Keegan picked up his own glass and took a generous sip. Maybe it was the heat or the food he’d neglected to eat that day, but the bourbon burned his throat like acid. Perhaps a half-bottle of fine wine and a sip of fancy coffee had ruined his palate for lesser pleasures. He set the glass down on the coffee table and licked the stinging flavor from his lips.

Nora, still eyeing the lieutenant warily, lay down in the kitchen doorway and rested her chin on her paws. She’d wait this one out.

“So, how’s it going?” Keegan said. “The investigation, I mean. What are you finding out about the old man’s death?”

“It’s early yet,” the lieutenant said. He took a pensive sip of the bourbon, but his face didn’t register an opinion of it. He, it appeared, had weightier things on his mind. “Not a whole lot to go on. Nobody in the neighborhood heard the gunshot. Your place is the only one with a view of the house, and you weren’t here.”

“Wish I could have helped.”

The lieutenant nodded and took another sip of his drink. “All we’ve got is the crime scene.”

Keegan thought of the swept-up main room where he’d sat with the widow. He thought of the one too-clear pane of glass in the French door. There wouldn’t be much of a crime scene anymore, not with Mrs. Ormsby back in the house. “And what did the crime scene look like?”

“Broken glass in a door,” the lieutenant said. He pressed the cold glass to his forehead. “No fingerprints. No footprints. No nothing.”

“Sounds like a stone-cold whodunit.” Keegan turned his own glass in his hands. Beads of condensation had gathered on the sides, and the coldness of it felt good on his dampening fingers. “I’m no big-city jack,” Keegan said. “But maybe it’s the obvious. A break-in that went awry.” He turned the Daffy Duck glass in his hand again. “How many times did I type that sentence up for The Times?”

“Motive?”

Keegan shrugged. “Money,” he said. “Lot of burglaries in these hills. At least according to my mother, who didn’t miss much in the way of gossip.” He passed the glass to his other hand and dried his fingers on his trouser leg. “Probably even more of them this week. People get careless in this kind of weather. All those open windows. Easy pickings for your enterprising local malefactor.”

The lieutenant shook the ice in his Class—the cubes were just nubs now—and took a long last sip. He set the glass down on the table. “Could be,” he said finally. “But I doubt it.”

“Why’s that?”

Moore eyed Keegan warily. It was clear he was holding back. “We’re off the record, right?”