“That explains why she used to drop in unannounced so often. She always said she’d just come down for a walk by the ocean. She’d borrow the dog and off they’d go, then she’d sit down for a beer afterwards,” Lindsay said. “Obviously she can’t have been doing that while she was over here. Do you think she’d have made alternative arrangements in England? Maybe left the disks with somebody she knew in London?”

Meredith shrugged. “It’s possible. I’d say it’s more than likely. But I don’t know how we find out.”

“If need be, we go through every single person in her address book,” Lindsay said grimly.

“Oh, great,” Meredith sighed. “Lindsay, I think you’re going to have to handle that one by yourself. I’m not ready to talk to all those people yet.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Oh, one other thing.”

“What?”

“This murder by exploding beer bottle. It’s really off the wall. Where did she get the idea for that?”

“You ever notice her scar? On her left forearm, about two inches long? Well, years ago, before she knew me or you guys, she was on holiday in Austria and it was a real hot summer like this one. She had some bottles of this wheat beer sitting on the kitchen table, waiting to go into the fridge once there was room for them. She accidentally knocked against the table, the bottles rocked back and forth, and one of them exploded. She said it was like a bomb going off. Glass everywhere. And one chunk of glass embedded itself in her arm. I guess she should have had the cut stitched, but she didn’t want to go to hospital in a strange country, so her girlfriend closed it with surgical tape. That’s why she had such a noticeable scar. She always said one day she was going to use it in a book.”

“And when she did, it looks like it killed her.”

Meredith looked at Lindsay while she automatically lit a third cigarette. “So what are we going to do about it?”

Chapter 14

Chapter 14