“I don’t know how he felt about Mr. Miller,” she said. “He had started with him, that much I found out later. Maybe he felt loyal. Or sorry for him. For years my mother did business with a milkman she couldn’t stand.”

“Mm. That article in the Examiner you remembered appeared over three years ago. It was just a paragraph on an inside page.”

“Well, Colin had mentioned you twice in conversation, once before and once after I saw it. I had an important association.”

Now he could begin to believe it. “Still, this is a Port Smith matter. You lived there, and Flatlands is in Clausen County. I don’t remember your husband at all. I don’t have any special knowledge to bring to the case.”

“Colin was born in Manitou, Mr. Leland. His mother and his first wife still live here. After the war, he and his first wife moved back and forth several times. There’s a lot that happened here that I want to know, too.”

“Then you’re not just interested in the circumstances of his death,” he said.

“I’m interested in everything you can learn about him,” Mrs. MacIver said. “We were married a little over two years. There was a lot that I never learned. I never met his mother. She didn’t come to our wedding.”

“Quite a bit of that you could do yourself.”

“I’m not capable of it,” she said.

Leland scratched the back of his hand. He hoped that Florence was not so shocked that she would allow herself to stare.

“Mrs. MacIver,” he said, “I may as well tell you now that, for something like this, we have to charge a hundred dollars per man per day, plus expenses.”

She went to her sulking expression again. “I have the money.” She took a deep breath, as if she could not believe that it was so difficult to understand her. “I never had money before in my life. It was his money. Until eight o’clock on August twelfth I thought that I was going to have a life with him.”

“Excuse me, what time?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“What time do you say you learned of his death?”

“Eight o’clock. Why?”

“Put it down, Flo, if you don’t mind.”

“I have it.”

“What’s wrong?” Mrs. MacIver asked, looking to both of them.

“Were you anywhere you couldn’t be reached until eight o’clock?”

“No, I was home. I had been to the doctor’s, but I was back from there by four o’clock.”

“Did your husband have proper identification on him?”

“Yes, a wallet, his car keys with his name attached, and I think his sports jacket had his name sewn inside. Yes, that, too. Why?”