“Oh, sure.” Then he heard himself and amended. “Well, not the kind that would want to kill ya.”

“Who?”

“Well, mainly girlfriends, I guess.” Knowlton glanced again at the fireplace and the brownish-red stain.

“More than one?” Rivers asked.

“Oh, yeah.” He was nodding, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin, his eyebrows elevated a fraction. “Trouble is, y’know, women, they don’t like to share.”

Mendoza said, “So he might have more than one girlfriend at a time?”

“Sure.”

She pressed. “And his girlfriends didn’t like each other?”

“I’m guessin’. I mean it’s not like that sister-wife thing on TV. You know the one where several wives all get along.” He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, like that would ever happen.”

“Did James say as much?”

“Not to me.” He looked from one cop to the other. “But it’s a problem, ya know, not breaking it off with one before taking up with another. Women—they tend to not like that.”

“Men, either,” Mendoza observed, and Rivers wondered if her comment was a generality or from personal experience.

Knowlton’s gaze drifted to an antique rifle mounted over the mantel. “He’s probably lucky he didn’t get shot.”

“His girlfriends have tempers?” asked Mendoza.

“Isn’t that what they say?” Knowlton mused. “ ‘Ain’t no force of evil as bad as a woman scorned’ or something?”

“Something,” Mendoza said, and to her credit, she didn’t correct him. “Do you have any of the girlfriends’ names?”

“The recent ones,” he said as Ralph returned and Knowlton bent over to scratch the dog behind his ears. “James was dating Megan Travers. The one that’s missing. She and James, they had a thing going for a couple of months, maybe more. I’m not sure on that.”

Mendoza asked, “You know anything about her?”

“Nah. Not much.”

“Family? Friends?” Mendoza pushed.

“Sorry.” He seemed sincere. “Didn’t pay all that much attention. As I said, they came and went.”

Mendoza asked, “Who else?”

“Well, lemme see.” He screwed up his face in concentration. “There was a schoolteacher who lived in . . . Marysville or Everett, someplace north of Seattle, I think.”

“Her name?”

“Janice or Jenny? Somethin’ or other. But they’d broken it off. A while back. Probably over a year or more.”

“That’s two,” Mendoza said. “Anyone else?”

He looked thoughtful. “There is the blonde who works at the inn. First as a waitress, then in the office. She’s had her eye on James for a while, and I’ve seen ’em together a few times. Her name’s Sophie, er, Sophia . . . but, sorry, I don’t know any more about her.”

“But she was seeing James?” Rivers pressed.