“Know anyone who might have wanted to mess with her head?”

“Russell Loming,” I said at once. “Brett owed him money. He could have tried to use Crissy to barter. There’s also Cheryl, Brett’s girlfriend at the time. She claims her relationship with Brett was serious, but he left her without looking back, plus I don’t think she liked Crissy very much, despite the fact that she was supposedly willing to take the kids in.”

“Could she really attack a teenager, though?” Tim asked, his disgust plain in his voice. “Or kill the man she claims to have loved?”

“It might have been unintentional. If Cheryl accidently killed Brett in a fit of rage over his decision to leave, and Crissy saw it happen, Cheryl might have felt trapped. But if Cheryl wanted to impair Crissy’s memory, there are better drugs than meth for causing confusion and amnesia. Rohypnol, for one.” Just saying the word numbed my tongue and sucked the moisture from the insides of my mouth. My intimate experience with such drugs might come in handy for my job, but it wasn’t something I liked to revisit.

“How does Crissy feel about Cheryl now?”

“Actually,” I said, “she indirectly discouraged me from investigating Cheryl. That could be because of her relationship with Suze, though—she’s an old friend of mine, and Cheryl’s daughter-in-law. So where does that leave us?”

“Maybe what we need is a fresh angle,” said Tim. “Should we look at this from Felicia’s point of view?”

I didn’t want Tim thinking my aunt could be a killer, for many of the same reasons I didn’t want him knowing about Bram. Tim was perceptive, though, and he’d heard more than enough from Crissy to realize Felicia warranted examination.

“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” he said tenderly, “but is there any way Felicia could have had a hand in Brett’s death? Brett was trying to take her kids away, right? Her only alibi witness is her son, who was a child at the time. Are we absolutely sure about her movements that night?”

“You mean could she have driven to the refuge and offed her ex?”

Looking uncomfortable, Tim said, “Well, yeah.”

“Honestly, there was a time when I thought that was possible. But what about Crissy’s head injury? Felicia did hit her son once, but I’m not sure I can see her staging a violent attack against Crissy, no matter how hard it was for them to get along.”

I stared out the window at the baseball diamond, which was covered in snow. Beyond it, I could see the place where the trees parted and a path snaked into the woods. The sight of it made me feel numb.

“Is this what you do?” Tim said. “Drive out to the most remote spots you can find and hope for a face-off mano a mano?”

“Sometimes.”

“Jesus. You’re not in some cheap action movie.”

I ignored that and said, “Can I ask you something? Did you talk to Gil Gasko about me?”