He didn’t say anything; he often found it was best to let people rant and rave. He frequently learned more from silence than from a series of direct questions. “Well, you’ve really lost it this time. This is just plain nuts.” She paced over to the plate-glass window that dominated the living room. Outside, a hummingbird was flitting along the deep purple blooms of a climbing vine that wound its way to the eaves.

“You know, Rick,” she said. “You’ve lost it. Really. If Jennifer were really alive, I would know it. She would have contacted me. Where has she been hiding all these years? And if she wasn’t the woman in the car, who was? Why did you identify the wrong woman? Don’t tell me you were drunk.”

“Of course not! I thought…I still think she was behind the wheel.”

“But now you’re not sure? Because of photos of a woman who looks like her? Because you think you saw her?”

Bentz ignored the question. “What do you remember about the last time you saw her?”

“Oh, God, do you really want to go into all that?” she asked, retracting into her hard shell.

“Sure, Lorraine. Why mince words?”

Her lips pulled into a knot of dislike and her nostrils flared. “Okay, she did call me a few days before the accident. She was obviously troubled, maybe drunk, I don’t know. But not right. When I asked her what was wrong, she blamed you. Said you didn’t believe that she loved you, and it was eating away at her. I knew about the infidelity, of course, but for some reason she had it bad for you. Well…you, and the priest. Your half brother, was it?”

Bentz’s guts twisted, but he kept his expression bland. “Anything else?”

“Nothing that involves you. Sometime I think back and wish she’d stayed with Gray. If she would have stuck it out with Alan Gray, she’d still be alive today. Alive and rich. Instead…” She shrugged. “I told her she was making a mistake when she broke it off with Alan, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Getting to his feet, he tried not to wince, didn’t want to let on to Lorraine that he felt any pain whatsoever.