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D oreen frowned at her phone. “Why would you even ask me that?” she cried out. “You’re supposed to be in court, looking after things.”

“Yeah, and then I just got this feeling.”

“I was just thinking that, if you were around, I would talk to you about this. However, you’re busy with the court, so I can’t get you sidetracked with all this other stuff.”

“Fill me in,” he snapped, and his tone brooked absolutely no alternative.

She groaned. “I just got off the phone with Elizabeth Harley.”

“The coroner?” he asked.

“Yes, the captain gave me her name and number.”

“Oh no, the two of you together? That could be bad news.”

“Why? The captain mentioned something about our being very similar, but, at least on the surface, I don’t see it at all.”

“On the surface, no, but, if we go one layer deeper, you definitely are.”

“In what way?” she snapped.

“You are both terriers. The minute you find anything even slightly suspicious, anything at all, you both jump on it.”

“She’s gone back to Lilybeth’s body to pull some tissue and blood samples,” she shared.

“Who’s Lilybeth?”

And she realized that he had no idea. She quickly filled him in.

“Good God,” he muttered. “Right, that’s the woman who died of a heart attack in the retirement home. And yet that thing is expected.”

“No,” she stopped him. “Certainly at that age you can die at any moment. However, she died of a heart attack with absolutely no signs of being in danger of having a heart attack.”

“That you know of,” he pointed out.

“That’s true. But, since Elizabeth was under the impression that nothing was suspicious about Lilybeth’s death, Elizabeth didn’t do an autopsy because the family representative didn’t want it, given her age.”

“Exactly, and, given her age, that’s a very common thing,” he pointed out. “We only do autopsies on suspicious deaths.” Doreen went very silent. Then he sighed. “Right, so as far as you’re concerned, this was a suspicious death.”

“Exactly,” she pointed out. “And I do believe Elizabeth may agree because she disconnected abruptly, since the body was due to be picked up by the funeral home at any moment. She wanted to deal with something and just ended the call with me.”

“Yep, that would be Elizabeth. Absolutely that would be her. We’ll see if she comes up with anything,” he noted. “That in itself will push everything else to the side because that would mean… you do understand that, if it’s not a heart attack, then it’s murder, which means it’s not a cold case anymore?”

She groaned. “I get that, but it wouldn’t be a murder in your eyes if I hadn’t poked into it.”

It was his turn to groan. “You’re always poking into it.”

“The captain asked me to look into this, and honestly, Elizabeth seemed quite thrilled about it. I did tell her about uploading the toddler’s DNA and finding a connection to a second cousin related to the Winters family, and that led us to old Buck Winters, who had his DNA taken at one point in time, which must have led to getting Iris’s DNA too.”

“Right,” he muttered, “the Winters family, yes.”

“And Iris Winters is a direct match to the dead baby’s DNA—but not Buck Winters.”

“Wow. That’s a whole different story.”