“Travers said she’d go down there to see him, in Florida. They’d get together, as he put it, ‘for old times’ sake.’ Last time she was down there was this past November, around Thanksgiving. I also pried out of him a little bit about Deighton’s brother and sister. The sister’s a lot younger, married, lives out West. The brother’s the eldest, in his mid-fifties, and manages a grocery store. He had throat cancer a couple years back and his voice box was cutout”

“Wait a minute,” I said.

“Yeah. You know what that sounds like. You’d know it if you heard it. No way the guy who called you at the office was John Deighton. It was somebody else who had personal reasons for being interested in Jennifer Deighton’s autopsy findings. He knew enough to get the name right. He knew enough to get it straight that he’s supposed to be from Columbia, South Carolina. But he didn’t know about the real John Deighton’s health problems, didn’t know he should sound like he’s talking through a machine.”

“Does Travers know his ex-wife’s death is a homicide?” I asked.

“I told him the medical examiner is still running tests.”

“And he was in Florida when she died?”

“Allegedly. I’d like to know where your friend Nicholas Grueman was when she died.”

“He has never been a friend,” I said. “How will you approach him?”

“I won’t for a while. You only get one shot with someone like Grueman. How old is he?”

“Somewhere in his sixties,” I said.

“He a big guy?”

“I haven’t seen him since I was in law school.”

I got up to stir the fire.

“Back then Grueman’s build was trim bordering on thin. I would describe his height as average.”

Marino did not say anything.

“Jennifer Deighton weighed one-eighty,” I reminded him. “It appears her killer yoked her and then carried her body out to her car.”

“All right. So maybe Grueman had help. You want a far out scenario? Try this one on for size. Grueman represented Ronnie Waddell, who wasn’t exactly a pencil-neck. Or maybe we should say, isn’t exactly a pencil-neck. Waddell’s print was found inside Jennifer Deighton’s house. Maybe Grueman did go to see her and he didn’t go alone.”

I stared into the fire.

“By the way, I didn’t see nothing in Jennifer Deighton’s house that could have been the source of the feather you found,” he added. “You asked me to check.”

Just then, his pager sounded. Snapping it off his belt, he squinted at the narrow screen.

“Damn,” he complained, heading into the kitchen the phone.

“What’s going … What?”

I heard him say. “Oh, Christ. You sure?”

He was silent for a moment. He sounded very tense when he said, “Don’t bother. I’m standing fifteen feet from her.”