“Do you think David was calling it off and she retaliated? Or she wanted to end the relationship and they struggled, and-”

He shook his head. “I’ve talked to her. We had breakfast this morning.” I thought of scolding Barry for his bad taste in restaurants, but I’d impressed him enough with my extrasensory abilities. “She’s devastated over this. And you probably didn’t see the side of her this weekend that everyone sees all year. Cheryl’s the one behind all the charity giving the Mellaces do.”

“That’s not an unusual division of labor for a wealthy couple.” I wasn’t ready to give Cheryl the benefit of the doubt.

“Well, all I know is that Cheryl loved David. I think she was planning to leave Walter in fact. But that’s one thing David and I didn’t share-our love lives.”

I had to be sure Barry wasn’t holding out on me. “I thought men friends shared that kind of thing.”

Barry swallowed hard. Tears escaped and ran down his cheeks. “That’s the kind of guy David was. We made a kind of game of hinting at what was going on with women in both our lives, as if my life were as full as his. But really David knew I didn’t have much along those lines, and he did, and he didn’t want to lord it over me.”

Another dead end. According to Barry, David and Cheryl were both candidates for sainthood.

“I think I’m out of questions,” I said.

“I’m not.” Barry’s frown and abrupt turnaround unnerved me. “What are you going to do with what I told you, Mrs. Porter? About the business.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Barry. The police are already working on David’s financial records, and if everything we’ve discussed has crossed my mind before tonight, it has probably crossed theirs.”

“Believe me, David knew how to cover his tracks.” He said this again as a matter of pride in his deceased friend.

“It’s only a matter of time, Barry. Your best bet is to go to the police and tell them what you told me. Make it easy for them so they’ll be more inclined to go easy on you.”

Not that he deserved it.

Barry stood and walked with me to the door. “You may be right, but I’m not ready now, if ever, to go to the police. And anything we’ve said tonight… well, if anyone asks me, we just chatted about old times at ALHS.”

I opened the door, and at the same moment the doors opened on a sedan parked outside my house. Three men got out. The street was quiet at this time of night, all residents’ cars safely tucked into garages. There could be only one reason for the unmarked car and its occupants.

“You may not have to go to the police, Barry. I think they’ve come to you.”

I was grateful that the LPPD didn’t pull out all the stops with sirens and spinning red-and-blue lights.

Something told me that my nephew would be stopping by soon, to explain the quiet drama in front of my house, so instead of retiring my tired mind and body to my bedroom, I refilled the cookie plate and put more water on for tea.

I sat in my chair and tried to put the new information in order. There wasn’t much that I hadn’t guessed before Barry’s visit, but I felt that I could cross Barry off my mental list of murder suspects. His affection for his lifelong friend was obvious, and he seemed as confused as I was about who might have killed David.

Barry would be paying dearly enough for his other crimes. He hadn’t directly accused Walter Mellace of orchestrating the broadly applied scheme, but it might be another story once he was under police lights. I wondered if Walter Mellace had made contingency plans in case something like this happened.

I thought of Larry Esterman and his stealing the records that had been left on my car seat, most likely by Ben. What could that mean? I narrowed it down to two possibilities: First that he was going to undertake his own investigation to clear his daughter, and second, that there was something on the sheet that incriminated him.

Barry had confirmed what Rosie had told me earlier-that Larry had been perhaps more angry than Rosie about the so-called incident in Joshua Speed Woods. Could Larry have killed David after all these years? Why wait? It was possible that David’s compounding of the insult to his daughter by essentially stealing from Larry’s company might have put Larry over the edge.

Fine, I thought, Barry is off the list and Larry is on.

Not what you’d call progress.

As predicted, the next face I saw through my peephole was Skip’s. I opened the door and enjoyed his smile when he heard the kettle whistling. “I hope there’s food to go with that,” he said.

“Of course. But not before you tell me what that was all about.” I pointed in the direction of the sidewalk where LPPD plainclothesmen had been waiting for Barry Cannon.

Skip waved one hand at me while the other took up a cookie. “Nothing new. And, I’m guessing, nothing you don’t already know. We had our guys look into the construction award records as far as they could without a warrant.” He laughed. “Sort of a Maddie approach.”

“She’ll be thrilled to hear you call it that.”

“I know. I get to tell her, okay? It’s not open-and-shut, but a little more digging is bound to uncover an illegal scheme to lock out Mellace’s competition. Since Barry is Mellace’s CFO, we figured he must have had a part in it.”

“And you had a feeling he’d be here?” I called from the kitchen where I was attending to the tea.

During the summer especially, I was thankful for a refrigerator that made ice automatically, but lately the process took on a new dimension-I wondered if some underhanded negotiations were involved in the purchase of my home refrigeration system. Had a big company ridden over a small one to get my service contract?

As soon as this case is over, I mused, I really must pursue other interests.

“We’ve been tailing Barry all day to see what plans he might make now that one of his partners is dead. Imagine my surprise… not… when Drew called in and said he’d tracked Barry to your house tonight.”

“He just stopped by, honestly. I didn’t invite him. He probably thinks I called you to arrest him.”

“Right now, we’ve just taken him in for questioning. I figure if he ended up here, he must be ready to confess.”

I was honored that criminals preferred to bare their souls in my home instead of interview room number three at the LPPD.

Larry Esterman’s name was on the tip of my tongue, but I hadn’t had a chance to look again at the package of e-mails Maddie had given me, and I didn’t want to put Rosie’s father in a bad light on the basis of a hunch. I considered telling Skip that the mystery of who mugged me in the Duns Scotus lobby had been solved, but I decided not to complicate matters.

For now, I let it go and enjoyed tea and cookies with my nephew.

I had about another half hour before I’d have to crawl into bed, no matter how warm and stuffy my bedroom was. When Skip left, I took out the e-mails. They were useless except as documentation of contract awards. Mostly boilerplate, such as pursuant to our determination and herewith we offer you. I needed the pages Maddie had given to Skip. I’d had only a glance at them in his office. On the other hand, I thought that even if they were in front of me now, I wouldn’t be able to focus. It was time to call it a day.

I turned out all the lights on my way to my bedroom. Only then did I notice the little red light blinking on my answering machine. It was unusual that I wouldn’t have seen the light when we got home this afternoon, and even more amazing that Maddie didn’t notice it.

Surely I could manage one more task before going to bed. I pushed the button.

“Hi, this is Henry. Sorry we missed each other today, Gerry. Call me when you get in later if you wish.”