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little girl anymore, and he made no secret of the fact that I was an embarrassment to him, not that I cared. I wasn't about to start living my life to please him, so I'm not going to apologize for making myself happy first and foremost.”
    “Nor should you.”
    “Thank you. Anyway, he kept trying to get me to change my ways. He would threaten to cut off my inheritance, he'd lock me out of the house when I did something that really offended him, and he even tried to arrange a marriage for me. Who does that these days?”
    “It sounds like your relationship was volatile.”
    “Believe me, there were times I would have beaten him with a tire iron . . . if I hadn't been locked out of the house. But we're family, so once emotions cool down, you get over it.”
    “So you didn't want your father dead last night?”
    “Wait, are you thinking I might have killed him?”
    Knox watched her closely, looking for a tell. Her disgust at the thought of killing her father looked real, but it registered more slowly than he would have expected. This may have been significant, or it could have been a side-effect of the hangover she was fighting to hide. He filed the information away, thinking it might make sense once the details began filling in.
    “It sounds like you have a motive.”
    “Maybe, but I also have an alibi.”
    “And what's that?”
    “I was working all last night.”
    “And what do you do?”
    “I'm a dancer.”
    “Where do you dance? We'll need to verify your story.”
    Her face changed, her shoulders slumping as the words made their way down her tongue. She wasn't embarrassed by what she did, but she knew judgment was always coming from the other side of the conversation. She was tired of being told what was good for her.
    “I dance at the Electric Club. Yes, I'm a stripper.”
    “You don't need to defend yourself.”
    “No I don't. I'm an artist, I bare my soul.”
    “You do know your soul isn't found under your clothes, don't you?”
    “Do you enjoy dicking around with people in the midst of their grief?”
    “My apologies.”
    “See, there's your problem. You're never supposed to apologize for being who you are. If my father could have realized that, we wouldn't be sitting here with you thinking I might be responsible for his death.”
    “People can be responsible without committing the act.”
    “I know. It's the story of my life.”
     
    * * *
     
    Detective Knox walked away from this second interview more bewildered than before. The picture being painted of the Hobbes family was confusing, and shed little light on the unfortunate ending to George Hobbes' life. He hadn't expected a confession to pour out of anyone's mouth, but speaking to the family gave him no insight into the man at the center of the mystery. George Hobbes remained a shadow unconnected to a man, a specter talked about as though he never really existed.
    It would have been easier, Knox thought, if that was the case. The ordeal would be more tolerable for everyone involved if they had dreamed the entire sordid nightmare. What Knox knew was that despite the lack of anything resembling a clue as to the mechanics of the murder, George Hobbes was as real as any of them, and he could not be so easily written out of their stories.
    Detective Lane was also confused. He struggled to understand how a family could be so unflinching in their apathy towards a man's death. Even if they hated him, most people would try to put on an act of contrition, so as to take the prying eyes off of themselves. It was surely telling that they didn't care about how they were perceived, but Lane didn’t know what this meant. At least, he thought, Knox was also no closer to uncovering the truth. As long as they were both in the dark, he felt reassured that there was little he could do.
    “That's two down, Knox. One more to go.”
    “I wonder what we're going to get this time.”
    “With our luck, another psychopath.”
    Detective Lane pressed down with more