A Really Great Team

by Dennis Palumbo

About the Author: Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author. His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). His series of mystery thrillers (Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors, Phantom Limb, and the latest, Head Wounds, all from Poisoned Pen Press), feature Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert.

Excerpt

“Really, Helen? With Stan? … Our own lawyer?”

Stan Rakson, senior partner at a downtown law firm, family friend, and the back-stabbing prick having an affair with my wife, answered before she could.

“Sorry, Dave.” He shrugged. “These things happen.”

My wife Helen, tall and slim and as lovely as the day I married her eight years before, slid her hand into his. I had to admit, they made a handsome couple. Though ten years older than either Helen or myself, Stan Rakson had the trim but sturdy body and assured manner of a professional athlete.

At that moment, he certainly had the home field advantage. We were standing in the main room of his expensive house on the lake, our three images reflected in the broad picture window looking out over the water. Like every other room in the spacious vacation home, this one boasted sleek, high-end furniture, some impressive artwork on the walls, and the hushed stillness of old money. The only sound was the muted lapping of the waves from the wind-stroked lake beyond.

It wasn’t five minutes ago that I’d pounded on the front door and demanded to be let in. Helen, still in silk lingerie and holding a martini glass, looked as if she’d faint on the spot when she saw me. But Stan, clad only in a robe, had opened the door to admit me with what could only be described as a smug smile.

“If this were a Noel Coward play,” he’d said, “one of us would be saying something arch and funny right about now.”

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