"Yes," I said. "Tolliver dated her for a while."

I don't know what demon prompted me to add that, but I think I was feeling needled by Fred Hart, by his reluctance to come to our room. I decided that was because he thought there was something distasteful and shoddy about us, and I wanted to get back at him. That was a stupid thing to do.

"Did he now? Felicia is so focused on work…" his voice trailed off. He should have finished the sentence by saying "that I'm glad she found time to go out," or "that she seldom seems to date." Those were the words that would have made sense of the thought. But it was like his heart gave out before he could complete the idea. We both tried hard not to look too startled.

When we finally got into the room, I, for one, was thinking we should maybe call the older man a cab, not let him drive home. I was really concerned. He'd seemed such a nice guy at the Morgensterns' awful luncheon; very serious and sad, true, but also caring and thoughtful. What had happened to Fred Hart?

"Mr. Lang, Miss Connelly," he said ceremoniously, standing in the middle of our little temporary living room, "Joel asked me to give you this." He took an envelope out of his inner jacket pocket and handed it over to me.

I stared at the white envelope for a moment before I opened it. There was no way to do this that wasn't awkward. The envelope contained a check for forty thousand dollars. It was the reward money for finding Tabitha's body. With this money added to what we had in savings, we'd be able to buy a house. My eyes filled with tears. I hadn't wanted to earn it this particular way, but I was glad to have it.

"You're shaken, I can see," Mr. Hart said, sounding pretty shaken himself. "You may not want to accept this, Miss Connelly, but you did the work and you deserve it."

I did want to accept it, and I had every intention of accepting it. I did deserve it. But somehow his words shamed me, and I felt abruptly sick.

To my horror, I saw a tear trail down Fred Hart's cheek.

"Mr. Hart?" I said, in a very small voice. I was not qualified to deal with a weeping man, especially since I didn't know the trigger for his tears.

He sat down heavily in the closest chair, which happened to be one of the wing chairs. Tolliver settled in the other, his face unreadable, and I perched on the edge of the love seat across from them. We had just had a very strange talk with Anne Nunley; now it looked as though we were going to have one with Fred Hart.

Of course, alcohol was playing a major role in opening Fred Hart's emotional conduits.