“How much food is he going through?”

“Two complete food tubes a day, sometimes three. That’s enough to feed a dozen cats. All that food can’t just disappear off the face of the earth, so he’s got to be hiding it. I just haven’t been able to discover where.”

“Do you want me to fill up the Kitty Valet again?”

“Might as well. Maybe we can catch him in the act. In the meantime, I’ll put on the coffee.”

There was a knock on the door, and Michelle went to answer it. Norman and Andrea had arrived together. She ushered them in while Hannah brought out a carafe of coffee and four cups, and they all sat down in Hannah’s cozy living room.

“Okay,” Hannah said, yawning widely. “I think you’d better give me your notes really fast before I fall asleep in my coffee.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

She was exhausted, but her eyes were wide open and her mind was whirling like a top. She had four sets of investigative instructions to assimilate.

At least Stella Parks hadn’t told her how to investigate. The only thing the Minneapolis detective wanted Hannah to do was talk to people and listen to people, something Hannah always did anyway. Too bad Mike, Bill, Lonnie, and Rick didn’t have the same faith in her!

There were the books on procedure to read. Mike believed that if she read them and followed the correct investigative procedure, it would lead her to Ronni’s killer. But she didn’t have time to read all those books, and that wasn’t the way she worked anyway.

Bill wanted her to focus on the forensics, and he was providing Andrea with crime scene photos, transcripts of some interviews, and the autopsy report. The report from the Crime Scene Investigator’s unit was still to come on fingerprint, hair, and DNA evidence, and they’d have that as soon as it arrived.

Lonnie’s take on the proper way to investigate was totally different. He thought that psychology was the most important factor and that Hannah should delve into Ronni’s background. Since no one knew quite what that was, he’d suggested that Hannah interview Wade Hoffman at length to see what he knew about Ronni’s childhood and her relatives.