Carlene Thompson - Don

Natalie shrugged. "It could be a lot of people. No one immediately springs to mind."

"How about the guy that was in Lily Peyton's shop yesterday morning?"

"Now that you mention it. He said his name is Jeff Lindstrom."

"What does he do?"

"I have no idea. He said he's here on vacation."

"Staying where?"

"I don't know. He was headed for Trudy's Diner for breakfast, though. Maybe he struck up a conversation with someone there."

Nick smiled. "Dr. St. John, you are a gold mine of information."

"Only one of my many fine qualities." Natalie stood abruptly. "I should be going now. My father is under the impression that I'm fifteen and he'll probably be calling to check on me, which would be too embarrassing to endure."

"A concerned father is always a concerned father."

"So he keeps telling me. But I hope when Paige is an adult, you give her a little more leeway than my father does me."

"I'll try, but I'll probably be a complete pain."

She laughed. "Tell Paige I had a wonderful time with her."

"I will and thanks for staying."

"I suppose I'll see you at the funeral. I've read that police come to funerals of murder victims to see if the killer might turn up to get a big thrill out of the whole thing."

"The only problem is that if they're getting a thrill, they usually don't look like it. Natalie, I'd rather Lily didn't know the real reason why I'm coming to the funeral."

"I won't have to tell her-she'll already know. She won't come up to talk to you about the case, either. She'll stay out of the way." She frowned. "Alison is another matter."

"She's attending?"

"Viveca says she wants to and Alison gets what she wants. She might sit like a stone and behave herself. Or she might make a scene and have to be taken away. Or she might play Lois Lane and come up to interview you."

"Oh, God," Nick moaned. "I vote for the stone."

"Don't count on it."

He trailed behind her to the front door. He wanted to say something, clever, but the only thing he managed was, "Sure you can make it home after all that milk?"

"I think so. It didn't have nutmeg in it, remember?"

"Nutmeg. I'll have to try it." Well, you've certainly impressed her with your witty repartee, he thought gloomily. As she strode to her car, though, one more comment burst from his mouth. "Do you really think Paul Fiori is gorgeous?"

She turned, her silky hair swinging over one shoulder, and winked at him. "Absolutely irresistible."

He shook his head. "I knew it. Too much milk."

"Tell me again what they looked like. Warren and Charlotte, I mean. No, wait a minute. I wanna see this."

Ted Hysell sighed and glanced back at the television. Eddie Salvatore leaned across the table, his brown eyes smoldering in his chiseled face. "So you don't know nothin' about this murder that went down today, I got that right, Ice Pick?"

A sweating hulk with acne scars and bulging arms sprouting from a sleeveless sweatshirt dropped his sneaky gaze. "Yeah.'man."

"I love this show!" Dee gushed. "Paul Fiori is a walking, breathing piece of perfection."

"He's good as Salvatore," Ted agreed without her panting enthusiasm.

"Yeah?" Salvatore demanded. "Yeah! Is that what you're tellin' me, Ice Pick?" More shifting of eyes and sweating from Ice Pick. " 'Cause I'm gonna tell you somethin'." Salvatore sprang from his seat and grabbed the giant around the throat, rushing him across the room and slamming him against a wall. "I'm gonna tell you about how a little girl got found in the street, a little girl in a sweet blue dress pulled up around her waist from where some animal raped her over and over before he wrung her sweet little neck until her face turned as blue as her dress and her mother had to see that little girl, had to look in that little girl's face and say, 'Yes, that's my baby,' and for the rest of her life every time that mother tries to sleep she'll see that little girl's sweet face all blue and the eyes bulgin' out-"

Salavatore's well-meaning but vastly inferior partner stood back reverently, gazing at the law enforcement god that was Eddie Salvatore. "You gonna tell me that, Ice Pick?" He pounded the man's huge head against the wall. " 'Cause I got a hunch, Ice Pick. I got a hunch you didn't have nothin' to do with hurtin', rapin', stranglin' that little girl, but you gotta give up the truth, you hear what I'm sayin'? 'Cause you don't give up the truth I'm gonna beat you till I turn that head of yours into a big, soft melon with brains drippin' outta your ears-"

"It was Snipe, man!" Ice Pick screamed, spraying saliva, overwhelmed by the blazing rage of Salvatore. "It was Snipe, I swear!"

"Hot damn, that was great!" Dee took a slug of beer from a can, now willing to talk because the scene had swung away from Salvatore. "You get confessions that way, Ted?"

Terror of the interrogation room, that's me, Ted thought dismally. "Sometimes it gets pretty rough."

"Like when?"

"It's hard to remember all the times." Ted gulped beer, thinking furiously. "You remember that old man found floating in the lake a couple of years ago, bullet in his heart? We got the guy what was seen with him last…"

"Yeah?" Dee asked eagerly.

And Sheriff Purdue had conducted the interrogation, half drunk and belligerently ignoring the guy's plea for a lawyer, bullying him into a confession that a judge rightly labeled fruit of the poisonous tree. The guy had walked away a free man with a smirk at Ted he'd never forget. "It was pretty bad," he said lamely. "I'm not supposed to go into details, though."

"Oh, hell." Dee sounded as if she knew he was trying to snow her. "Tell me about Warren Hunt and Charlotte Bishop."

He had to make up for her disappointment in his previous murder tale. "Got their throats slashed." He paused for effect. "Somebody nearly took off Charlotte 's head."

"Wish I'd have seen them! Given me a real thrill to see those two mutilated like a couple of pigs."

Ted blinked at her. "Jeez, Dee."

She threw back her head and laughed. "I was joking. You should see the look on your face!"

"Shut up down there!" The voice of Dee 's mother shrilled down the dingy stairway and bounced around the living room. "And turn off that damned TV. You're runnin' up the electric bill."

"Why don't you turn off your heating pad and your dehumidifier and your air conditioner, too?" Dee muttered savagely.

"Is she cranky tonight?"

"Cranky? That one of your mother's words? She's a bitch all the time now, not that she was ever a bed of roses to live with. Being deserted by two husbands didn't improve her disposition, but my brothers and I couldn't help it."

"They don't come around much anymore, do they?"

Dee flushed. "Not anymore."

Not now that she'd been fired from the hospital where she occasionally lifted drugs for her brothers to sell, Ted thought. He always told other people the charges against her were false. They weren't and he had mixed feelings about the drug theft. What she'd done was against the law, but the brothers were losers with kids who were going hungry. She'd denied the allegations Andrew St. John had brought against her, even to Ted. She had only told him the truth one night when she was particularly drunk after a call from one of her nieces who'd run away from home. The girl was sixteen and Dee was afraid she would become a prostitute. There was no mistaking the sincerity of her love for the kids, but she'd done what she'd done and she was just lucky the hospital was more concerned about bad public relations than pressing charges or she would have landed in jail.

After losing her job, Dee would have left town if her mother hadn't been diagnosed with lung cancer. She now lived in her mother's house rent-free in return for nursing care. She earned enough to exist by typing. She also did other people's laundry, although Ted wasn't supposed to know this. He did know, though, and often anonymously threw business her way.