“You wanted to see me, Your Honor?” Dwight said formally.

“Yes, please.” I held the door of my temporary chambers open.

When we were inside with the door closed, and before I could speak, Dwight put his arms around me. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’ve been wanting to do this all day.”

God, he kisses good! As slow and deliberate as his driving. And with the same attention to all the road signs.

“Much as I’d like to pursue this line of thought to its logical conclusion,” I said, stepping back a little breathlessly, “I have to get back in there in fifteen minutes and you’ve got a lot of ground to cover, too.”

“I do?”

“Those shoes that Polly Viscardi was wearing when she died. Are you sure they’re hers?”

“Huh? Yeah... well, pretty sure. Pink laces, little bells on the lace tips. Why?”

“Look at my poor foot,” I said, and slipped off my shoe so he could see the red where a blister was trying to form beneath the sheer nylon.

“I’ve got six people out there doing a canvass of the carnival and you call me back to show me your blister?” He gave a sudden grin. “Am I supposed to kiss it and make it all better?”

“Only if you have a foot fetish,” I said, smiling back. “No, you’re supposed to think about Skee Matusik’s blisters. I’ve had these shoes three years and they still look like new because they hurt my feet so much I can’t wear them for very long at a time. Skee’s on his feet all day. Those are not new-looking shoes he’s been wearing the last two days, but they were certainly brand-new blisters.”

“I don’t know what he was wearing Friday night,” I said. “I didn’t notice. But on Saturday, it was dirty white sneakers. Yesterday it was the leather shoes he had on at the funeral, but the laces are way too short. Even leaving the top holes untied, he could barely make a bow. And you saw those blisters on his heels today at lunch when Jessica brought him Band-Aids. Those can’t be his own shoes that he’s wearing.”

“Matusik killed Hartley?” Dwight asked. “Why?”

“Sorry,” I said, and I really was. For better or worse, Tally’s first son had been part of our family, lost to us before we knew he existed, as forever unknowable as my father’s first son. “I don’t know enough about either of them to even begin to guess. He and his late wife were supposed to be like grandparents to Tally’s boys. Tally said the only reason they let Skee come out with them this trip was because Braz begged them to on account of their close relationship. But if the shoes Polly was wearing turn out to be Skee’s, then he has to have been the one that killed Braz, not Polly. And after he finished killing her late Sunday night or early yesterday morning, he must have switched shoes. Put her pink laces in his low-top shoes, and his short laces in her ankle-high ones. He’s a small man, and she was a sturdy woman, so their feet would have been roughly the same size. Only his laces weren’t long enough to go through all the holes.”