"Hello, Ms. Sinclair, we haven't met before even though I've worked with your husband. I'm Lt. Charles Blossom."

    That's it, she thought, I'll name a character, Lt. Lotus Blossom.

    "You have my deepest sympathy and I know you must be in shock, but I have to ask you some follow-up questions about the murder of your husband."

    At this point she'd bring in the good gal/bad guy, and then she'd--but he was saying something.

    "Tell me about your relationship with your husband."

    She made a mental note of his expression, a slight tightening of the muscles around the eyebrows. She could use that.

    "We were getting a divorce as I'm sure you know." Of course, he knew. It had probably been the talk of the Department. She wondered what Vince's version had been. No matter, she could easily write that. We haven't lived together for seven months," she said. And three days. "That was basically our relationship at this point."

    "I should rephrase that. Were you on friendly terms?"

    Friendly? Shoot off at OK Corral was more like it. "We were on speaking terms." Mostly through our attorneys.

    Oh, poo, that's not what her heroine would say. She'd say...hmm what would she say? Maybe she wouldn't say anything. That's not right either. Can't have a heroine who says nothing.

    "I understand you're a mystery writer."

    Casually said, like you have to keep busy with a hobby while your husband's at work. A lot. At work a lot of the time. Supposedly overtime.

    "Yes."

    "You've made a fair amount of money?" He said it as though he considered any publisher or reader daft to pay money for her words.

    "I'm not starving," she said. Her heroine would be thin. But would she say that? Maybe she would say--

    "And your husband wanted half in the divorce settlement?" He said it without any inflection, or revelation of his thoughts on the matter. But surely, he had them.

    "One of my books became a best-seller while we were married so under California community property law, he claimed half of that income, yes. Then my other books began picking up considerably in sales." And he wanted half of that, too. The ones written B.V. Before Vince. Community property rights only start with marriage, a point Vince wanted to ignore and hoped everyone else was stupid enough to do also.

    "He was killed exactly the way your victim was killed in your book," Lt. Blossom said.

    "I know the spouse is the first person to be suspected. And me, probably more than anyone else. I mean I wrote the book on it." She spurted a laugh. Why was she trying to explain? Was she babbling? Heroines shouldn't babble. This man wouldn't understand the inner workings of the mind of a mystery writer. Vince certainly didn't. Nor care. As long as the money rolled in from her hobby. Money to buy him the car to impress the female of the gender.

    Maybe she was talking too much, putting a noose around her neck. Actually in California it was a lethal injection. And she knew how that worked. That had been in her third novel--

    "Ms. Sinclair, I need your help. It looks like someone was trying to make you the prime suspect. Do you have any enemies?"

    Suspects. She needed at least three suspects. Otherwise, it would only be her heroine, the wife, from the get-go. Not a good idea.

    "Enemies? You mean someone who would want to do this to me? The only person I can think of is Vince. And, of course, it wasn't him, unless he hired someone to kill him to frame me. But I don't see that happening." Vince had an strong aversion to pain. Maybe that's why he stayed anaesthetized most of the time.

    Lt. Blossom made a note. She wondered what it was. Something factual? Something sarcastic? Something to do?

    "Can you explain the fact that your husband had been here in your house--dead--for possibly ten hours before the police arrived?"

    Can you explain again, he meant. "But I didn't know he was here. I've kept the door of the den closed ever since he left." Ever since I kicked him out. "I never go in there." That's where Vince spent all of his time--whenever he decided to come home. Watching TV and drinking a case of beer, then acting like the obnoxious pig that he was. The man had changed so much. What happened to the man who had romanced her? Was her success his downfall? Success envy? Perhaps her character should dab a handkerchief at her eyes. Hmm maybe even ask the officer for a handkerchief. No, that was overdoing it.

    "You say you haven't lived together for seven months but he still had a key?"

    She nodded. Locking him out was the first thing her attorney told her to do when she filed for divorce but she just hadn't gotten around to it. Sometimes procrastination paid off.

    "Does anyone else have a key?"

    "My cleaning lady, my house-sitter--I can't think of anyone else."

    "Do you have a boyfriend, Ms. Sinclair?"

    A boyfriend. Didn't that sound intriguing? As though she was svelte and twenty. A boyfriend. Her heroine would though. Hmm, the boyfriend could be one of the suspects.

    "No."

    "Someone you've invited over who might have the opportunity to duplicate your key?"

    "No."

    Invited over. How quaint. Dripping with innuendos. Invited over for the night. Invited over and stayed in her bed. Overnight. All sorts of interesting possibilities. She eyed the Lieutenant. He might not make a bad love interest for her heroine. She glanced at his hand. No wedding ring. But then she knew most cops didn't wear them. Vince had said that his ring could get caught on something and rip off his finger. The real reason she knew was--

    "Anyone else who might have had access to your keys? Parking lot attendants, someone who borrowed your car, service station mechanics?"

