“Just general follow-up,” I said. “What I’m interested in specifically is the week or so before the accident. Did he sleep well or was he restless?”

Her breath caught, and the hands on her hips whitened. “What happened, sir, is what I told you: Pierce fell off Akhbar. Now he’s gone and I’m the one has to live with that and I don’t appreciate your raking all this up.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You keep apologizing, but you don’t stop asking.”

“Well,” I said, “here’s the thing. Maybe it was an accident, but you did ask for a drug scan on Akhbar. Paid the coroner quite a bit of money to do it.”

She took a step away from me, then another. Shook her head, plucked a piece of straw out of her hair. “This is ridiculous.”

“Another thing,” I said. “Detective Sturgis never introduced me by name, but you know who I am and what I do. I find that kind of curious.”

Her eyes widened and her chest heaved. “He said you might do this.”

“Who did?”

No answer.

I said, “Dr. Harrison?”

She turned her back on me.

“Mrs. Schwinn, don’t you think we need to get to the bottom of things? Isn’t that what Pierce would’ve wanted? Something was keeping him up at night, wasn’t it? Unfinished business. Wasn’t that the whole point of the murder book?”

“I don’t know about any book.”

“Don’t you?”

Her lips folded inward. She shook her head again, clenched her jaw, swiveled, and caught a faceful of sun. A tremor jogged through her upper body. Her legs were planted, and they absorbed the motion. She turned heel and half ran toward her house. But I followed her inside; she didn’t try to stop me.

We sat in the exact same spots we’d occupied a few days ago: me on the living room couch, she in the facing chair. The last time, Milo had done all the talking, as he usually does when I tag along, but now it was my game and, God help me, despite the anguish of the woman sitting across from me, I felt cruelly elated.

Marge Schwinn said, “You guys are spooky. Mind readers.”

“We guys?”

“Head doctors.”

“Dr. Harrison and I,” I said.

She didn’t answer, and I went on: “Dr. Harrison warned you I might be back.”

“Dr. Harrison does only good.”

I didn’t argue.

She showed me her profile. “Yes, he was the one who told me who you were—after I described you and that big detective, Sturgis. He said your being here might mean things would be different.”

“Different?”

“He said you were persistent. A good guesser.”

“You’ve known Dr. Harrison for a while.”

“A while.” The living room windows were open, and a whinny from out in the corral drifted in loud and clear. She muttered, “Easy, baby.”