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blond hair, combed severely sideways and beginning to thin, a lock of it lying raggedly down his forehead. A long, narrow face with tiny and close-set blue eyes, a jutting jaw. He looked more Scandinavian than Scottish. His thin lips parted in a smile to reveal the wide gap between his front teeth, and he shut the door behind him and stepped all the way into the office. Like many very tall men, he seemed to move lazily, in sections. Broken glass crunched beneath his boat-size black wing-tip shoes.
    He said, “Looks like your cleaning woman ain’t been in yet today.”
    Carver said, “I’ll tidy up myself just as soon as you’re gone. I’d like to get to it.”
    McGregor hitched his thumbs in his belt and stood with his legs spread wide. A colossus straddling anything he could bully. Not going anyplace. “This is police business, Carver. Let me ask, you notice a car explode right outside your window?”
    Carver’s headache throbbed. “It didn’t escape my attention.”
    “Now, the guy who’s barbecued in the driver’s seat might have come to this building to rent a car, only he arrived in what looks like it was a pretty new and nice car before it got all bent and scorched. Or he might have driven here to buy some insurance next door; that’d be a classic case of bad timing, hey? Or he might have come here to see you, a private investigator sitting with his thumb up his ass in his brand-new office. That seems most likely of the three. Incidentally, what made you rent an office? Edwina get tired of you and throw you outa her house?”
    The last thing Carver felt like doing was talking to McGregor, the most self-involved, ambitious, and unscrupulous person he’d ever met. Add to that bad grooming. Even from a distance of over five feet, he could smell McGregor’s foul breath and cheap perfumy cologne. The afternoon Florida heat was pushing in through the blown-out window, too. Almost enough to turn the stomach.
    “You didn’t answer my question, fuckface.”
    “I thought you said police business.”
    McGregor brushed glass fragments off the chair by the desk and sat down. Draped one long, long leg over the other. There were deep creases behind the knees of his cheap brown suit. Lint and dandruff littered the shoulders. Suit needed to go in for its yearly cleaning. He said, “Okay, you know the guy that got blown up?”
    Carver trusted McGregor about as far as he’d trust Charles Manson with a badge. The lieutenant often worked outside the police department and outside the law itself in his pursuit of personal glory, wealth, and promotion. It had led to his dismissal from the Fort Lauderdale police, but he’d come north to Del Moray and quickly lied and cheated his way up the ranks in that small department.
    “I knew him,” Carver said. He leaned into his cane and stood up. Limped idly around the office, extending his bad leg out in front of him now and then, with the heel on the floor, and doing a kind of cane-supported deep knee-bend to pick up things from the carpet. A file folder. The ashtray. The third thing he picked up was the Japanese-made combination phone, answering machine, recorder, and Dictaphone. As he did so, he pressed the record button. Casually placed the machine on the desk corner with the built-in mike aimed at McGregor. Lifted a nine-inch shard of window glass and tossed it over near the upended wastebasket. Just tidying up. The conversation in the office would be recorded now, without McGregor’s knowledge.
    “So go on, tell me about it,” McGregor said. “Gonna make like a shy talk-show guest and force me to drag every answer outa you?”
    “His name was Bert Renway. He came here to hire me.”
    “That figures. Guy musta been a loser from the get-go. Everything in that car’s been burned or melted, so you’re the main source of information. Don’t lie or hold anything back, Carver. This is a murder investigation.”
    “Maybe the car exploded by itself. Gas