“Thanks.” Marge sipped her coffee. “Here’s the evidence check receipt. Keep the original in your file since you’re the primary investigator. You know, we should make a copy of the victim’s teeth so we can have them in our files for immediate access.”

“Good idea.”

“I’ll do that tomorrow.” Marge crossed a T, then signed her name. “Your John Hancock?”

Decker scanned the report, then signed his name at the bottom. “You want to go first?”

“Nah, you can go ahead.”

Decker drank half his coffee, then recapped his conversation with Dr. Meecham. Marge related her talk with Tandy Roberts. By the time they were both done, Decker’s brain was a swirling cesspool of unrelated facts. Time to strain the garbage.

“Menopause at forty.” Marge shook her head. “Man, that would be hard for me to handle. And I’m not exactly the maternal type. But to have all my options taken away from me so suddenly…”

Decker was quiet.

“What it is, Pete?”

“What you just said, Marge. Marie had her options taken away.” Decker paused. “That’s what happened to Rina. Her choice was taken away. And she has healthy children. I could imagine what this would do to a woman who didn’t have children. Of course, all this motivation crap still isn’t going to tell us who was burned in Marie’s Honda.”

“You know, Pete, maybe we should get hold of a division that has one of those computer-enhancement programs…send them the dimensions of the skull and the facts we know from the body. Ask the programmer artist to put a face on top of the bones.”

“That would take two, three weeks minimum. But we can use all the help we can get. Morrison would probably cough up expenses for a kidnapped baby. Last I heard, Toronto has a top-notch division for that kind of thing. Maybe there’s a place closer to home.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“In the meantime, let’s go back to some old-fashioned brainstorming. Question number one.”

“Who’s our body?” Marge said. “Like I said before, neither Tandy nor Paula mentioned Marie having a black friend. Should I go back and ask them about it?”

“You think Paula’s straight up?”

“She seems on the level…unlike Sondra-Tandy Roberts.”

Decker said, “Call Paula. See if she knows anyone. As far as Miss Autoconversationalist goes, the less Tandy knows, the better. You know, Marge, ever since Annie brought up the ring not fitting, I’ve been assuming that the body wasn’t Marie’s.”

“Me too.”

“So I’ve been thinking, who could it be? Irrespective of race, my guess is that this was someone from the hospital. Or at least someone who was in the hospital last night.”

“Why’s that?” Marge asked.

“The blood in Marie’s parking space.”