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then reset, which means that whoever killed her knew the code, because Mandy Kent swears she armed it when she took her daughter to her friend’s house on the way to work.”
    “That suggests an act of rage, doesn’t it? I mean who would plan to murder someone and leave them where the crime points to themselves, and only the Kents knew the alarm code.”
    Parker grinned.
    “All right, I’ll say it, I suspect the wife. I think she had to be livid when she found her husband with that girl, I also think the sex with the girl’s brother was revenge sex.”
    Jo grinned back.
    “I think it’s the husband. I think he talked Tiffany into the house and made another move on her, and when she told him no, he lost it, grabbed the letter opener, and stabbed her.”
    “I can buy that too, but like you said, we’ll know more after the autopsy.”
    “When will we have the results?”
    “Tomorrow morning, we have an eleven a.m. meeting with Stella Harvey, the assistant coroner.”
    “Good, that will give us time to verify the alibis. How do you want to go about that?”
    Parker thought it over for a moment, before answering.
    “Some verification will be electronic, like phone records and checking traffic cameras and such. Those we’ll look at together after the autopsy, but why don’t you verify the Kents’ alibis, while I track down Steve Grace’s girlfriend, and this ex-boyfriend of Tiffany’s, Kevin Mathias.”
    “Sounds good,” Jo said.
    “Hey Partner,”
    “Yeah?”
    “Thanks for starting early. I think I missed having a partner more than I knew.”
    “You’re welcome, and I know we’ve just started, but I think we’ll make a good team, Rick.”
    “We’re good enough to catch this killer, I’ll tell you that.”
    Jo held up the last piece of pie on her fork.
    “The bad guys don’t stand a chance.”

5
    T he following morning, Detectives Parker and Knight sat inside the squad room at the town municipal center, and filled each other in on what they had discovered while verifying the alibis of likely suspects in the murder of Tiffany Grace. They had both finished their morning tasks early and were now waiting for the coroner’s findings.
    Parker tapped his pen against his desktop. They were each sitting at their own small, metal desk, amidst other groupings of desks. Their desks were pressed together so that they were facing each other, thus making it easier to talk and pass each other reports. The arrangement gave Parker a view of the chief’s office at the back, while Jo’s desk faced the elevator.
    On Parker’s right was a line of windows that let in natural light, they were interspersed with gray filing cabinets. On the left were a tiny break room and the bathrooms. The large room’s beige walls were made of plaster, with multiple cracks and divots showing, while the floor was well-worn wood that creaked with each step. The building was constructed in the thirties, and there was talk of building a new, more modern municipal center, but Parker liked the old place and thought that it had character.
    “The Kents’ alibis check out.” Jo said. “However, that house in Hamilton that Mrs. Kent was showing is less than a fifteen minute drive away from her home. Mr. Kent was at his office, but his office is at the rear of a large warehouse and has its own exit, and he could have gotten home in as little as ten minutes. The problem is, that there’s no way to verify that either of them stayed where they were.”
    “If either of them slipped away then that would seem to indicate premeditation, and this murder has act of passion written all over it. Tiffany Grace was a little thing. I bet even Mrs. Grace could have dragged the body away, but it was just left there. That makes me think that the killer was shocked by the act.”
    “Yeah, but they did have the presence of mind to wash off the murder weapon,” Jo said.
    “But they didn’t dispose of it, why not? It sounds to me like they weren’t