I MET CLAIRE at her car after work. I moved a pair of galoshes, a flashlight, her crime scene kit, a giant bag of barbecued potato chips, and three maps into the backseat and then climbed up into the passenger side of her Pathfinder. I said, “Richie got a translation of that Latin phrase that was written inside that yachting book.”

  “Oh yeah? And what did it mean?” she said, pulling her seat belt low across her belly, stretching it to the limit before locking it in place.

  I cinched my seat belt, too, said, “It roughly translates as ‘Money is the root of all evil.’ I’d like to get my hands on the sucker who wrote that and show him the victims all crispy and curled up on your table. Show him what real evil is.”

  Claire grunted. “You got that right,” she said, and pulled the car out onto Bryant heading us north, apparently deciding to take the 1.8 miles to Susie’s like she was racing the Daytona 500. She jerked the wheel around a slow-cruising sightseer, stepping on the gas. “You’re saying ‘him,’ ” Claire pointed out. “So that Debra Kurtz person is off your list?”

  “She has an alibi,” I told Claire through clenched teeth. I grabbed the dashboard as she cleared the yellow light. “Also, her alibis check out for the nights of the Malone fire and the Jablonskys in Palo Alto.”

  “Humph,” Claire said. “Well, about the two legible fingerprints on that bottle found at the scene. One belongs to Steven Meacham. The other didn’t match to anybody. But I’ve got something for you, girlfriend. Sandy Meacham had a good-sized blunt-force wound to the skull. Looks like she got clobbered with maybe a gun butt.”

  I thought about that - that the killer had gotten violent - then I told Claire how the canvass of the Meacham neighborhood had netted us no leads whatsoever. She gave me the results of the blood screen - that Sandy Meacham had been drinking, and that the Meachams had both died of smoke inhalation.

  It was all interesting, but none of it added up to a damned thing. I said so to Claire as she pulled into the handicapped zone right in front of Susie’s Café.

  ............