the hot, unyielding light that tastes so, so good.

Okay.

This guy was seriously losing it.

No, he’s just a good writer. It’s just what that girl, Emily, would be thinking.

Then why didn’t he read that part last night?

He just didn’t have time to.

Too many questions.

It left Tessa in a quandary. She could contact Timothy and see if he would meet her somewhere, or she could just let him know she was going to come by his place.

Go to his house. Take the journal and your book, just don’t go inside.

Part curiosity.

Part adventurousness.

Okay, yeah, true, part teenage impetuosity—she decided she couldn’t not go.

Who cares? It would be alright. She would just deliver the journal, get her book signed, and then be on her way again.

But, no, she would not enter his home.

++++

Timothy called his psychiatrist, Dr. Percival, to find out if he was the one who’d given the confidential information to Blake Neeson, but the call went to voicemail. Timothy did not leave a message.

He knew that Julianne had suspected him of killing Miranda Walsh, but he had no recollection of harming her, or Julianne, or anyone else.

So what’d happened to Miranda?

And who left that note in his kitchen telling him to check the basement?

When Neeson was there earlier, Timothy had wondered if he was perhaps his father, but Neeson had pretty much laughed off the idea.

Who else could have hurt those women? Who else would have?

Also, someone sent that picture of Julianne’s body to Neeson, and from what Neeson had said, it originated in the federal building downtown.

His dad? Did his dad work there?

There’s no way you could have sent that email. It proves someone else is doing this. Someone else is responsible for what happened to Miranda and Julianne.

The note left in the kitchen.

The email sent to Neeson.

Julianne’s body.

But if your dad is out there, if he killed Julianne, how did he get that picture of her in the trunk of your car?

Then the revelation, something that seemed now to be so obvious, but maybe that’s why he hadn’t locked onto it earlier: He was here. He was in the house.

Hastily, Timothy began to search room by room for any clues as to who from the federal building might have been there, inside his home.

++++

Ralph and I made it a working lunch, grabbing sandwiches from the cafeteria.

We cross-checked everything we could dig up about the associates of the people who were arrested at the Matchmaker’s place with the information of the ones who’d come forward and claimed to be at the senator’s house on the night when Jon died.

One name matched: Duane Sheldrick.

An anonymous caller had contacted the senator’s hotline with the name.