I’d told Jesse I planned to paint over the motorcycle this afternoon, but now I wondered if I was too late. I’d been too eager to paint my name, to see it glowing in the corner against the deep green of the Mill Village lawn. Now I was kicking myself for my narcissism.

Karl greeted both of us, touching the brim of his policeman’s hat. Then he looked past me and I saw that Jesse—my brilliant Jesse—had quickly moved his easel in front of the mural, blocking the motorcycle from Karl’s view. Instead of the motorcycle, all Karl would be able to see was a detailed drawing of one of the Williams family’s mules on the easel. But Karl didn’t so much as glance at the mural. I didn’t want to let him inside the warehouse, but he stepped past me, glanced around my studio space, then stood squarely in front of me.

“Where is your hammer, Anna?” he asked.

I played dumb, desperately trying to buy time. Finally I said, “I don’t have a hammer.”

Karl pointed out that I’d had one back when he was helping us stretch the canvas. He looked past me at Jesse. “Do you remember that, Jesse Williams?” he asked. “And Pauline told me she stopped by yesterday and she didn’t see one, so I was wondering what happened to it?”

I was stunned, torn between my anger at Pauline and my desperate scrambling to find a way around Karl’s question. I could say that the hammer he saw that day hadn’t been mine. That Peter had brought one with him. But then I’d be getting Peter in trouble.

Then Karl told us that a bloody hammer had been found in the woods near Martin Drapple’s motorcycle. “Just wondering if it might have been yours,” he asked.

I was breathing hard and fast. Surely he noticed. I tried to figure out what an innocent person would say at that moment.

I asked him if that’s what he thought killed Martin. The hammer.

“No, a person killed him with the hammer,” Karl said. “And I know you had a hammer you can’t seem to produce.”

I said maybe someone else might have brought a hammer the day we worked on stretching the canvas. Karl had brought tools, himself.

Karl gave me a look I can only describe as disgusted and said he’d just wanted to give me a chance to show him my hammer. “I see you can’t do that,” he said. He touched the brim of his hat and wished Jesse and me a good day. Then he was gone.

Jesse and I turned to stare at one another.