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hearts—Felicia. The script, it was perfectly feminine. You could almost smell her perfume.
    “Think we found the secret sweetheart.”
    Stluka took the picture from him, checked it front and back. “This thing’s twenty years old, minimum.”
    Just then, the heater came on, erupting from the cellar with a sound like thunder. Warm air that stank of mildew began pouring through the wall vents.
    Stluka shrank away from it. “I am really beginning to hate this case.”
    Murchison took the picture back, studied it one more time, then slipped it into his pocket. “Ideas?”
    Stluka cracked his knuckles. “Maybe it’s me, but I sense friction between the father and son.”
    “Style, you mean?”
    “Everything in Its Proper Place versus I Do What I Want—Try and Stop Me.”
    “The vic looks like a character,” Murchison agreed. “Headstrong. Daddy likes his drama. Son seems the dutiful type. And the girl?”
    “I’m not sold on her being uninvolved. Not yet.”
    “Interesting.” Murchison granted Stluka his instincts, which as a cop were often solid. His faults as a human being, those you had to deal with as they came. “And it’s not just that the son’s a neat freak, or that he’s only here short-term. It’s strange. He’s made an effort to clear a space for himself, but there’s no real stake in it.”
    “I’m here. Don’t push it.”
    “Yeah.”
    “And I’m still hung up on this thing about him walking. There’s a piece missing. He didn’t walk thirty miles home.”
    Murchison headed for the door, glancing around one last time. “Check out the rest of the house?”
    In the kitchen, a coffee mug lay in the sink, two cold tea bags shriveled inside it.
    “Smell that?”
    Stluka was already square with the next doorway. “I smell a lot of things. Pick one.”
    Murchison lifted the cup, sniffed, made sure. “Brandy, I think. Alcohol for sure.”
    Stluka closed his eyes, palms pressing his temples. “Murch, I got it. Okay? The guy was a lush.”
    “Bear with me.” Murchison opened cabinets, peered in. He found the brandy bottle. The cap was sticky but loose, like it had just been reopened after sitting awhile. “The father had a bad enough drinking problem it cost him a kidney. The son’s here to play caretaker. How long? Depends on how good a patient the old man is. Eight weeks of convalescence, he’s already at it again.”
    “You think they fought about it.”
    “From the picture we saw, the son’s no loser. He looks smart. And he’s got himself a girlfriend, his own career. But he hauls himself up here anyway, to live in this dreary old hole.” He nodded toward the cup in the sink. “Now this. Old man’s mixing it in his tea, which is either some kind of homebrew cocktail or he was trying to hide it. And that means, yeah, maybe they fought about it.”
    Stluka stared back from the doorway, giving it thought. He blinked like a cat.
    “You’re the one brought up friction,” Murchison said.
    Stluka waved his hands in mock surrender. “I confess.”
    “I mean, given the neighborhood, the way he died, I wouldn’t say this was a family deal. But in here—”
    “Tells a different story, yes it does.” Stluka tapped his hands against the door frame. “Wrap this up?”
    The next doorway opened onto the addition. Mismatched chairs and music stands rested in haphazard clusters. Bookshelves, crammed with sheet music, lined one wall. The other three were covered with egg crate foam. The craftsmanship was shoddy—below, the rug buckled and curled at the edges, never tacked down; above, the ceiling lacked several acoustic tiles.
    Stluka clasped his hands atop his head. “This guy had a real knack for unfinished business.”
    At the back of the room, a gold banner with black lettering hung from the ceiling, draped wall to wall:
    S TRONG C ARLISLE & T HE M IGHTY F IREFLY
MF R&B
    It dawned on Murchison, finally, what the curious name was code for: Mother Fucker. He felt the spirit of the