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don’t you go see about the children?”
    I had no intention of leaving the room. Scott had already told one lie, and if he was going to tell any more whoppers, I wanted to know about it. I looked hopefully at Sergeant Williams. “Don’t you need me here?”
    “No, not right now. Go ahead and see to the children, but we’ll want to talk to you before we leave.” Not the right answer .
    When I left the room rather reluctantly, Scott slid the pocket door shut between us. I thought about doing as I had been told, but as my mother will tell you, I’ve never been very good at that. So I stood outside the door instead, my ear practically glued to the paneling.
    “We understand your wife’s a patient of Dr. Sturges’s.” Officer Duvall spoke with a rich Jamaican accent.
    “She is. So what’s the problem?”
    “Diane Sturges was killed sometime yesterday afternoon.”
    “Killed? Oh my God! How?” I could just imagine Scott, the consummate salesman, shaping his face into a mask of surprise and dismay.
    “In a fall off her balcony.” Officer Duvall cleared his throat. “That’s why we’d like to talk to your wife. We understand she had an appointment with the doctor yesterday afternoon.”
    “Surely the fall was an accident.”
    Officer Duvall started to say something, but Sergeant Williams cut him off. “The case is still under investigation.”
    “My wife would hardly have had anything to do with Diane’s death. Diane was the thread that kept Georgina tethered to reality.” Scott’s voice was edged with concern.
    “There’s no need to get upset, Mr. Cardinale. We’re talking to all her patients.” Sergeant Williams’s voice oozed Southern comfort.
    “You don’t understand, Officer. This news is going to come as a great shock to my wife. She’s not at all well. I’m afraid this may send her right over the edge.”
    “May we speak to your wife, sir?” Sergeant Williams addressed my brother-in-law as if he were a second-grader.
    “Like Hannah said, she’s still asleep.”
    “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to wake her up.”
    “I’d rather not.”
    “Most people would rather not deal with the police, Mr. Cardinale, but my partner and I are here. Yourwife’s here. So the way I see it, she can cooperate with us now, or talk to the grand jury later. Her choice.”
    “How did you find out my wife was a patient of Dr. Sturges’s, anyway? I thought a doctor’s files were supposed to be confidential.”
    “Dr. Sturges kept her appointments on a computer,” Officer Duvall explained. “We have all her patients’ names and telephone numbers.”
    “Duvall!” Sergeant Williams’s voice had a sharp, elbow-in-the-ribs edge to it. Duvall will get his knuckles rapped good for letting that bit of information slip out, I thought.
    Scott grunted and the chair springs creaked a warning as he stood up. I scurried toward the kitchen, where he found me seconds later noisily tapping used coffee grounds into the trash from a gold-mesh filter. “The kids are fine,” I told him, having absolutely no idea whether they were or not. They could have been building campfires in the middle of their bedrooms and I wouldn’t have known.
    Scott smiled wearily when he saw what I was doing. “Make that a big pot, Hannah. I think we’re going to need it.”
    I filled the coffeemaker with enough water for twelve cups, my hands shaking. Why had Scott lied to the police about yesterday? More importantly, what was I going to do about it? I opened several cupboards before I remembered that Georgina kept the mugs in the cabinet over the microwave. I picked out five at random and set them on a hand-painted tray. As I opened the refrigerator looking for the milk, I realized that if the police had the doctor’s computerized files, there was no need for me to volunteer the calendar pages that Georgina had stolen. I could save her that embarrassment, at least. I found the milk easily—two gallonjugs stood on the bottom