    "I just had a new top put on my convertible--oh!"

    "What were you going to say, Ms. Sinclair?"

    "I have a house key hidden in the car." That was the dumbest thing her heroine could do, as though a car person wouldn't know where to look for a key if he wanted to find it. Duplicate it and then put it back, no one the wiser. But she had to keep that in the story. Hmm have the thief as a suspect also.

    He made another note. She should be the one taking notes. She hoped she remembered all of this afterwards.

    "Were you home yesterday?"

    "I left about 11 to drop my car off to get the new top, then I went to lunch. My girlfriend picked me up at the service station and afterwards she drove me home." She already told that twice to the other officers and had given them the name and address of her girlfriend. They'd even interviewed her. She had nothing to hide; it had all been the truth.

    "How long were you gone?"

    She thought about the lovely food and the two gin and tonics. Gone for a considerable amount of time? Mentally, yes. So lovely. She didn't think about Vince once; she was off into a numbed state and then when she came home she had the loveliest of naps. "Probably until about three."

    "Then what did you do?"

    "Napped, then worked on my novel--I'm quite close to the deadline--until about one in the morning and then went to bed."

    The chapters she'd worked on last night had turned out well. She hoped she didn't have to go through this every time with a new book. But this plot had been so special, handed to her on a silver platter, hard to resist. Write what you know.

    "I understand that your husband's partner found him."

    Not a question but she'd respond anyway. Yes, she had been awakened by Vince's partner, another obnoxious pig. Who learned from whom, she wondered. But then maybe he was the only one who would work with Vince. He was looking for him as Vince hadn't shown up for the night shift. Funny how he knew exactly where Vince would be. He must have told him he was moving back in. His partner found him all right. The front door wide open. Vince in the den. With the samurai sword through his throat. Her samurai sword from some relative; she couldn't remember which ancestor her mother had said the person was. A ceremonial sword, but sharp. Engraved so there was no doubt who it belonged to. Vince had always admired it. Fatal attraction? She had told them it turned up missing after she kicked him out. She hadn't used the word ‘kicked.’ After all they were brothers and sisters-in-arms with him. They'd be on his side. Against her. So she'd let them think Vince left her. She didn't need any ego; Vince had had enough for both of them.

    Then he had come back with it. Almost as though he wanted to tantalize her with it. She had been in the hall when she heard the key in the front door and there he was, walking in like he owned the place, like he still lived there, with the sword in its scabbard in his hand. Drunk on beer; she could smell it. Like the floor of the worst beer joint in the world. He'd walked in to the den and turned on the TV. Just like old times.

    "I'm moving back in," he had said. Oh, has your latest girlfriend thrown you out, she wanted to say, but she kept her shock and anger and fury lidded. Her sarcasm would be lost on him in that state. He'd probably thought all along that he could return anytime if it didn't work out. Why hadn't she ever considered that would happen? She liked her life without him. She had to give a kudo to whoever the bitch was, probably younger and thinner, who had jettisoned him.

    That had been a good plot in her latest book, the new best seller--a samurai through the throat. The actual cause of death was blood loss and severing of major vessels and trachea. Definitely a sure way to kill someone. A little messy though, particularly when severing an artery. She had to know all these things as a mystery writer.

    What she had really fantasized about doing in those seven months and three days was running Vince over with a Mack truck, then backing up over his body several times, listening to the bones crunch under the wheels. If such a sound could be heard. But she would hear it in her imagination. Or--shooting him with a shotgun several times so that his brain matter and body parts spewed against a dirty, graffiti-covered dumpster. Or--

    "Ms. Sinclair, I just have a few more questions."

    Ask away, Columbo. Now there was a great character. Too bad the producers got so regimented in their stories. If only she had a character like that. A series character as beloved as he had--

    "Do you have any idea who killed your husband?"

    "Whose prints are on the sword?" Time for her to ask a few questions. Who wants a passive heroine. She hadn't asked any up to now of the other interviewers.'

    "Wiped clean."

    "How many times was he stabbed?"

    "Just the once."

    Of course, as the victim had been in her book. She knew that stabbing the victim more than once indicated the murderer knew the victim and hated him and would stab him many times to vent hostility and anger. Once only indicated that the murderer wanted him dead, nothing personal.

    "As you pointed out, it seems quite ridiculous to think I would murder my soon-to-be-ex-husband in my own home using my own murder plot and my own inherited sword which I had also used in my book." At least she was getting her next plot out of all of this.

    "And I have no idea who would want to kill my husband, but then the front door was open, so I suspect a burglar. Someone who found my house key hidden in the car came in and saw my husband sound asleep in his chair in the den. Maybe Vince woke up, frightened him, the burglar saw the sword and killed him. Then ran out leaving the front door open."

    He made another note. "And you said you heard nothing, no cry for help, no voices while you were working in your office all that time? According to the Coroner death occurred," he flipped back in his notebook, "between six and ten pm."

    Actually it was 7:08.