. It was Grace. They’d been fighting a lot lately. When she’d married him six years ago, she was impressed with his uniform. Maybe he didn’t have medals to wear like soldiers had, but Mayes carried his unadorned uniform and wide-brimmed hat with soldierly pride. A cowboy-without-chewing-tobacco, hat tilted forward over leatheryface and narrowed eyes, chin strap secure, stomach sucked in, pants tight over his rump.
    Now, six years later, Grace Mayes no longer looked at her husband with the same adoration. Gone were the compliments on how he looked, or that when tourists tentatively approached him, especially kids with wonder and respect in their eyes, it sent shivers up her spine. Sure, he’d grown a little thick around the middle, and his stories about the people he met each day had become predictable, probably even boring. But she’d married him for better or for worse and knew from the day she’d met him how much he loved his job and intended to make it his career.
    She simply didn’t understand.
    Since he was a boy, Mayes had wanted a job that would keep him outdoors and close to nature. Being hired as a ranger for the Interior Department was the fulfillment of that boyhood dream, a dream Grace no longer shared. “Get another job,” she said to him most nights. “We can’t live on what you make.”
    “Like a goddamn broken record,” Lloyd usually replied, sometimes to her, more often to himself. He said it now as he looked up into the bronze face of Teddy Roosevelt, the country’s conservation president. Four twenty-one-foot-high granite tablets flanked the statue. Written on them were things Roosevelt had said about the environment, some of which Mayes had committed to memory. His favorite:
“There is delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, and its charm.”
    His second-favorite line from ol’ Rough Rider was, “A man’s usefulness depends upon his living up to hisideals in so far as he can.” As many times as he quoted that to Grace in the hope it would help her understand him, she only hardened. And last night she delivered her ultimatum. The job or her. Good there were no kids, he thought, as he slowly walked from the oval terrace that comprised the