“What lady across the street?”

It occurred to Shrew with a jolt of disbelief. “Please don’t tell me Terri’s the one who was burglarized. I wouldn’t have thought it since she’s the only one home over there, and her lights are on, so it wouldn’t dawn on me that someone would break into an apartment where the resident was home.”

She reached for her glass and held on to it.

“I suppose she might have been out last night like most people on New Year’s Eve,” she said.

She drank more than a sip.

“I wouldn’t know.” She kept talking. “I always stay in and retreat to my bedroom. I don’t wait to see the ball drop. I really have no interest. One day is the same as another.”

“What time did you turn in last night?” Investigator Marino asked.

She was certain he asked it as if he thought she was implying she hadn’t seen a thing, and he didn’t believe it for one minute.

“Of course, I understand what you’re leading up to,” she said. “It’s not exactly a matter of when I went to sleep. What I’m telling you is I wasn’t sitting at my computer.”

It was directly in front of the window that afforded a perfect view of Terri’s first-floor apartment. He looked right at it.

“Not that I’m staring out my window, down at the street, every other minute, either,” she said. “I ate in the kitchen at my usual time of six o’clock. Leftover tuna casserole. After that, I read for a while back in my bedroom, where the drapes are always drawn.”

“What are you reading?”

“I see, you’re testing me, as if I’m making this up. Ian Mc-Ewan’s Chesil Beach. It’s the third time I’ve read it. I keep hoping they’ll find each other again in the end. Have you ever done that? Read a book or watched a movie again, thinking it will end the way you wish?”

“Unless it’s reality TV, they end the way they end. A lot like crime and tragedy. You can keep talking about it for a hundred years, and people are still mugged, killed in a terrible accident, or, worst of all, murdered.”

Shrew got up from the sofa.

“I’m topping it off. You sure?” As she headed to her tiny kitchen that hadn’t been updated in forty years.

“Just so you’re aware,” his voice followed her, “no one else was home last night, not in your building or the one across the street. All the residents, except you, are gone for the holiday and have been since before Christmas.”

He’d run background checks. He knew all about everyone, including her, she thought, splashing more Maker’s Mark into her glass, the hell with ice. Well, so what? Her husband was a well-respected accountant, and neither of them had ever gotten into any kind of trouble or associated with unsavory people. Other than her secret professional life, which not even a police investigator could possibly know about, Shrew had nothing to hide.