“Please don’t send it to the house.”

“Where shall I send it?”

“Just keep it.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Anything else? Haven’t you done enough?” Mrs. Windborne was sobbing again. “My own husband and my best friend? Haven’t you done enough?”

“Only what you hired us to do.”

“I didn’t hire you to break into my friend’s condo, did I?” Mrs. Windborne dabbed a tissue at her face.

“We use very modern technology, so technically…”

“I don’t want to hear about it!”

“You did ask for evidence, and we provided evidence.”

“You’re right. I’ll take it from here.” Determination replaced sobbing.

“Do you want these? We don’t keep such things.” Angela indicated the photos. “And the digital recordings? We also have videos.”

“No, I don’t want them. Destroy them, please.”

“Angela Simmons Detective Agency.” She answered the phone with a practiced professional tone.

“You free tonight?” It was Ronda’s familiar voice.

“Yes. But it’s been a hard day. I just wound up a very difficult case and I’m exhausted.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t even ask. You know I can’t discuss it.”

“Yeah, I know-what if you were working for me-right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’ll fix us a nice dinner and have a nice bottle of wine to help you unwind. Six?”

“I’ll see you then.” Angela hung up the phone and picked up the photos from the coffee table. I wouldn’t say her thighs were fat. She censored the thoughts from her mind and put the prints of the photos in the shredder before she destroyed the other evidence her operative had gathered. She prepared the invoice for Mrs. Windborne, itemizing every expense, the funds received from her, and the balance due, just in case she wanted it later.

She won’t leave him. But she left me no hint of what she will do. She won’t kill anyone. And she won’t kill herself. She’s not a danger. So, case closed.

Angela left her office building and went to the parking garage where she kept her car, walked up the stairs to her parking place, and opened the trunk to take out an overnight bag with a change of clothes.

She slung the bag over her shoulder and walked down the stairs and through the downtown business area, past the theatre complex where six movies were showing, none of which she cared to see, past the chain restaurants and the Frank Lloyd Wright church, the classical post office, and turned into a trim residential area. She walked past the ornate painted ladies, as people called the Victorian houses, past the simple prairie designs of Frank Lloyd Wright houses to the one that looked to some like a Mayan temple-if they weren’t archaeologists. She rang the doorbell.

“You didn’t bring the car?”

“It’s a nice walk. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. What’s the point?”

“I don’t know, support the economy?”

“It’ll limp along without me for one night.”

Inside the house the two women hugged.

“He’s in Hamburg tonight. That’s the story, anyway.”

“Am I ever going to meet this husband of yours? This Mr. Moore? Or is it Less?”

They both laughed.

“His name is Asshole. Mr. Asshole to you.” They giggled as they walked through the house. “Let’s eat in the kitchen.”

Ronda had prepared lightly steamed asparagus, boiled new potatoes, and smoked salmon with an arugula salad. There were two glasses of wine on the table and an open bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon on the table.

“I got a head start. I can’t cook without wine.”

“It looks delicious.”

Ronda picked at her food as Angela ate.

“Remember our conversation about love?”

“Yes.” Angela nibbled the end of an asparagus spear, shaped her lips around it, wrapped her tongue around it, and drew it into her mouth.

“You’re being obscene with your food.”

“Ummm. Makes it taste even better.”

Angela speared another asparagus tip and circled the tip of her tongue around the end of it. She looked over her fork to Angela and lightly licked the tip of the asparagus.

“Ummm, it’s sort of soft and firm like your clitoris.”

“Stop it. You’re getting me all hot.”

“Good.” But Angela sensed Ronda’s change to a more somber mood and bit into the asparagus.

“Seriously. I don’t think he loves me.”

“Because he’s never here?”

“Yes. If he loved me he’d be here, wouldn’t he? Beside that, he’s keeping some kind of secret from me. I don’t know for sure what it is, but I’ll bet it’s a woman. There’s sure something he’s not telling me about all these trips. Keeping secrets isn’t love either.”

“Maybe he has some other idea of what love is.”

“Besides being with the person you love? Besides letting them in on your life?”

Angela thought about the various ideas of love she’d encountered as a love detective. Everything from picket-fenced cottages to whips and chains, from making money to making babies. She lifted one of the small potatoes to her mouth with her fork, and, from the contemplative look on Ronda’s face, decided to just eat it instead of performing fellatio on it as she had the asparagus spear.

“What do you think it means?” Ronda stabbed some arugula leaves with her fork. “Love?”

“I suppose the purest form is a mother’s love for her child.”

“How’s that?” The innocence of Angela’s response betrayed genuine puzzlement.

“Love is being willing to give everything for another. It means never holding back.”

“Tell all?” Ronda leaned forward, all attention.

“Or having nothing to tell. It means suffering, too, I suppose, because when you do give all, you suffer.”

“How?” Ronda’s fork dangled between her fingers.

“Like with a child. The first thing that happens is you are sick all the time. As soon as you get used to that and things settle down a bit there’s a short period when your hormones kick in and you understand why some women like to be pregnant. It’s like a butterfly’s wing can make you have an orgasm.

“But then you are lugging this huge parasitic growth around in your belly and your arches fall and your feet hurt and your back aches and all you want do is sit down and you can’t sit down and you can’t lie down and nothing is comfortable or right. And your boobs get all huge like a cow’s udder and flop all over the place and hurt.”

Angela slumped back in her chair with the memory.

“This is love?” Ronda took a sip of wine.

“No, this is suffering. But it’s just beginning.” Angela sat up and speared another potato, chewed it contemplatively, and took a sip of wine. “It’s just the beginning of suffering. Because then that parasite has to come out through your body. It’s just sitting in there getting ready to turn you inside out. And then it turns you inside out and you scream and curse the race of men who ever invented this whole damned way of doing things, and then you have this helpless little thing sucking on your nipple and trying to bite it off. But you’re glad it’s there because it relieves some of the pressure on your boobs. And then it starts to cry.” Angela lifted her glass of wine. “This is good. And delicious food.”

“I’m still waiting for the love to come into it.” Ronda stirred her fork in the salad bowl.

“This is still the suffering part. But soon you forget the pain and…”

“Do it again?”

“Some might. I didn’t forget that much.”

“I’d like to have a child.”

“No reason not to.” Angela made an appreciative face as the salmon fell apart in her mouth.

“Asshole doesn’t want one. But where does the love come in?”

“Maybe because of all the suffering, you know that you’d do anything for that little piece of ‘you’ that’s trying to bite your nipples off.”

“You’ve done this?”

“Yes.”

“I thought there’d be stretch marks and saggy boobs.”