Buried In Buttercream

circle with him enough times that Savannah was getting dizzy.
    She had decided five minutes into the interview that it was a mistake to do this on an empty stomach. Her brain never functioned at full capacity without a generous helping of carbs.
    Chocolate never hurt either.
    “I don’t know what that man and that girl at the brothel were talking about,” Ethan said for the fifth time as he paced back and forth the length of the small room. “I went there once, yes. That’s perfectly legal here in Nevada.”
    Dirk shifted in the small chair he was sitting in next to the table. Savannah sat across from him, equally restless.
    “But you told them, paid them, in fact, to lie about where you were the day after that,” he said. “Don’t tell us that you didn’t again, because my friend here doesn’t like being lied to. In fact, she chewed up and spit out the big Russian guy who runs that dive for lying to us about your so-called second visit. The one that didn’t happen.”
    “You paid them to say that you were there, when you were here in the hotel,” Savannah said. “We absolutely know that. And you’re losing all credibility by telling us otherwise.”
    “If you have solid evidence that I was here in the hotel,” Ethan said, running his fingers wearily through his thick silver hair, “why are you harassing me like this? I couldn’t have been here in this hotel and in San Carmelita murdering Madeline at the same time, now could I?”
    It was true, of course, Savannah told herself. But there was still something very peculiar about this business of establishing a false alibi, even if it turned out that you had a better one elsewhere.
    She knew bull-pucky when she smelled it, and from where she stood, she could swear she was standing in the middle of a dairy’s grazing field.
    “Look,” Ethan said, “I’m sure that if you’ve been investigating my wife and her life for the past few days, it didn’t take you long to find out that we didn’t like each other, to say the least. But I didn’t kill her. I don’t know who did. I’m not the only person who was on the outs with her.”
    “We know that,” Dirk said. “But we also know that divorces, and especially bitter custody battles, bring out the worst in people. Then we find out that you’re hanging out in brothels, and bribing the prostitute and pimp to lie for you. We have to find out what that’s about.”
    Ethan walked over to the bed and abruptly sat down on it, as though his legs had just given out beneath him.
    “Listen,” he said. “I’m going to tell you one more time, and you can believe me or not. I went to Monique’s that first day that you’re talking about. I went and ... to be embarrassingly frank ... I couldn’t ... you know. I’d never gone to a place like that before. I guess I was just in a weird mood because of all the stress Madeline put me through. Anyway ...”
    He stopped, took a deep breath, and then continued, “I couldn’t, you know, perform. The girl felt bad and told me that if I came back the next day she’d give me a freebie. I told her I’d think about it. I gave her a big tip, because I felt sort of sorry for her. She seemed like a good kid in a bad place.”
    “She is a good kid,” Savannah said. “A sixteen-year-old kid. And we took her out of that bad place.”
    “Oh, wow. Then I’m glad I didn’t do anything with her. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
    Savannah watched him closely, and her intuition told her that at least that much was true. Plus, on the way to the bus station in Vegas, Charlene had told them as much about his lack of performance power.
    “That part of your story jibes with what the girl told us,” she told him. “But the rest of it, about the next day ... that doesn’t fly.”
    “I don’t know why she and that Russian guy would claim that I bribed them to say I was there the second day. I did not. Like I said, I gave her a generous tip. Maybe she misunderstood and miscommunicated it to him. I don’t know.”
    Savannah knew they had hit a wall with this guy. And when she looked over at Dirk, she could see all over his face that he knew it, too.
    All this time and effort, and this suspect was a dead end like all the others.
    “Ethan,” she said, “if you didn’t kill your wife or have it done, do you have any notion who did?”
    He thought for a while before answering. And when he did, he looked her straight in the eye with as much sincerity as the