Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle

instant. He gave me a contented smirk that said he’d had his fun at my expense. I couldn’t argue with the smirk, but I wouldn’t have minded putting my fist through it.
    â€œMiss Malana,” Moretti stepped around me toward the front door, “if you’ll come with us, we’ll make sure you get a ride to wherever you like after we done.”
    Melody let out a quick breath and gave her head a minute nod. Composed, she rested a hand on my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll be fine,” she whispered. Then she followed Moretti to the front door.
    I didn’t think so. “Let me call you a lawyer first.”
    Dan looked at me like I worked for the ACLU.
    Moretti opened the door and said. “This shouldn’t take very long.”
    Melody turned back and gave me a weak, crooked incisor smile. It sucked a breath out of me. “It’s okay, Rick, I’ll call you when I’m done.”
    Dan followed her outside and closed the door, sealing me inside my empty house.

Muldoon’s
C HAPTER T EN
    I washed the breakfast dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, hoping that if I kept my hands occupied my mind would follow. It didn’t. Melody kept creeping in. A woman I hadn’t known three days ago now seeped into my thoughts, flooding me with feelings I hadn’t had for almost a decade. Feelings I never thought I’d have again. Love? I couldn’t tag that label on it yet. But something strong, visceral. A need to protect. And I couldn’t protect Melody when she was down at the La Jolla Police Department’s Brick House.
    Of course, she was only there for routine questioning. Cops always called it routine when they took you down to the station. Just a few routine questions. Next thing you know, you’re in a holding cell waiting for the chance to call a lawyer.
    Until the coroner’s report came back with a cause of death that wasn’t homicide, Melody’s freedom was in the hands of a small-town cop with a big-city ego. And there was nothing I could do about it.
    When I was done in the kitchen, I headed for the front door. I didn’t have to be at Muldoon’s until five p.m. Normally I’d play golf or get a workout in. I was too beat up to do either and probably wouldn’t have been able to concentrate, anyway. I needed to take a drive to either clear my thoughts or focus them.
    I grabbed my keys and wallet off the end table by the front door and noticed the
U-T
newspaper that Detective Coyote had brought in with him earlier. Ever since Santa Barbara, I’d made a practice of skipping the front page and the local section and going right to the sports page. Everything else ended up in a pile and then in the recycle bin.
    Today, I scanned the front page and inside looking for Heather Ortiz’s article on Adam Windsor’s death at the Shell Beach Motel. I wondered if she had more information than Moretti had let out when he took Melody away. I found the article on the front page of the local section.
    The headline alone told me more than Moretti had: Son of Windsor Bank Founder Found Dead. And the accompanying picture of Adam Windsor told me more than Melody had been willing to. He looked younger in the picture and didn’t have a neck tattoo, but Adam Windsor was the red-haired man I’d seen talking to Melody in the bar at Muldoon’s Sunday night. Not just “some guy” hitting on her. Her ex-husband. The man who ended up dead.
    This wasn’t a matter of Melody not telling the whole truth, of holding something back. This was a lie. I’m sure there were plenty of legitimate reasons to lie about talking to your ex-husband. Especially, as Heather Ortiz’s article stated, after he just got out of prison. Embarrassment over bad choices, didn’t want to burden the new boyfriend with old baggage, wanting a fair chance at a fresh start. All that kind of bullshit. But the fact remained, Melody had