Simon Says Die

have been nice to have a little more notice myself. Like maybe when I’d questioned someone at the police station, they could have clued me in that they thought the shooter was their late husband miraculously come back to life.”
    Madison opened her mouth to object, but promptly closed it when Pierce squeezed her hand again. He was probably right. Anything she had to say to Hamilton was only bound to get her in trouble.
    â€œMadison knew her story was difficult to believe,” Pierce said. “She didn’t want to burden the police with it until she had some kind of proof. When Mr. MacGuffin called last night to say he might have seen her late husband, I decided it was time to fill you in on her suspicions.”
    Looking somewhat mollified by Pierce’s diplomatic explanation, Hamilton nodded. “What exactly did MacGuffin tell you?”
    â€œHe said he was walking through the restaurant last night when he saw a man who fit Madison’s description of her late husband, right down to the unusual light blue eyes. The man was signing a credit card receipt and looked up just as Mr. MacGuffin was walking by. That’s when he noticed the eyes.”
    â€œDid he talk to the guy, ask his name?”
    â€œNo,” Madison said, unable to keep quiet any longer. “Mr. MacGuffin said he was so surprised that he rushed back to his office to call me. He wrote down the date and table number so that he could pull the man’s credit card information from the cash register, but he got interrupted with some kind of problem at the restaurant before he could make the call. He forgot about it until he got home and pulled my number out of his pocket, and by then it was getting dark. He said he has problems seeing at night, so he wanted to wait until this morning to go back to the restaurant. He called me to make the appointment.”
    She’d offered to go pick him up last night and drive him to the restaurant, rather than wait. But Mr. MacGuffin had politely refused, telling her he’d had a long day and was already settled in for the evening.
    Hamilton took another long sip of his coffee. “Okay, let’s assume he can figure out which credit card receipt is for the guy he saw. You don’t actually think if your husband faked his death that he’d get credit in his real name, do you?”
    â€œOf course not. But Pierce thinks we could get a judge to make the credit card company give us more information on the cardholder. It might be enough to figure out where Damon is.”
    Pierce released her hand and Madison immediately missed the warmth of his touch.
    â€œI doubt it would be that simple,” he said, “but at a minimum we could track his movements, see if there’s a pattern. We might find out where he’s living, if he isn’t paying his rent in cash. Finding him should be fairly easy, if he sticks to any patterns. Most people do.”
    Hamilton was already shaking his head before Pierce finished his last sentence. “No judge is going to issue a warrant based on a widow’s belief that a man looks like her dead husband.” He wiped his mouth and cleared his throat. “Mrs. McKinley, believe me when I tell you that I completely understand how you could see someone and think he was your dead husband. I lost my wife to cancer a couple of years ago, and to this day I can still see a face in the crowd and swear she was my Amy.” His mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “But you and I both know that’s not possible. It’s just the mind playing tricks on us.”
    Some of Madison’s irritation with him faded after hearing how his voice had softened when he said his late wife’s name. Still, it didn’t really change her situation. “Lieutenant, I can tell you loved your wife very much. And maybe that explains why you think you see her. But my case is different. I thought I loved my husband when we got married, but it quickly changed. I made a terrible mistake. And there is no part of me, none, that wants to see him again. I’m not imagining things. The man who’s stalking me, the man who shot Agent Buchanan, is my former husband. He murdered some other man and staged his death. I’m convinced of it.”
    â€œWhy?” Pierce asked. “Why are you convinced? Did something happen to make you think Damon wasn’t really dead back when the car accident happened?”
    She cleared her throat and