There was a click and the line went dead, just as dead as Hannah’s respect for Mike. He’d lied to her about being involved with Ronni, and then, when he thought she’d found out about it, he’d tried to explain his behavior away by saying it meant nothing. Even worse, he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about the night she’d spent at Norman’s house.

There was a sound from the top of the couch, a low growl. Hannah glanced up to find Moishe standing there with his fur bristling. He gave another low growl, just like he did when he spotted Delores coming up the stairs, and then he jumped down to the cushions and hopped on her lap to lick her cheek.

“It’s okay, Moishe,” Hannah said, petting her loyal friend. And then she settled down again to watch the tape she’d decided she’d view before she headed off to The Cookie Jar to meet her sisters.

The tape was clearly labeled with the date and camera number. The mall security staff was well organized. She didn’t have the list of camera numbers and their locations that Andrea had written up for them, but it took Hannah only a second or two to realize that the outdoor camera had generated this tape. There was a quick pop of the parking lot by the backdoor to Heavenly Bodies. It lasted a minute or two, showing nothing but parked cars and no movement. Hannah recognized several of the cars. There was Mayor Bascomb’s new Saab, Roger’s black Jeep, and Ronni’s old green wreck. Then horizontal lines began to stretch across the screen, and the image deteriorated until it was nothing but what her Grandmother Swensen, who’d had less than adequate television reception on her antenna out at the farm, had called “snow.”

Hannah hit the fast-forward button, but the snow remained snow. This must be the camera that had malfunctioned and failed to record Lonnie and Mike leaving the area, thereby causing them to be considered as suspects. Even though Hannah doubted that the camera would suddenly heal itself, she watched the tape until the end.

Something niggled at the back of her mind, something that wasn’t right. Hannah thought back to the beginning of the tape when the image had been clear, and she realized that Ronni’s old car was the problem. Mike had told her that the car had been sitting untouched on the street in front of the apartment building for at least two weeks. But that wasn’t true. There it was in all its dubious glory, on the security tape from the night Ronni was killed.