“Way before the murder—he left for New York six months ago and they stopped talking before that. The rest of her records didn’t say much, either. Mostly she emailed her employers about work-related stuff—a lot of it after hours, poor thing was a diligent type, they really loved her. The rest of her calls and emails were to her family. Lighthearted stuff, happy birthday, anniversary. She’s from a big clan in South Dakota. Parents, grandparents, a great-grandmother, five sibs, nieces, nephews. A whole bunch of ’em came down to take care of the body and to get educated by me. There I am, facing a room full of well-mannered, decent folk and giving them zilch. And they were nice about it, which made me feel shittier.”

He raised his arm and brought his fist crashing toward the table. Stopping just shy of contact, he dangled his fingers a millimeter above the surface. “If there is no secret boyfriend, maybe you’re right and a buddy of Kleffer was dispatched to carve her up.” He got to his feet. “Okay, thanks for the coffee.”

“You didn’t drink any.”

“It’s the thought that counts.” He paced a few circuits, returned. “What do you think about the meal being staged postmortem? Some sort of sick joke?”

I thought about that. “Sure, why not? If Kleffer did contract the killing, a mock meal could be a way of putting his stamp on it.”

“I cooked for you, you dumped me, now you’re dead meat.”

“You do have a way with words.”

He rubbed his face, like washing without water, loped to the coffeemaker, poured, took a sip, dumped his cup in the sink. “Nothing wrong with it, sorry, my gut’s raw.”

I said, “How many Hail Marys for wasting caffeine?”

“Add it to the tote board. How’s Robin?”

That sounded obligatory. A kid trained to say the right things.

“She’s great.”

“The pooch?”

“Charming as ever. How’s Rick?”

“Putting up with my foul temperament since I began working Hennepin.” Dropping the murder book back in the green case, he left the kitchen, paused at the front door. “I should’ve come to you sooner. Don’t know why the hell I didn’t.”

“I haven’t come up with much,” I said.

“Maybe if you’d been to the scene—”

“Doubtful.”

“Whatever. See ya.”

I said, “Hope something develops.”

Nothing did.

Two weeks later, he phoned to say the case was officially back-burnered, no trace of anyone or anything linking Katherine’s death to Darius Kleffer, no other suspects.

I didn’t hear from him for another twenty days when he phoned, sounding adrenalized.

“Progress on Hennepin?”

“New case, amigo. This time you’re on it from the git-go.”

CHAPTER

2