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words. You’re too tough on everyone, and he’d walk out back and stare at the crap in his neighbors’ yard.
    He stuffs all his notes on the murder into a file and walks back toward his office, makes a turn through the outside door to clear his head. As he steps into the parking lot, the air is hot and soggy. He pushes from his mind thoughts of Ann, her car bumping off the driveway onto the road, the cake at home, melting on the kitchen counter. Instead, he replays bits of his two interviews, and something about Ronald’s nags at him. He can’t put his finger on it. It’s a feeling, that’s all, but he’ll check out the guy’s alibi first chance he gets. He’s already got a call in for the night-shift bartender at the hotel where Steinhauser’s staying. And then there’s the neighbor, the last one known to see the dead woman alive and the only other person with a key.

CHAPTER 5
    D ana scrambles eggs in a blue bowl and stirs in a few drops of half-and-half.
    â€œMom?” Her son watches her from his seat at the kitchen table. He’s back, but only for the day; he’s in the summer session, and it’s tough, he tells her—the classes are more difficult, all that information crammed into a couple months. He’s come home to grab some odds and ends, he’s said, for his dorm room, but Dana knows it’s her phone call that’s brought him here. She can feel him observing her. Jamie is the sensitive one in the family, always watching for a variation in mood, like a medium, sticking trembling hands inside a house, a room, and feeling vibrations.
    She turns around.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œWell,” she says, “it’s upsetting, this whole thing.”
    â€œMrs. Steinhauser?”
    â€œYes. The awful way she died.” She stirs the scrambled eggs with a wooden spoon, scraping them from the bottom of a large cast-iron pan.
    â€œWill they do an autopsy?”
    â€œI guess.” She empties the pan onto a large orange plate and puts it on the table in front of Jamie. “Help yourself,” she says, glancing up as Peter stumbles through the doorway and makes a beeline for the coffeemaker.
    â€œWhat do you think, Peter?” She doesn’t look at him.
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œAbout Celia.”
    â€œIt’s . . . God, it’s . . .” Peter pours his coffee and sits down at the table, reaches for the eggs. She’s behind his chair, leaning in with a plate of bacon, so Dana can’t quite see his face. She only sees Jamie watching her, studying her, and she suddenly wishes she hadn’t called him the night Celia died.
    They eat in silence. Peter peruses the front page of the morning paper, thumbing through to the sports section as a car honks in the driveway and Jamie pushes back from the table. His chair scrapes across the tiles and his sneakers squeak like long ago when he was little. Dana feels a stab of nostalgia. “See you guys later.” He kisses Dana on the top of her head before he stacks his dishes in the sink. “You sure you’re okay?” he whispers, and she nods.
    â€œFine,” she says. “Make sure you’re back in time for dinner,” and Jamie turns in the doorway, gives her a thumbs-up. She stabs at a tiny edge of bacon. Across the table Peter seems riveted to the sports section. The thin newsprint shakes in his hands.
    â€œWhat do you think about Celia?” Her words are loud and flat in the silent kitchen.
    â€œI think it’s horrible.” Peter sets his mug down on the table, and a small spurt of coffee flies over the rim onto the place mat, “as I’ve told you several times since this hap—”
    â€œYou didn’t really know her, though, did you?” Dana takes a bite of toast. “Could you pass the jam?”
    â€œI— Through you I did. From the times she was over here. With you.”
    â€œReally?