"Anything new on the case?" Dwayne asked, scooping up Szechuan noodles from their plastic container and eyeing me.

"Roland Hatchmere’s family doesn’t think much of Violet.  They’d like to see her go down for his murder."

"She didn’t kill him."

"So you say.  And so says Violet.  But somebody hit him with the tray she gave as a wedding gift." I forked in some rice and pea mixture that had a hint of saffron.

Dwayne swept an arm toward my laptop case.  "You got a report for me?"

"There’s nothing to report."

"Give me a list of the players: Hatchmere’s family members, the wedding guests, people from work.  There’s a reason somebody killed him."

I fought back a natural obstinance, finished my salads, then switched on my laptop.  Dwayne loves hard copy.  He’s always yammering about how I should spend more time logging data and generating pages and pages of information to impress the client, and he likes to look at information on paper himself.  Seeing facts on paper helps him think.  Unfortunately I wasn’t kidding: I had nothing to report.  Since Violet had announced to me and Dwayne that she was suspected in Roland Hatchmere’s death, I’d barely learned anything of note.  Certainly nothing worth writing up and printing off.

We finished our meals and Dwayne was nice enough to thank me and even pay for the food.  I tried to demur but he smiled faintly and ignored me, so I pocketed the bills.  I’m pretty sure I should be embarrassed by my cheapness, but I can’t stop looking at it as a good thing.

I pretended disinterest as he picked up the Review and started reading.  Perversely, as soon as I was clearly dropped from his consciousness I wanted to be right back in there.

I said, "I’m having trouble getting the Hatchmere clan to talk to me.  I’ve left messages...I even dropped by the house, once, but I got the door slammed in my face."

"Who slammed it on you?"

The daughter.  Gigi Hatchmere.  Or, wait...Popparockskill. . ."

"It’s still Hatchmere.  Ceremony never came off when Roland didn’t show." He shook the paper and opened to another page as he headed back outside.

"Have you got any bright ideas on what I should do next?" I called but Dwayne was outside and either he couldn’t hear me or he didn’t care.

Annoyed, I pulled up my file on Violet and wirelessly sent its meager contents to the printer as I slid another look Dwayne’s way.

He’d put down the paper and was standing in the strange darkness created by the storm, staring up at the sky.  I followed his gaze and saw a crack between clouds where sunlight spilled through, looking like a sheer, glowing curtain of white and yellow, the kind of odd illumination that as Dwayne moved in front of it, surrounded him with a brilliant aura.

"Saint Dwayne," I muttered.

"What?" he hollered.

Oh, yeah, sure.  Now, he hears me? "Nothing."

I was worried this case might prove to be a sticky one.  All I can say about that is it’s a good thing I couldn’t see into future.  Sheesh.  What a lot of trouble I was in for.

Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.