Micklind blinked. "Pardon?"

She shook her head. "I was at work. Got there at three. Lots of witnesses."

"I'm one of them," Mattie said.

The cop raised an eyebrow at Timmie. "You telling me you should be considered a suspect?"

Timmie smiled sourly. "I seem to remember telling you I had something like this in mind. And that is my gun. My dad's, anyway."

"You what?" Cindy demanded.

Micklind didn't spend more than another look on her. "This Jason Parker was your ex-husband. That correct?"

Timmie couldn't take her eyes off those shiny loafers on her floor. "I haven't seen him in almost two years."

"Until tonight."

"He's called a few times. Said he was in town. This is the first time he's made an appearance."

"He seem depressed or having trouble with alcohol or drugs?"

"I don't know."

Mattie leaned forward. "There was that message he left on you answerin' machine 'bout makin' you know how much you hurt him."

Timmie couldn't seem to do much more than stare at her.

Mattie grimaced. "Barb told me. She was so mad about it."

Cindy nodded. "Yeah, I was there, too. We just figured he was talking about taking you back to court, though."

Timmie frowned, wondering what else her friends had all shared. Guilty all over again at the thought that she was angry, when they just wanted to help. Hell, she talked as much about each of them with the others as they probably did about her.

Micklind just jotted down notes. "I'll check up on it. I don't think it'll go much farther than this, though. He's got tattooing and gunshot residue on the right temple. No signs of a struggle, gun within reach of his hand. We'll probably find blowback on his shirtsleeve and his prints on the weapon. Which means that it looks like he broke into your house to commit suicide where you'd find him."

"It does look like that, doesn't it?" she said, and finally took a sip of the whiskey, so that it would burn all the way down to her stomach and help her focus.

Micklind had been all set to go back to his notes. Instead, he refocused on her. "But?"

Her smile was neither pleasant nor amused. "But nobody broke into my house, and my ex-husband didn't shoot himself."

"Don't you tell him anything," Cindy insisted sharply.

Micklind ignored her. "What makes you say that?" he asked Timmie.

Timmie didn't bother to point to the obscene decoration on her wall. "Look at the blood-spatter pattern. Jason is six feet one. That pattern isn't tall enough, and the trajectory is upward, so he was definitely below it when the gun was fired. He wasn't standing up when he died."

Now everybody looked. "So he was kneeling," Cindy said. "Why couldn't he kneel to shoot himself?"

"If he knelt down to shoot himself," Timmie said, "wouldn't he have fallen forward or on his side? He's on his back with his feet stretched out in front of him. I just don't think that's possible."

Van Adder heard her and laughed. "Oh, that's right, Mick. You haven't heard. Miss Leary here is a forensic nurse. She's going to tell us our jobs now. What else do you want to tell us, Ms. Leary? You getting vibes, are you? Messages from the dead?"

Timmie watched as the evidence tech reached down to lift the gun from where it lay, just beyond Jason's outstretched right hand. "Well, there is one other thing," she said.

"And that is?"

She didn't look at Van Adder. She didn't look at Micklind or her friends. "My ex-husband was left-handed."

* * *

Murphy hadn't intended to walk to Timmie's house. But then, he hadn't intended to leave his Porsche across the street from Charlie Cleveland's, either. The ice should have cleared with the sun. Somehow, though, in this particular part of the world, the temperature didn't seem to rise in the morning. Which meant that the ice stayed right where it was, and with it, his car.

So he walked. Three miles. Just to tell Timmie that they still had more than one suspect, and Murphy's favorite was still the golden boy. At least that was what he'd set out to do. All plans changed when he got to her street and saw the crime scene tape. Murphy began to run and ended up sliding halfway down the damn street on his ass.

"What happened?" he demanded of the neighbors who had clustered next door to drink coffee and consider the empty house that was decorated like a Christmas package with shiny yellow ribbon.

One older lady in curlers and moth-eaten mink turned to him with an avid smile badly disguised as concern. "Do you know Timmie? Isn't it terrible? You don't think she'd kill her husband, do you?"

Five minutes later, Murphy was skidding down the street toward Mattie's.

"You out exercising, or you need a lift?"

Too focused on forward momentum, Murphy hadn't even noticed the nondescript Caprice pull up alongside him. But there, leaning across the passenger seat, was the redoubtable Micklind.

"You wouldn't be heading to the Wilson house, would you?" Murphy asked.

Micklind unlatched the door and pushed it open. "You heard, did you?"

"I saw," Murphy said, climbing in. "What the hell happened?"

Murphy had to wait for his answer until Micklind had navigated two turns and a fairly steep street, which he did in first gear.

"Your friend thinks her husband was murdered. I was all set to call it a flashy suicide and go home, when Ms. Leary informed me that the victim couldn't have committed the act himself, and proceeded to point out why." Micklind actually smiled. "To the great chagrin of the coroner, I might add. He doesn't like her much, did you know that?"

"It's okay. She doesn't like him much, either. She a suspect?"

"Hard to be unless she contracted it out, which I doubt she'd go to the trouble of doing and then ruin it by telling us all it was murder. She also has a pretty good alibi for the time. Seems she participated in the Ice Capades at the Med Center in front of about fifty patients and the entire staff."

"Could she have been the intended target?" Murphy asked. "She hasn't been quiet about what's been going on."

"I'd stay close to her if you can," Micklind said. "You can bet nobody's authorized me to. They still want me to bring her in."

"Who do you think did it?"

"Well, now, that's the question, isn't it?"

The Wilson house was a tiny white cottage situated on the same property as the similarly clapboarded Hill of Zion A.M.E. Church. Kids of all colors spilled off the porch in noisy confusion, and the driveway was clogged with vans, all bearing the church's logo in neon purple. Murphy couldn't imagine Leary finding any peace and quiet here after what must have happened last night. But then, Murphy wasn't a big-happy-family kind of guy. He hadn't figured Leary to be, either.

They were met at the door by a man the size of one of those vans, who had a stillness about him that connected him with the church next door. "I'm Walter Wilson," he introduced himself, opening the door to Micklind's badge. "Mattie's husband. I imagine you're here to talk to Timmie."

He led them through what there was of the tiny house to where Mattie stood guard at one of the back bedrooms.

"You go on in, have something to eat," was all she said as she stood there, arms akimbo over an impressive chest and beneath a more impressive scowl. "She be out in a minute."