She’s no angel, but she’s got nothing to hide these days.

Unlike Frank.

She tries not to judge. She really does. What goes on in other people’s marriages is their business.

Still, whenever Frank talks, she doesn’t just listen . . . she offers advice. Unsolicited, of course, because no cheating man is going to ask a woman—especially one who knows and likes his wife—what she thinks about his extramarital affair.

Her advice to Frank is always the same: end it.

End the affair. Go home to your wife every night and be grateful for what you have. A loving spouse. Three beautiful healthy kids. A roof over your head and a job that will keep it there . . .

Sometimes, she thinks she’s getting through to Frank—but then he’ll slip and say something, or she’ll see something, and she’ll know he’s still involved with the other woman he’s been seeing for a while now.

A fellow cop.

Someone who understands . . .

Like Jermaine understands Crystal.

So, yeah. Who is she to judge?

She thinks about Hank Heywood. He’s still riding high on their short list of suspects, but they haven’t turned up a scrap of evidence against the guy. If he has anything to hide, it’s well-buried.

He did tell them about his wife’s secret—that her cancer had spread—but he asked them not to share that information with the rest of the family.

Unfortunately, Hank Heywood’s request was not as simple to honor as Keith Drover’s appeal that they not mention his affair to his wife. Drover’s illicit relationship has no direct impact on the investigation—not at this stage, anyway. His alibi seems to have checked out—unless, of course, his lover is an accomplice who’s covering for him.

Anything is possible. But—at this point, anyway—they have no reason to suspect Drover, and he has no apparent motive for wanting his mother-in-law dead.

The man’s lover, Jonathan Randall, is an adjunct at the University of Kentucky. He seemed a bit rattled to be questioned in connection with a homicide investigation, though he said he already knew about the murder. He confirmed that he and Keith were together at his apartment until the wee hours on Saturday night—and volunteered that they were together again on Tuesday night, while Rebecca Drover was in Cincinnati with her family.

Crystal wonders whether he’ll show up today for the memorial service. Probably not—but stranger things have happened.

She and Frank will be there partly to pay their respects, partly to observe the family, and partly to keep an eye out for anything—or anyone—unusual in the anticipated crowd of mourners.

Before leaving home this morning, she’d discussed the case again with Jermaine as they shared a bathroom mirror.

“I’m telling you, babe,” Crystal said, running a brush through her shower-damp hair, “the killer was someone close to Meredith Heywood—or someone who felt as if he knew her. It might have been someone who was acquainted with her only through her blog, but whoever it was still cared about her on some level.”

“And you’re basing that on . . .”

“Instinct, and the way the body was positioned.”

“That’s right. I remember.” Jermaine squirted a fat cloud of shaving cream into his hand. “You said that was one of the first things that struck you when you arrived at the scene.”

She nodded, closing her eyes and envisioning the way Meredith Heywood’s nightgown was arranged neatly and demurely down to her ankles, as if to preserve her dignity.

“It wouldn’t—couldn’t—have settled that way if she’d fallen dead in a scuffle,” she told Jermaine.

“So whoever killed her had some remorse.”

“Exactly.”

“You know there’s a thin line between love and hate,” her husband reminded her. “Remember that article I showed you, back when you were working on the case involving that mother who drowned her baby?”

“Diaphanous Jones. I do remember.”

The article was from one of the scientific journals Jermaine likes to read. It discussed a recent neurological study that had found that contrary to popular thinking, intense love and intense hate aren’t opposite emotions at all—they’re strikingly similar, biologically and behaviorally speaking. Both can arouse passionate behavior; both can trigger irrational action; both involve the same circuitry in the brain.

“Okay,” she’d said. “So did Meredith Heywood’s killer act because he loved her? Was it some kind of twisted angel of mercy scenario? Or was it because he hated her?”

“Maybe both,” Jermaine said with a shrug, and put his arms around her from behind. “But since you’re always saying I have a one-track mind, you can rest easy, because my brain circuits are only wired for one thing when I think of you.”

She’d laughed as he pressed up against her. “I don’t think we’re talking about your brain, here.”

That was a pleasant, if fleeting, distraction.

Now, her own mind is right back on track, constantly working, working, working the case from every angle.

As she and Frank near the exit for McGraw’s Funeral Home, she’s confident that if Meredith Heywood really was killed by someone who knew her well enough to love her or hate her—even just via the Internet—then there’s a good chance that person will be drawn to show up today.

They often are.

And if that happens . . . we’ll be watching.

Sheri Lorton has been on autopilot ever since her husband, Roger, was senselessly murdered while out walking their puppy early Thursday morning. It’s amazing, when you think about it—and she has scarcely allowed herself to think about it—that she’s managed to propel herself through forty-eight hours that have involved walking, talking, breathing . . .

Forget sleeping and eating. Even on autopilot, she’s incapable of accomplishing either of those.

But the rest of it—somehow, she’s still upright, functioning in the aftermath of the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

She had no inkling of the looming tragedy when she awakened Thursday morning to barking beneath the bedroom window. She tried to sleep through it at first, then finally peered out to see Maggie at the back door, dragging her leash from her collar. Roger was nowhere in sight.

At the time, unaware that the world can end in an instant, Sheri assumed the puppy must have gotten away from him and found her way home. They’d only had Maggie for a few weeks, and she was pretty feisty.

She let the dog into the house and set out a bowl of water, wondering if Maggie was too much of a handful after all. They’d decided against having children—Roger has three from his first marriage—and it had taken him almost a decade to agree with her notion that a dog might make their house feel more like a home. Maybe he’d been right about adopting a more mature dog, though.

“I think you might just have too much energy for us, huh, Mags?” she’d said, watching Maggie lap up the water eagerly, wondering how she could possibly bear swapping the puppy for a better-behaved dog.

She called her husband’s cell phone to tell him Maggie had found her way home, but heard it ring in the next room. He’d left it behind again, plugged into the charger—not unusual for the quintessential absent-minded professor.

She figured he must be out combing the streets for the dog. But when minutes turned into a half hour with no sign of him, Sheri began to get nervous.

Hearing sirens in the distance, she called the police station. By that time, runaway puppy or not, her conscientious husband should have been at home showering and getting ready to leave for work. He was teaching an early class this session on Advanced Abstract Algebra, and with summer construction between their neighborhood and campus, the commute had been longer than usual.

The police officer on the other end of the line seemed to take the call in stride, as if people went missing every morning around there. Sheri couldn’t imagine that was the case, though. The surrounding blocks had changed over the past decade since they moved in, but this was hardly a sketchy inner-city neighborhood.