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obviously from their wedding, and so unconventional it’s almost out of focus. It looks as if a gust of wind caught the new couple off guard, Melanie holding down the skirt of what could be a gauzy Vera Wang, Brad in a sleekly Italian-looking suit.
    “It’s the one we sent to the newspaper,” Melanie explains as she shows it to me. “Wedding announcement.”
    I look at the picture more closely. Brad even looks Jimmy Stewarty, in a lanky, almost gawky kind of way. He’s gazing lovingly at Melanie, but her eyes look confidently into the camera. Seeing the happiness on their faces makes this whole thing even more tragic, if that’s possible.
    “Hold the photo steady, ma’am, can you?” Walt rolls off a quick shot, then turns the camera back to Melanie. She’s still staring at the photo.
    “So?” I look at her encouragingly. I can’t let her lose concentration. More than twenty minutes here and we’ll blow our deadline. “He worked at Aztratech?”
    “Yes. And he was happy there.” She replaces the silver frame on a glass end table, wincing as it clatters down. “He worked at headquarters ever since we moved East a few years ago. My parents were here. They left us this house, in fact…”
    Aha. Not their house.
    “…and so it was perfect when Aztratech started up. It was very bare bones at the beginning, sometimes Brad didn’t get paid….”
    Another aha. Money problems.
    “And he wasn’t a pharmaceutical researcher, he was in accounting. Budget forecasting, that kind of thing. He was always interested in numbers…. He was top of his class at Wharton, did you know?”
    And just as she seems to be comfortable again, my beeper goes off. Of course.
    I glance down and hit the button on my alpha pager. Suicide? it says. Angela says ask.
    Now there’s a charming suggestion. Angela’s telling me I’m supposed to sit in this little waif of a widow’sliving room and casually throw out a couple of questions about whether her oh-so-recently deceased and beloved husband may have killed himself on purpose in a gruesome crash of twisted metal. I flip the beeper to Off. I work for local news. That’s exactly what I have to do.
    “Sorry, Melanie,” I say. “Forgive me. Anyway, anything else you’d like to add?” Here I go. I glance at my notebook, as if I have a list of questions. “You said your husband was happy at work. But otherwise, any worries or concerns you’d noticed? About, um, money, maybe?”
    I cringe at myself. Subtle, kiddo. She is so going to throw me out of here.
    She doesn’t.
    “No, not that I know of,” she says slowly. “When he left that morning, it was like any other morning for him. Everything was—as usual.”
    But I notice her fists are clenching and now Melanie is looking at the photo again. The little dog looks up at her, nuzzles her leg, and she gives her an absent pat.
    “Charlie…may I ask you something?”
    “Of course.”
    “Must we have the camera on?”
    With that one question, I’m tossed overboard into the murky waters of J-school ethics class. TV news is all about getting the story on tape. If we turn the camera off and she says something newsworthy, I’m sunk. But if I tell Melanie no, we can’t turn the camera off, she probably won’t tell me whatever it is she wants to tell me. And I’m really curious.
    “No problem.” I take the plunge. “Walt, we’re done.”
    Walt clicks off the lights, and starts wrapping cords and twisting down light stands. He doesn’t care what happenswith Melanie; he’s figuring in ten minutes we’re outta here. He can dump me off at the station and go back to chasing fires. I register a flutter of envy. To him, this is just nine to five plus overtime. If I lose a story—well, the dominoes may start to fall. On me.
    “Why didn’t you answer my husband’s e-mail?” Melanie asks. She doesn’t look angry. It’s almost as if she’s—hurt. “He sent it the day before he disappeared.”
    My brain brakes into a stall,