The gravestone closest to the asphalt road had a simple inscription: Herman Moscowitz. Devoted Husband.

I stood close by in case I needed to grab her, but all Lois Moscowitz did was stare at the inscription. It could’ve gone either way.

Then Mrs. Moscowitz turned to me and started to laugh. Loudly. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and gave me a hug, laughing the whole time. I needed the hug as much as she did. She was suddenly a different person. Younger, animated. As I drove her home, she chatted about her hobbies of knitting and skeet shooting and asked about my mom.

When we got to her tidy two-bedroom house, I pulled in the driveway and ran around to open the door for her again. She tried to give me a five-dollar bill and some change from her purse.

I kept refusing until she said, “How’s an investigator going to stay in business if he doesn’t charge people for his time?”

I finally took the cash, then waited until she was safely inside.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I hadn’t even gotten back into my car when Timmy Jones, my buddy from the sheriff’s office, pulled up in his marked unit. The cold wind blew his thinning blond hair in a swirl around his wide head. The look on his face told me he had news. It didn’t look like good news.

My mind raced with all the possibilities: Bailey Mae had just been found dead at the foot of a cliff, or her body had washed up on the shores of the Hudson. I’d done a good job of tamping down the darker visions of what might have happened to her. Pretty much the whole day had been spent either looking for her or avoiding thinking about what might have happened to her. That was one of the reasons I’d helped Mrs. Moscowitz. I was good at avoiding tough issues. The private investigation business was my main means of not dealing with my own emotions. If I was distracted by something else, I couldn’t dwell on the past. On dead fiancées. On missed opportunities. On my screwed-up family.

My stomach did a flip-flop as Timmy slowly walked around the front of his patrol car and then up the short driveway to face me. The frustration of his silence made me bark out, “What is it?” My voice couldn’t hide the dread I felt.

Timmy started slowly, looking for the words. “My partner and I were knocking on doors, asking about Bailey Mae near her house.” He paused and ran his hand through his hair.

“Timmy, get to the point,” I almost snapped.

“Sorry. The old couple down the street from your cousin Alice’s house, the Wilkses, were found dead inside their own house.”

“Dead? From what?”

“They’d been shot.”