“You mean law enforcement might be in on it?” she said. “Do you know something?”

“No,” I said, sorry I’d opened my big mouth. “It’s just . . . we don’t know anything for sure. I guess I was thinking about Dove Beck.”

“He’s the one she was in bed with that day?”

I nodded. “That big guy, there—the black guy in the suit? That’s his cousin Alcee.”

“Think he might have had something to do with it?”

“Not really,” I said. “I was just . . . speculating.”

“I’ll bet Calvin’s thought of that, too,” she said. “Calvin’s very sharp.”

I nodded. There was nothing flashy about Calvin, and he hadn’t managed to go to college (I hadn’t either), but there was nothing wrong with his brain.

Bud beckoned to Calvin then, and he got out of his truck and went over to the body, which had been laid on a gurney spread with an open body bag. Calvin approached the body carefully, his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t touch Crystal.

We all watched, some with loathing and distaste, some with indifference or interest, until he’d finished.

He straightened, turned, and walked back in the direction of his truck. Tanya got out of my car to meet him. She put her arms around him and looked up at him. He shook his head. I’d lowered my window so I could hear. “I couldn’t make out much on the rest of her,” he said. “Too many other smells. She just smelled like a dead panther.”

“Let’s go home, Calvin,” Tanya said.

“Okay.” They each raised a hand to me to let me know they were leaving, and then I was by myself in the front parking lot, still waiting. Bud asked me to open the employee entrance to the bar. I handed him the keys. He returned after a few minutes to tell me that the door had been securely locked and that there was no sign anyone had been inside the bar since it had closed. He handed the keys to me.