“According to the people at Hertz, you rented a vehicle from their Sky Harbor facility early that morning and brought it back later in the afternoon.”

“Why would I need to rent a car?” Matt asked. His insides lurched. The car! That was another problem. Using his fictional early appointment in Tucson as an excuse, he had checked out a motor-pool vehicle on Friday night. He had driven home in it and kept it over the weekend. It was also the vehicle he had driven to his appointment with Susan at the model home in Red Rock. How many traffic cameras along the way might have picked up on that?

He took a deep breath. Obviously, this wasn’t a joke. The cop was real. Someone was dead, murdered, and the cops believed that Matt was involved. Then his heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t heard from Susan since then-not since the day she had stood him up-though he had written to her time and again, told her he understood completely if she’d had second thoughts. What if Susan Callison was the person who had been murdered? What if that was why she had stood him up and why she hadn’t been back online?

“It was rented under your Hertz gold-card number,” Holman told him.

“I’m sorry,” Matt declared. “There must be some mistake. I don’t have a Hertz gold card.”

How would he? Why would he? He never went anywhere that he didn’t drive himself. Jenny didn’t like flying, which meant they didn’t fly.

“I see,” the detective said.

And Matt was afraid that he did-that Holman saw everything. So Matt didn’t demand to know who was dead. That would have counted as making a fuss. And he didn’t say again that he hadn’t been in Sedona, couldn’t possibly have been in Sedona, because he was a third of the state away from there, hoping to get lucky. He just kept quiet.

“So could I come talk to you about this in the morning?” Dave Holman asked. “I could probably be at your office by ten or so, if that would be all right.”

“Of course,” Matt said. “Ten is fine. You know where we are? We’re here in Phoenix, on the capital campus downtown.”

“I’m a detective,” Dave said with a laugh. “I’m sure I can find it.”

Matt wondered if that comment had been intended as a joke, but his first thought was that it sounded more like a threat, and maybe it was.

For a long time after Matt put down the phone, he sat there and considered his options. He could go home and spill the beans to Jenny. He could tell her the whole story, throw himself on her mercy, and hope she would forgive him. Or not.

Around him, other people in the department started leaving the office. A glance at the clock told him that Jenny was still at work. Even if she heard her phone ringing, she wouldn’t be able to answer it on the floor. Glad to avoid having to speak to her directly, Matt dialed her number and left a message.

“Something’s come up at work,” he said. “It’s a project that has to be finished in time for a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. So you’re on your own for dinner. Sorry about that. And don’t bother waiting up for me,” he added. “I’ll probably be very late.”

When Ali returned to the living room, Chris reappeared long enough to say he was leaving. Like his grandfather, Chris had warned her of the dangers of computer worms and viruses. Right that moment didn’t seem like the time to tell him that her computer might have been compromised by an identity thief.

“Where to?” she asked.

“Just out for a burger with the guys.” His response seemed a trifle too casual.

“Not with Athena?” Ali asked.

Chris shook his head. “She has papers to grade.”

The answer was so quick that Ali wondered if it was true. Was the fact that Chris was on his own for the evening some kind of carryover from the previous night’s engagement-party fiasco?

“Want me to bring you something?” Chris added. “I think Mr. Brooks pretty much emptied all the leftovers out of the fridge.”

“And probably saved us both from dying of food poisoning,” Ali said with a laugh. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

And she was. She turned on her music and fixed herself a container of microwave soup. As she cleared the kitchen, she was careful to dispose of the plastic container in a fashion that would be invisible to her mother, if not to Leland Brooks. As far as Edie Larson was concerned, soup that came in plastic containers wasn’t fit to eat.

Ali had just started the dishwasher when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it, expecting to find B. Simpson outside, bringing her a substitute computer. Instead, Athena stood waiting on her doorstep.

“Chris isn’t here,” Ali said, letting her visitor inside.

“I know,” Athena said. “I came to talk to you.”

“About last night, I assume,” Ali said without enthusiasm.

“Yes,” Athena agreed. “It is about last night.”

By the time Athena made her way to the couch, Sam was there waiting. As soon as Athena settled down, Sam snuggled up beside her. There was something touching in the way the normally unsociable cat had taken to Athena-as though there was some special connection between these two disfigured beings.

“Look,” Ali said. “I’m really sorry about what happened at the party. My mother adores Chris, and she thinks you’re terrific. I’m sure she let her natural enthusiasm get a little out of hand, but-”

“I know Chris already bitched Edie out about that,” Athena interrupted. “The last thing I want to do is to cause hard feelings between Chris and his grandparents. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t that big a deal-well, maybe it was a little bit of a big deal, but I didn’t want him to go to Bob and Edie and make it that much worse.”

Time to fess up, Ali thought. “He spoke to my mother at my suggestion,” she said. “He told me you were upset, and I thought he needed to get my parents to back off. He may have been less diplomatic than he could have been, but I had said that the two of you should get to do things your way, with nobody else interfering. That goes double for me.”

Suddenly, with no warning, Athena burst into tears. “You don’t understand,” she managed. “Nobody does, not even Chris.”

In order to sit next down next to Athena, Ali had to pry Sam loose and shoo her out of the way. “What is it?” Ali asked, wrapping a comforting arm around the young woman’s heaving shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“How can I explain it to you when I don’t really understand it myself?”

“Try me,” Ali said.

“You know about Kenny?”

Ali knew a little about Kenneth Carlson, the man who had been Athena’s husband. He was also the jerk who had dumped her, filing for a divorce while she had been recuperating from her injuries.

“Some,” Ali said, keeping her voice noncommital.

“We started dating in high school,” Athena said. “From our sophomore year on. Our senior year, we were voted most likely to become Ken and Barbie. My folks loved him and still do. As far as they were concerned, Ken was the son they’d never had. His folks loved me the same way, like a daughter. But as we got older, things changed. Or maybe I changed. Ken’s a farmer, like his dad. I wanted more than that. I was interested in other stuff, but by then things were already in motion. Both our families-both sides-got all caught up in planning this huge wedding. It was like a moving freight train-the dress, the invitations, the flowers, the whole bit. I knew I was getting cold feet. I wanted to get off the train, to stop it somehow, but I didn’t have the nerve. So I went through with the wedding, even though I knew it was wrong. Even though I knew, walking down the aisle, that I didn’t really love him the same way he loved me.”

Athena paused. Ali, sitting beside her, said nothing. This story was one she recognized all too well. She had allowed herself to be talked into marrying Paul Grayson in much the same way-allowed herself to be persuaded, even though she’d known at the time she was settling for something less than what she’d had with her first husband. Paul had money, position, looks, everything she should have wanted, except for one critical deficit-Paul Grayson wasn’t Dean Reynolds. Ali worried that Athena was feeling the same kind of reluctance about her engagement to Chris.