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a source, especially not to a potential suspect.
    â€œYou must think I’m dumber than dirt, little lady.”
    â€œOh come on, cowboy,” I said, figuring two could play at Texas talk. “You don’t really think I shot Sam?”
    â€œNope.” He shook his head. “I don’t expect you’re capable of hitting the side of a barn. Heck, missy, you probably never even held a gun.”
    Then he opened his suit jacket and flashed a shiny handgun in a shoulder holster.
    â€œA gun!” I gasped. “Here at the station?” I looked around, but the newsroom was fairly empty and nobody seemed to be paying attention to us.
    â€œSure thing,” he said. “Handy as a pocket on a shirt.”
    Clay winked and assured me that Texas gun-carry permits are reciprocal in Minnesota. Now I understood how he’d gotten so chummy with the local cops so fast. Waving a weapon likely helped him bond. So would arguing over who had more firepower.
    â€œGo ahead and grip it,” he suggested, opening his jacket again and moving closer toward me. “Safety’s on.”
    I didn’t tell him about my dead husband’s gun. I’d declined to take it back from the police after their investigation because I didn’t want to own a weapon that had killed someone—even though that particular victim deserved to die. I’d already regretted that decision once, but not enough to shop for a replacement.
    Clay apparently noticed my hesitation. “You northern ladies afraid of guns?”
    I ignored his taunt. My hand brushed against his chest as I pulled the Glock from his holster. I experimented with its heft. Favored by cops, it felt familiar. I stretched my arm, purposely holding the barrel even with my eye, before holstering the weapon behind his jacket.
    He insisted on walking me out to my car. Maybe because it was dark, because he was armed, or because a crazy lady sent me pretty flowers with a confusing note, I agreed.
    Garnett had his feet on my coffee table and a beer in his hand when I walked in carrying Chinese food and chopsticks. He’d checked with his old homicide buddies, who’d all denied being Clay’s leak, as usual blaming the medical examiner.
    â€œYeah, well, you’d always deny it too if they asked you about me,” I said.
    â€œThey don’t have to ask anymore,” he answered. “They can read about it in the paper. Oops, those days are gone.”
    He raised his beer in a tasteless toast that I ignored as I opened fried rice and a chicken lo mein dish for us to share. Cops can be just as cynical as journalists.
    â€œDon’t joke about Sam being dead,” I said. “Or they might start speculating you killed him to defend my honor. You’re lucky you were in Washington that night.”
    He shook his head and laughed. “For a guy no one seemed to like, his murder certainly is getting plenty of attention.”
    From a journalistic standpoint, Sam deserved the play. Newspapers are a dying industry. That’s hardly news anymore. But dead newspaper columnists still deserve coverage. I didn’t begrudge Sam his postmortem headlines.
    â€œHe seemed to relish being feared more than being liked,” I said. “I wonder why.”
    â€œWell, you know what they say: if you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me.” Garnett patted the couch beside him.
    â€œOlympia Dukakis in
Steel Magnolias,
1989,” I said as I sat down. “But she ripped it off from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s socialite daughter.”
    Garnett and I had a tradition of weaving famous movie lines into our conversations and guessing the film, actor, and year. I associated movies with major news events and recalled watching
Steel Magnolias
about the same time Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini was condemning Salman Rushdie to death for blasphemy.
    I was used to viewers complaining about