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my life again. As if I’d once been a member of the Communist Party or something. “It wasn’t a real organization or anything,” I said. “It was just a bunch of—”
    He stopped me again. “Have you stayed close to any of those people?”
    I shook my head.
    “So you weren’t at that Kerouac Thingy-dingy the other night?”
    “Good gravy, no. I haven’t gone for years.”
    “So your relationship with Sweet and his friends is pretty much ancient history then?”
    “Well, yes. I suppose so.”
    I could tell from the way Grant was nibbling on the ice in his water glass that he was disappointed. “Exactly when was the last time you talked to Gordon Sweet?” he asked.
    “It could have been six months ago—or maybe a year.”
    “That memorable, was it?”
    “It was just the usual small talk when you bump into someone. ‘How you doing?’ ‘You’re looking good.’ That kind of thing.”
    “And was he looking good, Mrs. Sprowls? He didn’t look troubled or frightened? Preoccupied with something?”
    “Well, Gordon was always preoccupied with something,” I said. “He was a very smart man and there was always a lot going on upstairs. But I don’t have any memory of thinking something was wrong.”
    He put another spoonful of ice in his mouth. “You went to the memorial service, right?”
    I nodded, wondering how he knew.
    “You have a chance to talk to anybody?”
    I told him who’d I talked to, Effie, Chick, Gwen and Rollie.
    “Any of them say anything interesting?”
    “Just the stuff everybody says. What a great guy Gordon was. How they’re going to miss him.”
    “Nothing relating to his murder?”
    “Well, Effie did say maybe Gordon was digging where he shouldn’t have been.”
    Grant showed a smidgen of interest in that. “Was that
her
maybe or
your
maybe?”
    “I’m pretty sure it was her maybe.”
    “So you didn’t get any sense that she knew something?”
    “Not really. But you do have to wonder if his dig had anything to do with his murder, don’t you?”
    The waitress brought our drinks. Grant had ordered a Diet Pepsi. I’d ordered hot tea. He watched me squeeze the goodness out of my teabag and I watched him take his straw out of the wrapper. I figured if he wasn’t going to ask me another question, then I’d ask him a few of mine. “You don’t have any suspects then?”
    He bent the tip of the straw at a convenient angle and took a long suck of his Pepsi. “Every murder comes with a shitload of suspects, Mrs. Sprowls. Pardon my Vulgarian.”
    I waved off his apology. “But nobody you’re going to arrest in the next day or two?”
    He adjusted the angle on his straw and sucked again. “This one could take a while to unravel.”
    “What about that graduate assistant, Andrew Holloway III?” I asked.
    One of Grant’s big eyebrows arched higher. One went flat. “What about him?”
    “Dale said the kid found both Gordon’s body and his car. Fifteen miles away from each other.”
    Grant stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. He was not thrilled that I knew that much about the graduate assistant, which meant he was not thrilled that Dale knew that much. Clearly somebody back at headquarters was going to get his ass chewed out for leaking that. “That’s really all I know,” I assured him.
    “Let’s try to keep it that way,” he said.
    The meatloaf sandwiches and sides of au gratin potatoes arrived. Like everyone who’s ever eaten at Speckley’s, we raved about how good it was all the time we were stuffing our faces. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,” I said.
    He put down his fork. Folded his fists under his chin. “That’s not the only reason I wanted to see you.”
    I put my fork down, too. Fidgeted with my napkin. “Oh?”
    “Let me ask you this—If you weren’t that close to Professor Sweet anymore, why did you go to his memorial service?”
    It was a good question. One I’d asked myself. I fumbled my way through a number of answers: