She scooped up the debris from the passenger side, tossed it into the back, and climbed in. She only hoped the seat was clean.

Detective Cold Fish was walking toward the car. He looked hot and harassed. His shirtsleeves were rolled up now, his tie yanked loose. Even as he tried to leave the scene, cops were pulling him aside to ask questions.

At last he slid in behind the wheel and slammed the door. “Okay, where does your mother live?” he asked.

“Cape Elizabeth. Look, I can see you’re busy—”

“My partner’s holding the fort. I’ll drop you off, talk to your mother, and swing by the hospital to see Reverend Sullivan.”

“Great. That way you can kill three birds with one stone.”

“I do believe in efficiency.”

They drove in silence. She saw no point in trying to dredge up polite talk. Politeness would go right over this man’s head. Instead, she looked out the window and thought morosely about the wedding reception and all those finger sandwiches waiting for guests who’d never arrive. She’d have to call and ask for the food to be delivered to a soup kitchen before it all spoiled. And then there were the gifts, dozens of them, piled up at home. Correction—Robert’s home. It had never really been her home. She had only been living there, a tenant. It had been her idea to pay half the mortgage. Robert used to point out how much he respected her independence, her insistence on a separate identity. In any good relationship, he’d say, privilege as well as responsibility was a fifty-fifty split. That’s how they’d worked it from the start. First he’d paid for a date, then she had. In fact, she’d insisted, to show him that she was her own woman.