Pizza. I’d phone in our order as soon as he walked through the back door.

Half an hour later, worry got the best of me and I phoned the station.

Officer Derek Underhill, the police force’s unofficial second-in-command, said Gilroy had just left. Normally Underhill enjoyed chattering like a magpie about a new case, especially when I promised to bring morning donuts to the station, but my offer of pastries was having no effect on the man, and the tone in his voice had me worried.

When I asked how Laura had died, he said to ask Gilroy. Then he stopped me from hanging up. “Give him time, Rachel. He’s wiped out. Let him decompress.”

CHAPTER 6

I woke early to muffled sounds coming from downstairs and the smell of coffee and sausages. Rolling on my side, I checked the alarm clock—6:05—then flopped on my back and pulled the comforter to my chin.

Gilroy had managed a whole four hours of sleep last night. Maybe. And I hadn’t done much better. He’d lain awake much of the night—I could tell by his breathing—and at one point, about two in the morning, I’d heard him creak down the stairs.

Wind rattled the bedroom’s single-pane windows. Get up, get up. I reached out and flicked on the nightstand lamp. Why are January mornings so blasted dark?

“Stupid question,” I mumbled. I tossed back the comforter. Braving the cold wooden floor, I got up, got dressed, and went downstairs.

“We need to replace our windows,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee. “Thanks for making this.”

“Sorry if I kept you up,” Gilroy replied. He looked brighter this morning, even under our kitchen can lights.

“I wasn’t sleeping that well myself. Nothing to do with you.” I took a long sip.

“Sausages,” he said, pointing at the cast-iron pan on the stove top.

“I’ll make some toast.”

Gilroy took his coffee and plate to the kitchen table. He blew across his steaming coffee and started drinking before he touched his sausages, an act of boldness that, at forty-four, I could rarely manage without digestive upset. While I could down an astonishing amount of coffee in the course of a day, food had to come first.

I made toast for both of us and joined him. “Holly, Julia, and I discovered a few things yesterday that might be connected to Laura Patchett’s murder.”

There. I’d said it.

He slathered butter on a piece of toast. “Thanks for not bringing it up last night.”

“Talk murder over that delicious pizza? Sacrilege.”

“No mushrooms next time?”

“You got it.”

He laid down his toast and took up his coffee cup. “Tell me what you found out, and I’ll let you know what I can.”

i was at a corner table in Wyatt’s Bistro, thinking about Laura’s brutal murder—that’s how Gilroy had described it—and drinking coffee when Mary Blackwell entered. She ordered tea and reminded me she was taking a break from work, an hour earlier than usual. She had fifteen minutes before people started wondering where she’d gone.

“Then we don’t have time to waste,” I said, irritation working its way into my voice. She’d asked for my help, not the other way around, and I was taking time away from writing my latest mystery novel. “Let’s start with Connor Morse. Who do you think gave you his arrest record?”

“I don’t have a clue. I’ve thought about it. Morse was arrested in Denver, so maybe someone who has access to Denver court records.”

“He was seventeen at the time, a juvenile.”

“As a dealer, he may have been charged as an adult.”

True enough. “Why do you think you were the recipient of that information, and why did you agree to give it to Brodie?”

“I didn’t have a choice.” Her fingers played nervously over the rim of her cup. “In the envelope that came with the photocopy of his record, there was a note.” She looked away, toward a slew of breakfast seekers coming through the front door. “My son, Parker, graduated from high school last summer and started classes last September at the police academy in Austin—do you remember? That’s where he wants to live. The heat must be oppressive.”

“I remember you saying how excited he was to attend academy.”

“It’s what he’s dreamed of since he was a kid. Always watching cop shows. He didn’t want to go to college. He thought that was a waste of his time, and for him it would be. So he passed the entrance exams and background check and was accepted.”

“But?”

“The night of his senior prom he broke into a church in Berthoud and graffitied the altar and some of the pews.”

“He was eighteen?”

“Yes, an adult.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Yes, but he was let go at the station. The church’s pastor, Fred Stratz, called Clay after calling the police, and Fred and Clay came to an arrangement. Fred asked the police if he could handle it by having Parker work for the damage he caused. In the end he didn’t want Parker to have a permanent record.”

“You said Parker’s doing well at the academy, Mary. Help me here.”

She shook her head. You don’t get it. “Technically, there was an arrest, but it was scrubbed.”

“Scrubbed?”

“It didn’t come up in the background check, and I think the pastor’s to thank for that. That doesn’t mean it can’t come up later because someone knows about it. Parker didn’t include the arrest in his application, and lying on your application gets you expelled. If he’d told the truth, he would’ve been turned down, and if he tells the truth now, he’ll be expelled, three weeks from graduation. He could wait a few years and reapply, but he’d never do that. He’d go on to who knows what in life. Being a cop—it’s his world, and it’s a good life. A good job for a kid with just a high school diploma.”

“Then why did he risk—”

Mary cut me off, eyes flashing. “Do you have kids? They do stupid things. He was two weeks from graduating high school, and on his last big night out with his best friend, he took a foolish dare.”

“What about his friend?”

“Gavin didn’t enter the church so he wasn’t charged.”

“Gavin who?”

“Gavin Inman.”

“I’m guessing it wasn’t Stratz who gave you Connor Morse’s arrest record.”

“Stratz retired and moved to Arizona not long after Parker left for the academy. Parker and Stratz ended up getting along. No, someone local put Morse’s arrest record in my mailbox. Even Gavin doesn’t live here anymore. Whoever it was knew about Parker’s arrest and threatened to tell the academy. If the academy finds out, they’ll investigate.”