“Had anything changed in his life recently? How was his marriage?”

“Honestly, I don’t know that much about my father’s marriage.”

“How long had they—”

“Since I went to college, so about four years.”

“Can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to harm your father?”

“No.”

“Disgruntled customers from the store? Old girlfriends?”

Harry shook his head.

“Do you know anything about your father’s financial situation?”

“You mean, did he have money?”

“That. Or did he have money problems? How was the store doing?”

“Fine, I think. My father did okay in his business, well enough to send me to college. He had some family money, as well, I think. And my mom had some money from her parents. My biological mother.”

“Your mother is . . . ?”

“She died. About seven years ago.”

The detective jotted that fact down in his notebook, as though it was the first thing he learned that he hadn’t known already. “How did she die?” he asked.

“Of lung cancer.”

“Did your father have close friends here in Kennewick that you knew of?”

“He was friends with John Richards, who works for him.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Not much. He’s a retiree who started out by volunteering to help out at the store, but now he pretty much co-manages it with my father.” Harry stumbled over the words, aware he was using the present tense.

“And they were friends?”

“Oh, yeah. I don’t know if they were social with each other, if they did things outside of the store, but my father relied on him.”

“What about other employees?”

“I know that he sometimes got someone to help out during the summer, when there was the most foot traffic in the store, but they were usually teenagers or college students.”

“You never came up and helped out during a summer?”

“No,” Harry said.

“Okay. What about other friends? Did your father and his wife socialize with other couples at all?”

“I don’t really know, but I don’t think so. Alice has a friend named Chrissie Herrick—that’s where she is right now—and she’s married but I don’t know if they did ‘couple’ things together.”

The detective pulled a vibrating phone from his pants pocket. He checked the screen, then put the phone into his suit jacket pocket. “Sorry,” he said, then slid forward fractionally on the sofa. “Anyone else you can think of that your father had regular contact with? Anyone he kept in touch with in New York?”

“His old business partner, Ron Krakowski, was there, and they were still close, but he never even leaves the city.”

He jotted the name down on his pad, then put it back in his suit jacket. It was clear that he was getting ready to go. “You’ve been very helpful, Harry,” he said as he stood.