He smiled kindly, lifted his fedora a tenth of an inch in greeting, and set it back on his head. I looked over his shoulder, and there, at the curb, was Trixie’s GF300. A man got out the driver’s side, walked halfway across the yard and tossed the keys to Flint, got into the passenger side of an unmarked car parked in front of it.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re done with it,” he said, tipping his head toward Trixie’s car. “Forensics went over it, didn’t find a thing. She took your wheels, so go ahead and use hers.” He dangled the keys in front of me and I took them warily.

“Thanks,” I said, pocketing them. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Don’t go thinking I made a special trip. I have more questions. First one being, you taking a trip?” His eyes were on my overnight bag.

“Uh, just an overnighter, I suspect,” I said.

“Little vacation?”

“No, it’s for an assignment. An out-of-town assignment, a feature I’m doing,” I said.

Flint nodded. “You mind if I come in?”

“No, of course not,” I said, admitting him to the house and tossing my bag onto the floor as we eased into the small living room at the front of the house. Flint, clearly a man of manners and breeding, took off his hat once inside, and held it in his right hand by the brim.

“What sort of assignment?” he asked.

“Well, actually,” I said, “I can’t really discuss assignments I might be working on for the paper, with the police. I’d have to speak to my editor about that.”

“The reason I’m asking is, it’s my understanding that you’ve been suspended.” He gave me that friendly smile again. I said nothing. “So I don’t understand how you could be going off to do an assignment for the paper if you’re not actually working for the paper at the moment.”

I was starting to sweat. Flint didn’t even have me under the hot lights in an interrogation room yet. I was here in my own home, and I could feel beads of perspiration on my forehead. I could see how bad this looked. Found with a dead guy one day, discovered hitting the road with bag packed the next.

“I talked to some people where you work—well, where you worked,” Flint said. He tossed his hat onto the couch so that he could reach into his jacket for his notebook. He turned over a couple of pages, squinted to get a better look at his own handwriting. “You know a woman named Frieda, I think it is?”

“Yes,” I said.

“She runs the housing section at the paper?”

“Home,” I said, without the exclamation mark. Flint would have wondered what was wrong with me had I shouted it at him.