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chair next to me. A full-sized chair, thanks
     to the kindness of Harry. He’d taken in the drawn looks and pale faces and lugged
     folding chairs out of some secret janitorial closet.
    “Fine,” I said, as brightly as I could.
    “You’re still a horrible liar,” he said, rearranging papers on his clipboard.
    “Maybe I’m such a good liar that you can’t tell that I’m lying about lying.”
    He glanced at me, then went back to his paperwork. “That doesn’t make sense.”
    I sighed. No, it didn’t. “I’m tired, sad, angst-ridden, and depressed about the human
     condition.”
    A hint of a smile lightened his face. “That’s more like it. You okay with staying
     a while longer? The kids are all set?”
    “Marina took them to her house.”
    He nodded. “She can be an interfering chatterbox, but her heart is the size of an
     Oldsmobile.”
    As compliments go, that was as backhanded as any I’d ever heard. There wasn’t a chance
     I’d pass it on to Marina without a hefty dose of editing. She still hadn’t forgiven
     Gus for the way he’d treated me last spring, and I didn’t want to make that situation
     any worse. “They haven’t made Oldsmobiles in years,” I said. “You need to get a new
     simile.”
    “It’ll last me to retirement.”
    I sat up straight. “You’re thinking about retiring?” Rynwood without Gus as police
     chief was as unthinkable as . . . as Rynwood without Auntie May. Knowing there was
     even a slim chance of Auntie May catching you in wrongdoing had kept the entire populace
     on the straight and narrow for three generations.
    No one, but no one, wanted to hear the rattling cackle that preceded “Caught you,
     you little sneak” if you so much as forgot to hold the door open for the person behind
     you. And heaven forbid if you accidentally let a scrap of candy bar wrapper flutter
     onto the sidewalk. Yes, Auntie May was our conscience and our guide. Guide to what,
     I wasn’t quite sure, but it was a certainty that we were better off with Auntie May
     than without her.
    Well, a near certainty.
    “Thinking about retirement,” Gus said, “is a hundred miles from doing it. Besides,
     if I retired, Winnie would drag me to every garage sale between here and Milwaukee,
     and I’m not sure our marriage could handle it.”
    “Ha. You two are like one of those salt-and-pepper sets. You know, the kind that snuggle
     up against each other and look all wrong if they’re by themselves.”
    “I’m not sure I’ll tell Winnie that one.” He clicked his pen. “And now we should get
     started so we can get you home. Let’s walk through what happened.”
    I looked at my hands, fingers interlaced, thumbs pushing hard against each other.
     “I don’t want to,” I said in a low voice.
    “Of course you don’t.” Gus’s voice was patient. “No sane person would. But . . .”
     He left the sentence open, and I filled in the blanks all by myself.
    But . . . it was my civic duty to tell Gus everything I could remember. I owed it
     to Dennis to describe everything I’d seen. Helping law enforcement set a good example
     for my children. Plus it was the right thing to do, and that was the truest and best
     reason of all.
    “Okay.” I watched my thumbs push against each other, their edges turning white. “This
     whole thing started when I heard that Rynwood was getting a new business downtown,
     a financial consultant.”
    “Dennis Halpern,” Gus said.
    I nodded. “I’d been thinking about getting Debra O’Conner from the bank to come talk
     to the PTA about investing, but she recommended Dennis. Said he knew more about investing
     than she ever would, plus he’d written a book. Summer Lang recommended him, too.”
    “It’s not your fault he was murdered,” Gus said. “Not unless you killed him, I mean.”
    I eked out a small smile. “No, I didn’t kill him. But he was here because I invited
     him.”
    Gus flipped a page in his notebook and got busy with