“I’m sure Deputy Berry asked you the same questions I’ll probably ask,” I said. “The reason I’m doing this, I want you to understand, is because I’m concerned for you and your mother.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Justin said. “I know Mama really appreciates it, and I do, too.” Finished at the counter, he returned to the table. He smiled at me again, not so shyly this time.

Good, I thought, he’s beginning to get some of his old spark back.

“You spent several hours with Godfrey yesterday,” I said. “Did anything unusual happen?”

Justin chewed for a moment, and after he swallowed he replied, “Most of the time we just talked. We argued, like I told you, but nothing weird happened.”

“Were you in his hotel room most of the time?”

“Yes, sir,” Justin said. “He said he didn’t want anyone bothering us, so it was better to be somewhere private.” He frowned. “That didn’t stop people from calling him, though.”

“How many phone calls did he get?” These might be slim leads, but they were better than nothing.

“Just two.” Justin ate a forkful of beans. “The first one was from his agent, he said. They only talked a few minutes, and he went into the bedroom to do that.”

“What about the second call?” I asked.

“Somebody else,” Justin said. “He went into the bedroom again, but he wasn’t there long.”

“Did he say who it was?”

“Not exactly,” Justin said. He thought for a moment. “When he came out of the bedroom he was muttering to himself, so I asked him if everything was okay. He said it was just some guy he knew bugging him about reading a book.”

That didn’t sound like a clue to anything. “That was all?”

Justin frowned. “Now that I think about it, he didn’t say book, he said manuscript. That’s different, I guess.” He paused. “I asked him if he read other people’s manuscripts and why, and he said he did sometimes because they wanted him to give them some kind of quote to use on the book when it was published. Then he said a lot of times people wanted him to read their stuff because they thought he would help them get it published. But he said this guy was a pest with no talent, and he wasn’t going to do it.” His face reddened a bit. “Actually the way he said it was a lot ruder, but I’m not going to repeat his actual words.”

“I think I can guess the gist of it,” I said. Justin was very different from my son, Sean, at that age. Sean had delighted in trying to shock his mother and me with rude language. “So that was it? Just those two phone calls?”