Richard snorted. “Him? I wouldn’t put it past him to have bumped her off just to stir up a bit of scandal for his book.”

“That’s outrageous!” I protested. “Besides, she was an important source for him on Jett’s early days in the business.”

“Yeah, well maybe he milked her dry then bumped her off. From what I hear, he’s been talking to the world since she died.” Richard sounded mean and spiteful, which isn’t like him.

I tried to show him he was just talking out of blind prejudice, explaining that Kevin had asked Neil to handle all the press liaison. “So of course he’s had to talk to people.”

“It’s not just all the copy he’s been flogging,” Richard replied, still peeved. “He’s been doing the hard sell on this biography too, telling people that there’s going to be stuff in there that no one else even guessed at before.”

I was puzzled. I remembered Neil telling me that his biggest problem with the book was that there were no new, exciting revelations. However, that had been before Moira had reappeared on the scene. “Maybe he’s just talking it up,” I suggested.

“I don’t think so. I suppose he could just be trying to cash in on the interest in Moira’s death by trying to stitch up a serialization deal sight unseen, but most feature desks won’t play unless they’ve got a bloody good idea what they’re getting for their money. Everybody’s under the cosh financially these days. The golden age when you could talk a story up and still get paid when the end product didn’t match up to expectations is long gone. The emperor’s new clothes trick just doesn’t work any more. Now they want to talk to the tailor.” Richard shifted away from me and got up. “I need a beer,” he said, heading for the kitchen.

While he was off examining his collection of exotic beers of the world, I thought about what he’d said. I still couldn’t believe he seriously thought Neil would have killed Moira for a few headlines. But I know from Richard that there is still big money to be made in the seedy world of newspaper exposés. I began to wonder just what Moira had told Neil. I’d have to ask him some more questions. The trouble with this investigation was that I just didn’t know the right things to ask. It wasn’t like insurance fraud or software piracy, where I knew who knew exactly what I needed to know. I was floundering, and I knew it.

Richard came back with a can of Budweiser and leaned against