“Who had secret meetings in hotel rooms.”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because nothing you’ve told me is credible.” His eyes speared into hers. “Nothing.”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“About you and Coleman Greer?”

“About everything.”

“How long did these cozy get-togethers last? One hour? Two? Longer?”

“It varied.”

“Ballpark. No pun intended.”

“An hour or two. Usually no longer.”

“Depending on how long you could sneak away.”

She released a slow breath. “You’re correct about that. Cato didn’t know about these visits with Coleman.”

“Ah.”

“But it wasn’t what you’re thinking. It wasn’t an affair.”

“Hotel rooms are used for two things. One of them is sleeping. I don’t think you met with Coleman Greer to sleep.”

“We talked.”

“Talked.”

“Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“With all your clothes on?”

“Yes!”

“Do you honestly expect me to believe-”

“It’s the truth!”

“-that you were in a hotel room with a man-”

“A friend.”

“-and didn’t get fucked?”

She inhaled a quick breath. She seemed about to speak, then thought better of it. Her lips compressed.

Duncan smirked. “That’s what I thought.”

Until she shrugged off his hand, he didn’t realize that it had been clamping her shoulder all this time. “Are you arresting me, Detective Hatcher?”

“Not yet.”

She retrieved her handbag and stormed out.

Her sudden departure left a vacuum in the small room. Duncan, staring at the empty doorway through which she had passed, raked his fingers through his hair and mumbled a stream of swear words. Long moments later, he realized DeeDee was still there, watching him, parallel frown lines between her eyebrows.

He raised his shoulders. “What?”

“What was that all about?”

“What?”

“The…” She sawed her hand back and forth, as though forming a connection between her chest and an invisible point in space. “That thing between the two of you.”

“What thing?”

“Tension. Something. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was crackling.”

“You’re imagining things. Talking about Coleman Greer naked got your sap running.”

“If you let this woman cloud your judgment, you’re the sap.”

He pounced on that. “Tell me how I exercised poor judgment.”

“By letting her sail out of here.”

“We don’t have anything to justify holding her, DeeDee,” he said, rather too loudly. “Without any evidence, how could I? I wanted to detain her, God knows.”

Before walking out, she fired a parting shot. “Detain? Is that a new word for it?”

For the remainder of the afternoon, DeeDee stayed at her desk, cleaning up paperwork on another case. Duncan stayed at his desk, too, thinking about Elise and wondering if she was an accomplished liar or telling the truth, but ostensibly running his trotlines on Savich.

Going through the motions, he placed a call to his contact at the DEA. “He’s been quiet,” Duncan said. “Makes me nervous.”

He learned from the agent that after getting a tip from an informant, they’d raided one of Savich’s trucks. All they’d found was machinery and the proper shipping invoices that matched the cargo, right down to the correct serial numbers.

Duncan wasn’t surprised. Savich wouldn’t use his company trucks to ship drugs along Interstate 95. While the truck was being stripped down and searched, family vans and nondescript sedans loaded to the gills were headed for the lucrative markets along the eastern seaboard.

He consoled the agent over the failed mission. “I couldn’t get him for Freddy Morris, either.”

“You still dry?”

“As a bone,” Duncan admitted. “Lucille Jones has gone underground, and the DA won’t try the case again without something substantial, like the knife Savich used to cut out Freddy’s tongue. He’d prefer it to still be dripping blood.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“One can dream.”

Duncan ’s frustration matched that of the federal agent. He suspected that Savich was having information fed to him, probably by one of the department’s own paid informants. Although, maybe not. Savich had infallible sensors that had served him well over the course of his criminal career. He may only have sensed Freddy Morris’s betrayal and, taking no chances, acted with dispatch to eliminate him.

Ready to put an end to the unproductive Monday, Duncan left for home early. On his way out, he stopped at DeeDee’s desk. “What’s your gut feeling?”

She didn’t look up. “On?”

“Laird. Do we sign off on it? It was self-defense. Case closed.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“If we could talk to Napoli -”

“But we can’t.”

“And that’s like an itch I can’t scratch,” he said. “The whole Napoli-Trotter-Laird connection.”

“It would be useful to know what Napoli had on Mrs. Laird. How damaging was it?”

He stared out the window for a moment, then said decisively, “Let’s keep working it. Give it a few more days. Maybe Napoli will surface.”

She looked up at him then, her smile bright. “See you tomorrow.”

However, less than an hour later, she called him on his cell phone. “What are you doing?”

“Buying groceries,” he replied.

“Groceries? You don’t cook.”

“So far I’ve got toilet paper and beer.”

“Essentials, for sure.”

Relieved that they were friends again, he asked, “What’s up?”

“We’ve been summoned to appear at the Lairds’ house at eight o’clock.”

“Tonight?”

“Yep.”

“What for?”

“I don’t think it’s for dinner.”

“Meet you there.”

At thirty seconds to eight, they met on the walkway leading up to the front door of the stately residence. “Any ideas?” he asked.

“He just said to be here at eight, and here we be.”

“Why’d he call you?”

“I was the one still in the office.” DeeDee punched the doorbell and they heard the chime inside the house. “We probably shouldn’t count on getting a full confession.”

“To what?”

“To anything.”

Mrs. Berry answered the door and regarded them as though they smelled like raw sewage. “They’re waiting for you.”

She led them as far as the arched opening into the living room. Cato Laird was standing with his back to the fireplace and the painting with the dead rabbit lying among the fresh vegetables. Elise was seated on the sofa. Both wore solemn expressions, but his voice was cordial enough when he thanked them for coming and asked them to take seats. There was no offer of refreshments on this visit.

The judge sat down beside his wife on the sofa. He took her hand and patted it reassuringly. “Elise told me about her interview with you earlier today. My initial reaction was to call Bill Gerard and raise hell. You placed my wife at a terrible disadvantage.”

Prudently, Duncan and DeeDee remained silent.

“But on second thought, I changed my mind about filing a complaint. You deserve a dressing-down for pulling a stunt like that, but I didn’t want to put any additional stress on Elise.

“And, actually, I was more angry with myself than with you. It’s my fault that she had to undergo that unpleasant interrogation. I couldn’t live with that.” He glanced at her, then came back to them. “So I confessed to her that I’d hired Meyer Napoli to follow her.”

Duncan ’s gaze moved to Elise. She was regarding him with palpable hostility.

The judge said, “I felt that Elise should know everything that was said during our conversation in the locker room the other day, Detective Hatcher. I’m not proud of myself for lying to you and Detective Bowen when I said I’d never had personal dealings with Napoli. I deeply regret my business with him, especially if it resulted in the shooting of Trotter, no matter how roundabout the connection was.”

“That was our thinking when we talked to Mrs. Laird today,” DeeDee said. “That Trotter’s break-in was somehow related to Meyer Napoli.”