“Then there’s some kind of mistake,” I told him. “My ex-wife’s name was Faith.”
“She changed it,” Jamison replied. “As I said, her name was Katherine, but she mostly went by Katy.”
“She’s dead?” I repeated. “Faith is dead? You’re kidding. What happened to her?”
“She was murdered, Mr. Dixon,” Jamison said. “This is a homicide investigation. Are you sure you want to discuss it here?”
I looked around the room. The biggest part of the lunch rush was over, but there were still plenty of diners in the joint, most of them watching with avid curiosity while the drama played itself out. Behind the counter, Danielle had just clipped another incoming order onto the wheel.
“Sorry,” I said. “My cook called in sick. I’ve got a kitchen to run. The afternoon cook comes on at four. I can talk to you then, but I don’t see why I should. What does any of this have to do with me? Faith and I have been divorced for years. She married someone else—my former best friend, actually—so why are you talking to me?”
“Because of this,” Jamison said. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded and handed it over. It was a printed out version of an e-mail. The time stamp said it had been sent on October 15 at 2:00 A.M., Mountain Standard Time, a little over two weeks earlier. I scanned through the text.
Dear Deeny,
If anything ever happens to me, tell them about Butch. He’s been calling me lately. He’s never forgiven me for leaving him, and I’m afraid he’ll do almost anything to get even.
Katy
Deeny. Short for DeeAnn, maybe? I remembered that Deeny had been a grade school chum of Faith’s, and I also believed she was an attendant at our wedding, but that was all I knew. Obviously no matter what Faith’s name was now, she and Deeny had stayed in touch.
“According to Ms. Hallowell—DeeAnn Hallowell—Katy had complained to her that you were harassing her by phone—that you’d been threatening her.”
The whole idea was preposterous. “You think I did this?” I demanded, rattling the paper in the cop’s face. “You think I’m responsible for Faith’s murder?”
“Are you?” Jamison asked mildly, but watched me closely as he did so. “Less than a day after Katherine Melcher wrote this, she was dead. Could you tell us where you were on the night of October fifteenth?”
I could barely make sense of it. Faith was dead, but her name was Katherine Melcher now? Who the hell was Melcher? Where had he come from? And what had become of Rick Austin, my supposedly best friend, who had run off with Faith and married her the moment our divorce was final?
I handed Jamison back the computer printout, and that’s when I saw the trap because, on the night in question, I had been in Las Vegas attending a mystery writers’ convention—a thing called Bouchercon. I had driven up and back, stayed at the Talisman, where I had a coupon, rather than at the convention hotel out on the Strip. I had registered under the name people call me, Butch Dixon, rather than under my real name, Frederick Wilcox Dixon, because I was worried someone would notice the F.W. Dixon connection and think I was somehow related to the woman, masquerading as a man, who wrote all those old Hardy Boys books I devoured as a kid.
If Faith or Katy or whatever her name was now had died that night, and if she had accused me in advance of doing the deed, I knew I was in deep caca.
“Duty calls,” I told the two cops. “I’ve got food to cook. You’ll have to excuse me.”
I spun on my heel and made for the kitchen. On the way, I stuffed both hands deep in my pockets. I could feel they were shaking, something I didn’t want the visiting detectives to see.
At the end of the counter I had to dodge around Matty to get by. “Hey,” she said. “Are you all right? Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” I muttered as I hustled past her, not much caring if she believed me or not. I snapped the order off the clip and slapped it down on the prep table. Two chili burgers with onions and cheese. I stuck two patties on the grill and stirred the pot of chili that was simmering at low heat over a burner.