“I hope you’re here because you found our car,” she said.

“We did,” Les began as Sam followed with, “Which is good news–bad news, I’m afraid.”

“Oh?”

Sam kept going. “Just so our cards are all faceup on the table, from the get-go, you should know that your husband admitted to lying about how the car was stolen.”

Lucy Shaw’s features tightened minutely. “Ah,” she said, prompting Lester to admire her self-restraint.

He could also tell that his partner had regained her equilibrium since their arrival, allowing him to slip into observer mode as Sam stayed on her line of questioning.

“For our part,” she said, “we need to tell you that when the car was found in Vermont, it had a bunch of stolen property in it, along with a dead body in the trunk.”

Lester was looking closely, but the reaction this caused was instant horror, accompanied by appropriate body language.

“What?” Lucy asked, sitting bolt upright. “A dead body? That’s terrible. Oh my goodness. What happened? Oh no. You’re saying he was killed.”

She paused long enough to look from one of them to the other, wide-eyed, before stammering, “You can’t be … You can’t imagine … That we had something to do with it.”

“You did lie to the police,” Sam stated plainly.

Again, the tiny shifting of expression, this time to something a bit more aggressive. “Well, yes, but that was embarrassment. Neither one of us wanted Lemuel’s appetite to get out. I’ve read the police blotter. Those things are public record. It was a white lie. What harm would it cause?”

She hesitated, as if for a response, but shortly followed with, “Even now. You say a man was found dead. How’s that our fault? The car was stolen days ago. We don’t know where it’s been or what’s been done with it. I even thought it might be at the bottom of a lake somewhere. That’s what people do who steal things, isn’t it? Sell them or throw them away?”

“Not this time,” Sam answered dryly. She pulled out Don Kalfus’s mug shot and laid it on Lucy’s covers, oriented toward her. “Have you ever seen this man before?”

The older woman didn’t touch it, craning forward to take it in as she might a tarantula in a cage. “No. He’s the one?”

“Tell us about the night your husband called you.”

“About the Mercedes?” Lucy sat back as Sam removed the offending photograph. “What’s to tell? The phone rang, he told me what had happened, and I drove down in the Jeep to pick him up. We filed the theft with the insurance company and the police the next day.”

“You weren’t surprised?”

“I wasn’t happy, if that’s what you mean. I know his habits. Men will be men. Usually, he just does what he has to do, and we avoid discussing the matter.”

Sam took in the bedroom with a wide sweep. “You no longer sleep together?”

Lucy frowned. “Many people don’t. I don’t see how that has anything to do with a stolen car.”