“Retired,” he says, “but working with the team assigned to the case. I was asked to get in touch with Ms. Alderson.” He doesn’t think this lie will come back to haunt him, since Pete opened the door by inviting him to the scene. “Can you tell me how to get in touch with her?”

“I’ll give you her cell number. She went to Chagrin Falls for her brother’s birthday party on Saturday. It was the big four-oh, so Harry’s wife made a fuss about it. She’s staying until Wednesday or Thursday, I think—at least that was the plan. I’m sure this news will bring her back. Nan lives alone since Bill died—Bill was my husband’s brother—with only her cat for company. Mrs. Ellerton and Ms. Stover were sort of a surrogate family. This will just make her so sad.”

Hodges takes the number down and calls immediately. Nancy Alderson picks up on the first ring. He identifies himself, then gives her the news.

After a moment of shocked silence, she says, “Oh, no, that can’t be. You’ve made a mistake, Detective Hodges.”

He doesn’t bother to correct her, because this is interesting. “Why do you say that?”

“Because they’re happy. They get along so well, watching TV together—they love movies on the DVD player, and those shows about cooking, or where women sit around talking about fun things and having celebrity guests. You wouldn’t believe it, but there’s a lot of laughter in that house.” Nancy Alderson hesitates, then says, “Are you sure you’re talking about the right people? About Jan Ellerton and Marty Stover?”

“Sorry to say I am.”

“But . . . she had accepted her condition! Marty, I’m talking about. Martine. She used to say that getting used to being paralyzed was actually easier than getting used to being a spinster. She and I used to talk about that all the time—being on our own. Because I lost my husband, you know.”

“So there was never a Mr. Stover.”

“Yes there was, Janice had an earlier marriage. Very short, I believe, but she said she never regretted it because she got Martine. Marty did have a boyfriend not long before her accident, but he had a heart attack. Carried him right off. Marty said he was very fit, used to exercise three days a week at a health club downtown. She said it was being so fit that killed him. Because his heart was strong, and when it backfired, it just blew apart.”

Hodges, a coronary survivor, thinks, Reminder to self: no fitness club.

“Marty used to say that being alone after someone you love passes on was the worst kind of paralysis. I didn’t feel exactly the same way about my Bill, but I knew what she meant. Reverend Henreid came in to see her often—Marty calls him her spiritual adviser—and even when he didn’t, she and Jan did daily devotions and prayers. Every day at noon. And Marty was thinking about taking an accounting course online—they have special courses for people with her kind of disability, did you know that?”