It rained the next day, so I was home all morning. Sitting on my new sorta sofa, I tried to think the whole thing through, yet again. When I came up blank, I chalked it up to not enough pieces. I was waiting the results of Lucy's interview with the detective, who had originally handled the case. It was the last piece of information that was going to be handed to us. After that we had to be creative.

I didn't really believe Lucy could do as good a job with the cop as I would have, but I couldn't risk doing the interview. I did the next best thing. I made a questionnaire for Lucy. It was after five when she arrived at the apartment questionnaire in hand.

"So did you remember to have him expand on the answers?" I asked taking it from her.

"I'm not into this like you are, but I am not stupid either. By the way how do you know what to ask every time?"

"I read a lot of mystery novels last year." I said it smiling mysteriously.

"Right, You were either a cop or a criminal before you showed up here." Lucy wasn't smiling at all.

"And which would you prefer?"

"I would prefer cop, but I think criminal judging by how fast you decided to blackmail sheila."

"Either way, I was never violent so don't worry."

"Oh I'm not worried. You strike me more as a cat bugler than a serial killer."

"Good," I replied.

I learned very little from the questionnaire. There had only been one other person who got looked at. Ed had been involved in a confrontation at the club the week before Mattie went missing.

The argument had been about his bar's rules. There were just a few rules. Even so a fellow by the name of Al Floyd took issue with one of them. The rule was simply that you could not were any gang colors in the bar. Either you removed any jacket with writing on it or you didn't get served. If the shirt you wore had lettering on it, you didn't get served. No, not even if it was a company logo.

The tee shirt that Floyd wore had a tool company's inscription so he was told that he could not be served. He raised hell at the waitress, then the bartender. Finally Ed showed up and told him to leave and not come back. Al Floyd was not happy about that since Ed did it in front of a woman Al was trying to impress. Al never copped to anything but there was the thought in the cop's mind that he might have gone looking for ED and found Mattie. There was never any proof, so they were glad to adopt Ed's theory that she ran off with someone.

There was no explanation for the lack of cell phone or credit card use after she went missing. In other words they got no farther than a missing person's case. It was exactly what I had at that moment.

"So what do you think happened to Mattie?" I asked it of Lucy, who had watched me read very carefully.

"I think Ed killed her," she replied.

"Why do you think that?"

"I think he got a little too kinky one night and Mattie died. He disposed of the body and reported her missing."

"Well it certainly could have happened that way. Or even the way Ed says, she have4 just taken off."

"Why wouldn't she use the credit cards or the cell phone."

"She didn't want to be found." I answered. I didn't say I completely understood how it could happen.

"What reason could she have had?"

"There are lots of possible reasons. It would only take one no matter how unlikely."