“Surprised the hell out of me. This is what’s so weird. We were never in love. There was some kind of chemistry I wouldn’t even classify as sexual. It was more fundamental than that. Ours was a bad mix of personalities. We drove each other nuts. Happiest day of my life was when I left her the last time. Then she died and the bottom dropped out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Being angry with you was a relief.”

“Easier than grief.”

“Right,” he said. “Look, I know you were mad that I left.”

“Don’t project. I wasn’t that mad,” I said.

“Could have fooled me. Times I thought about you, I didn’t have the nerve to call. I figured you’d cut me down and rightly so. After a while, the absence just seemed to compound itself. When Pete didn’t pay me I figured it was your revenge.”

“Too subtle. If I take revenge, it’ll have my name written all over it.”

“So now what?”

“I could use some breakfast. I’m starving,” I said.

Dietz joined me in an orgy of bacon and eggs and all the accompaniments. It was a meal that never ceased to satisfy. I was still munching on a piece of buttered rye toast when he returned to the subject that had brought him to town.

“So here’s what bothers me,” he said. “Pete hires me to do a job and next thing you know he’s dead. What’s that about?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite like that,” I said. “You did the work when, the last weekend in May? The robbery went down in August.”

“I know, but I keep thinking the two might be linked. This isn’t a gig you see much these days. One spouse spying on the other? We live in the land of no-fault divorce, so it struck me as odd.”

“Why’d you take the job?”

“It sounded like fun. I can’t remember the last time I was asked to skulk around a hotel taking pictures with a telephoto lens. I did a damn fine job of it even if I say so myself. Then the guy who hired me gets shot to death and I don’t like it so much.”

“Just because one event follows another doesn’t mean the first caused the second,” I said.

“I get that and I hope you’re right, but as long as I’m here I’d like to satisfy myself.”

“Tell me about the surveillance again. When you talked about it last night I was feeling so defensive I didn’t hear a word you said.”