Johanssen had been quiet for some time, so I checked over my shoulder. He sat astride the motorcycle with his eyes closed. At least he wasn’t making engine sounds. Not out loud, anyway.

I bent down and flipped through some of the canvases. More wildflowers, one after the other, then a portrait of the young black man, again nude. He stood and faced the artist almost obscenely. I passed by it quickly. There were three other canvases, each of different nude men. Patricia had a wild side, all right, despite her cherubic appearance.

I glanced back at Johanssen. His eyes were closed in orgasm. Again, mercifully silent.

I flipped over to the next canvas and swallowed hard. I was looking at a gorgeous portrait from our Bermuda trip. Paul was sunburned under the moongate, his jacket an idealized white. The garden behind us was lush, the sky shone a faultless blue. The only part unfinished was me. My face was barely sketched in, like a ghost.

“Find anything?” Johanssen asked. He was standing behind the motorcycle looking at me.

Bluff, girl. “Yes. Some beautiful paintings. I love art, don’t you?”

“It’s okay.”

“You should really see this one, Officer. It’s lovely. A still life of some Gerber daisies in a vase. You can see each brushstroke. Come on over and see.”

“Uh, Gerber daisies?”

“Thick stems, a big bloom. Pinks, oranges, yellows. So perfect, so real. You’d love them. Come see.”

“I guess I’m not a real good art fan,” he called out, walking around the back of the motorcycle. “But my wife, she likes art. She grew up in Chadds Ford, so she likes Wyeth and those Brandywine guys. Sure is a nice bike.”

“I like Wyeth, too, some of those meadows he did. And the snow scenes. I love those, don’t you?” I flipped the portrait back in place and straightened up. I grabbed one of the small sketchbooks and quickly paged through it. They were pencil drawings of nude men, black men and white men, short men and tall men. The second sketchbook was more of the same, and I felt myself sweating by the third sketchbook, not knowing what I’d find. “Remember the Helga paintings?” I called out.

“Yepper, maybe I’d go with the maroon. I could live with the maroon. I bet I could pick one up, used. That shop in Montgomeryville, they’d have it.”

I opened the cardboard cover of the third sketchbook and froze on the spot. It was a sketch of Paul. His eyes were closed, in sleep, on a lacy bed. He was naked, with a sheet draped carelessly over his thighs. I wanted to cry out but didn’t.

“Maybe I should ask for it for Christmas?” Johanssen said.

I felt stunned. “Uh… worth a try.”

“We could take long trips together. She’s always saying we don’t spend enough time, just the two of us. Be good for our marriage.”

“Sure. Sounds like it.” As if I knew what was good for a marriage. I tore through the other sketchbooks. Paul wasn’t in any of them, but the young black man was, the one with the short dreadlocks. I returned to the drawing of Paul, holding the sketchbook in my hand. Deciding what to do with it.

“Yes sir,” he said, and rocked back and forth on his heels. “I think I’ll put it on my Christmas list.”

“Good idea.” I wanted to throw the sketchbook across the room, but I did something smarter. I shoved it into my purse.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Johanssen said.

Oh no? Watch me.

Ialmost came to understand Fiske’s alibi because I drove for the next full hour with the convertible top down and the sketchbook in the backseat of the car. Hot summer air whipped my hair around and makeup melted off my face, but I didn’t care how I looked. I didn’t even care where I went. I just drove. Fast. Very fast.

That I got no speeding ticket is a miracle, but that I did not rack up the car and kill myself stands to reason. First, I would never do that to my car. Second, I am not one of those women who turns her anger inward, the suicide prototype. I am quite proficient in turning it outward, and regard this as an improvement on the old-fashioned, Valium-taking, feminine-mystique model. After all, it wasn’t me I wanted to kill, it was Paul.

For the first twenty-five miles or so, I actually considered this. How to commit murder, how to get away with it. You would think the fact that I had just examined a gory crime scene would counsel against my homicidal ruminations, but the opposite was true. It gave me a kind of permission. See, other people do it, you can, too. Like cheating on your in-home office deduction.

It took me thirty more miles to pass through the acutely felonious stage, but by mile fifty-five I had just enough high-octane bile left to make good company, so I roared home. I pulled into the driveway behind Paul’s Cherokee, spraying its gleaming finish with gravel. I cut the ignition, grabbed the sketchbook, and slammed the car door, regretting only this last act. I never slam the car door, I care for my car. It pissed me off so much that when I got in the front door to the house, I slammed it so hard that the windows on either side rattled in their glazier’s points and Paul came running downstairs into the entrance hall.

“Rita!” he said. His alarmed expression reflected how deranged I must have looked, with my crayoned eyes, shiny face, and hair styled by Cuisinart.

“What’s the matter, Paul? Don’t I look like the woman you want to marry?” I did a model’s pirouette and wobbled not at all.

“You look… fine.”

I eyed him up and down in his pressed pants, black rayon shirt, and silk print tie. “So do you. All for me?”

“I was at Mom and Dad’s. The police came and searched the house, the closets, even the garage. It took all afternoon to put everything back together. They took Dad’s car, too. Where have you been?”

I brandished the sketchbook. “Tell me, does this look familiar?”

“I don’t understand.”

“But then again, maybe you don’t recognize it. You were sleeping, as I remember. You must have been so exhausted.”

“Rita, are you okay?”

“Why? Don’t I look okay?”

“Well, you look a little-”

“Crazy?” I said crazily.

“No, but-”

“Boo!”

He took a step backward.

“Well, I’m not. Crazy, that is. I may drive a little too fast, I may bet a little too hard, and I may be committing malpractice on a murder case, but I am definitely not crazy.” I held the sketchbook higher, like the Statue of Liberty on Ritalin. “I thought you were cheating on me and I was not crazy. I thought you gave me a virus and I was not crazy.” I advanced on him with the book in the air. “Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”

“Honey-”

“Don’t honey me,” I said, which is something I always wanted to say. Then I took aim and hurled the sketchbook directly at his face. He shouted and his arms went up protectively-he was always so good at net-so the book bounced off his fingers and hit another of his treasured watercolors, knocking it askew. He looked over his shoulder at the painting, then back at me angrily.

“What is going on here?” he asked sternly.

“Pick up the fucking book and look at it! Chapter One is you asleep naked. Chapter Two is you asleep naked. Chapter Three is you asleep naked, too, so the book is not what you’d call plot-driven. Don’t you just hate literary fiction?”

He didn’t reply, and plucked the book from our pretentious carpet.

“It would help if you’d gotten up and done something, Paul. Poured coffee, made a drink. Nuzzled her ear, cleaned her brushes. But I guess you did clean her brushes. You must have or I wouldn’t have this fucking virus.”

He opened the tan cover of the book, then slowly turned the pages one by one.

“Now, you piece of shit, you have one minute to tell me why you did this to me. Then you can pack your fucking bags and get out.”