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you think he might crack. Do you understand?”
    I nodded slowly. “Joanie, do you think Buddy could have hurt Alice?”
    She flinched when I said it, but she met my eyes and nodded. “In the sense that I don’t know what he’s capable of anymore, I guess I think so. He was wound real tight. He could have snapped. Then…”
    “Joanie,” I said after an awkward moment, “what else do you think he could have done?”
    She sighed deeply and took a big gulp of brandy-laced coffee. “As you know, he had a drug problem. I mean, sure, he got caught selling it. But his problem was using it. Marijuana. LSD. Cocaine. Whatever he could find, I guess. He did rehabilitation, as the court ordered. Afterwards he went to those meetings. Every single night. But there was a black part of Buddy where he wouldn’t let me in. Maybe he let Alice in there, I don’t know. But not me and not Tom. He spent a lot of time in his room. Not listening to that awful music, not reading. Just lying there, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes he seemed on the verge of talking about it. But then he’d pull back. There was no anger, none of those overt behaviors you might expect. That we were told to expect from him. But no joy, either. Just this awful, passive blackness. To answer your question, I think he was capable of hurting himself more than hurting somebody else. That’s what worries me. And if he did hurt Alice…”
    She didn’t need to finish. I sat there, smoking a cigarette and sipping my coffee while Joanie Baron composed herself.
    After a few minutes she looked up at me and made her mouth smile. It was not particularly convincing, but I pretended it was. I stubbed out my cigarette and stood up.
    “I best get on with my sleuthing,” I said lightly.
    Joanie followed me to the door, retrieved my raincoat, and held it for me. As I turned to open the door, she put a hand on my arm. “I really appreciate this, Brady,” she said.
    “Don’t get your hopes up, Joanie.”
    “Just the same, thanks.” She reached up on tiptoe to kiss me. As she did, she leaned her body against mine, confirming my observation that the sheer robe was all she had on. I moved my mouth away from hers, giving her my cheek to kiss. She stood back from me, an odd smile on her face.
    “You don’t wanna comfort the grieving mother?” she said.
    “Cut it out,” I said harshly.
    “Yeah. Shit. Dumb old broad. I’m sorry.”
    “C’mon, Joanie. Buddy’s okay.”
    She pushed me toward the door. “Go. Before I do something stupid.”
    I went.
    My first stop was not on the list Tom Baron gave me. I pulled into the lot beside the Windsor Harbor police headquarters and skipped over the puddles to the door. A different cop was behind the glass wall. I asked for the chief and gave him my name, and he got on the intercom. A minute later Harry Cusick came out.
    He grinned at me and extended his hand. “I thought I might be seeing you again,” he said.
    “I just wanted you to know that I’m going to be around town today, and to ask you to keep me informed on the Buddy Baron situation.”
    “Gonna play a little cops and robbers, huh?”
    I smiled and shrugged. “You might call it that.”
    “We’re just a small-town police force, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “But we’re pretty good at what we do.”
    “I have no doubt,” I said. “I don’t really expect to accomplish anything, to tell you the truth. Maybe it’ll make Tom and Joanie Baron feel a little better.” I shrugged apologetically.
    “It’s a funny thing about lawyers,” said Cusick. “They’re always telling the cops how to do their job. But when you take a look at who screws things up, more times than not it’s the lawyers.”
    “Readily granted. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
    “That,” he said, “is more than I have any right to expect. Look, why not check in with me in the afternoon. We can compare notes.”
    “You’re willing to do that?”
    “Sure. We’re all after the same