As I got to the front door, Mrs. Ferguson opened it. She must have heard the rumble of the Mustang pulling up out front. She was thin and her hand quivered slightly as she extended it to me. I could see the blue veins through her delicate skin, but the brightness was there in her eyes. I could see her spirit had not dimmed in spite of all the tragedy she had endured.

“Toni?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come in. I have coffee for us.”

She had a nice little house in a middle-class suburb in Houston. The house was a light-colored brick, single-story home with off-white trim and shutters. It was about two thousand square feet and as neat and tidy inside as any home I’d ever seen. We sat in her sunroom and had our coffee and just chatted for a few minutes.

“Well, Toni, it’s so nice to meet you after what you’ve done for me, but I know you didn’t come here just to socialize. You have something to discuss with me about Brian, I’m sure.”

“Yes, Mrs. Ferguson, I do. My son is one of the homicide detectives on the case…”

“I wondered if the name Sullivan for both of you was a coincidence or not.”

“No, ma’am, it isn’t.”

“He was such a nice boy. Actually, both of the detectives were kind to me. Your son seems like such a nice man, though.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ferguson.”

“Oh, you must call me Nadine. I’m sorry, Toni, you were trying to tell me something about the case?”

“Yes, Nadine. I was saying that I’m working with the police to try to put some things together about this case. We have one investigator working with us who has helped us develop some behavioral theories. In connection with that, and trying to gather more evidence to help bring it all together, I was hoping you could give me some idea of where Brian liked to go to do his hiking and bird watching, and maybe tell me something about his friends in Hempstead.”

“Oh. Oh, dear. Well, he mentioned several places. I’m not sure if I can remember the names, though. Let me see… Oh, it’s been so long.”

“Well, if you can’t remember the places, maybe you remember some of the people who knew him in Hempstead. People that might know where he did his bird watching.”

“You know, I know I can do that. He had two very good friends at that time, both of whom even occasionally went with him. They would know where he went.”

“Good.”

“Let’s see, the one he had his eye on was a girl named Julie Paine, and her friend was a girl named Frances Miller.”

“Do you know if they both still live in Hempstead?”

“Yes, they do. They were both at Brian’s funeral. Frances is married and has two children now. Poor little Julie never married, and appears to be quite grief-stricken over Brian even still. They were all very good friends then.”

“This is very helpful, Nadine. They may be able to give us the kind of information we need.”

“Yes, they would know better than me really.”

We sat quietly for a few seconds.

“You know,” Nadine said, “the man Brian worked for in Hempstead might be able to help you also. He still runs that same clothing store. It’s called Wolfram’s and it’s in the town square. He knew Brian really well.”

“Oh, that could be helpful, too.”

“Toni, why don’t we go look at some of Brian’s sketches. You’re an artist, and I’m very proud of his work. I’d like you to see them.”

“I would love that.”

We got up and went down the hall to a little room with windows all across one wall. It looked like a study, and with all the windows, it was light even on a gloomy day like that one. The study had become a gallery to Brian’s work. She showed me framed drawings of birds in the wild from all sorts of places. Apparently, Brian would travel to other locations from time to time to study and sketch the birds. The bookshelves were filled with books on ornithology. Suddenly, I noticed one book on the shelf that had the name Ferguson on the spine.

“Oh, what is this?”

“That was Brian’s book. He had a doctorate in ornithology.”

“I had no idea. That explains the bird watching.”

“Yes, but as you can see, he was a really good artist.”

“Yes, he really was. His work is very nice.”

“He just wanted to focus on his art and the birds without the pressure of a high-stress job. It was what he loved.”

Nadine and I talked for a while longer. As a mother, I couldn’t imagine what she had been through and was still going through now. Her husband had died two years ago and we discussed things that only a widow could understand. I thought about this brave woman, carrying on with what was left of her life. She told me that she only had about four months left, according to her doctors. She was enjoying what she had as much as possible, but she was ready, she said, to go to the other side. She said her life was richer now in understanding how precious each moment was. She had a close network of friends and she was maximizing her time with them. I felt better in hearing that, but sad still that this sweet woman was not someone I would have time to know better.

We brought our conversation to a close, I thanked Nadine for the coffee and made up my mind to go to Hempstead on my way back to Austin. Hempstead was only about an hour out of Houston and not really far off the beaten path back to my city. I didn’t know how wild Mike would be about the idea, but I wasn’t some little school-girl, and I thought Tommy wouldn’t object. I was going to do it anyway, because I needed the answers myself. Besides, I was saving them some footwork and they had other cases to work on. That one sounded really good in my head when I came up with it anyway.

As you drive up the coastal plain from Houston toward Hempstead, you move into the beautiful, lush green forests and hidden piney woods of Texas. They make ice cream in a town just up the road where they claim the cows think they’re in heaven. I know why they say that. It is truly one of the loveliest parts of our state, even in the rain.

Once in Hempstead, I found Wolfram’s and stopped in there to see Mr. Wolfram. A salesperson told me he was at lunch and gave me directions to the restaurant. It wasn’t hard to find. Hempstead wasn’t exactly a huge place.

I found him at a nice little diner called Goodman’s. He was seated at a table with two other women and a small child. He was a nice man of about fifty-five, portly with a bald head and a funny gray handlebar mustache.

“Mr. Wolfram?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Toni Sullivan. Nadine Ferguson gave me your name and said you might me able to help me. I’m the forensic sculptor who reconstructed Brian’s image.”

“Oh my! How nice to meet you.”

He stood up and we shook hands.

“Call me Bud, Toni.”

“Nice to meet you, Bud.”

“You’ll be interested in meeting my friends here. These are two good friends of Brian’s. Julie Paine and Frances Holman, she used to be Frances Miller.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. Julie Paine still looked like the young girl she must have been when Brian Ferguson was alive. She was a plain woman with fair skin, a small upturned nose, large, blue eyes with a sad appearance in them and a sweet, but tentative, smile. Her fine blond hair was tied in a ponytail with a green ribbon that matched the shirt she wore. Frances Holman Miller was a large-boned woman with tanned skin and she appeared to be fit. She had short black hair, a long slender nose and deep brown eyes, with an air of confidence Julie seemed to lack.

I shook both their hands, and Bud asked me to join them. It suited me just fine, I was starving for lunch myself. I sat down and ordered something to eat.

“The police asked us if we recognized that other woman who was killed,” Julie said.

“We didn’t,” Frances continued.

“We knew everyone Brian knew,” Mr. Wolfram offered. “He was just a really high-quality person. He really only wanted a simple life here. With his credentials he could have been teaching somewhere, but he wanted to live simply and study birds.”