A lot of things were bothering me – minor questions buzzing around at the back of my brain like a swarm of gnats. I had begun to believe that if Elaine was dead, she'd been killed fairly early on. I had no proof yet but I suspected that Pat Usher had masqueraded as Elaine and had staged that whole bogus departure for Florida as a sleight of hand, laying a false trail to create the illusion that Elaine was alive and well and on her way out of town when, in fact, she was already dead. But if she'd been killed in Santa Teresa, where was the body? Disposing of a corpse is no mean feat. Fling one in the ocean and it swells up and floats right back. Toss it in the bushes and a jogger will stumble across it by six A.M. What else do you do with one? You bury it. Maybe the body was concealed in the Grices' basement. I remembered the floor down – the cracked concrete and hard-packed dirt – and I thought, now that might explain why Leonard had never had the salvage crew come in. When I'd first searched the Grices' house, I'd just been grateful for my good luck, but even at the time it had seemed almost too good to be true. Maybe Leonard didn't want the demolition experts knocking around down there.

Pat Usher bothered me too. Jonah hadn't had a chance to run a check on her through the National Crime Information Center because the computer had been down. By now he'd left for Idaho, but maybe I could have Spillman run the name for me to see what he could come up with. I didn't think Pat Usher was her real name, but it might show up as an alias – if she had a criminal record, which was uncertain at this point. I took out a legal pad and made myself a note. Maybe with some judicious backtracking, I could figure out who she was and how she'd gotten involved with Leonard Grice.

I sorted through the new stack of Elaine's bills that Tillie had given me, tossing out the few pieces of junk mail. I came across an appointment reminder from a dentist in the neighborhood and tossed that aside. Elaine Boldt didn't drive and I knew she patronized businesses within walking distance of her condominium. I remembered in the first batch of bills I'd seen, there was a bill from the same dentist. John Pickett, D.D.S., Inc. Where else had I run into him? I leafed back through the material from the homicide file, running my eye down each page. Ah. No wonder the name rang a bell. He was the dentist who supplied the full mouth X rays used to identify Marty Grice. There was a knock at the door and I looked up, startled. It was already four o'clock.