“I’m staying,” she said. “Whatever she has to say—”

“Kayla.” Paula’s voice sharpened. “Don’t take that tone with Ms. Levine, and don’t tell me what you will or won’t do. I need you to go to the store. That’s not a request.”

Kayla shot me an icy look, but she obeyed. Paula went to the front window to watch her go. I stayed in the kitchen. When she came back, she took a seat. I did the same.

“Yes, Alastair is Ginny’s father,” she said. “But I wasn’t lying when I said she didn’t know and that she didn’t have any contact with him.”

“That’s splitting a very fine hair, Ms. Thompson. You knew what I meant—was there any relationship between them? I’d consider that a relationship.”

“I wouldn’t.”

She met my eyes, with that same defiant look I’d just seen on her granddaughter. But she couldn’t hold it. After a moment, she broke off with a sigh.

“Yes, I’m sure Chief Bruyn would consider it important, too. But I didn’t.” She caught my gaze again, hers softer now. “Alastair had nothing to do with Ginny, before or after her death. He doesn’t know she’s his daughter, and I’d like to keep it that way. For Kayla’s sake.”

“Kayla?”

“I don’t want Kayla to grow up in Columbus. She needs schooling—proper schooling, with other children and a teacher who can keep up with her. I go into Battle Ground every week, trying to find work, even head into Portland now and then. But there aren’t many openings for a forty-onevear-old cleaning woman with a tenth-grade education. I’m working on my GED. When this recession ends, I’ll be ready, and we’ll get out. Until then, Kayla is stuck here. With everything she’s been through, do you really think she needs the town knowing that her grandfather is the local kook? A dirty old man with a harem?”

“But what if Alastair had something to do with Ginny’s death? I know you and Chief Bruyn don’t get along—”

“Which is exactly why I didn’t tell him. I used to clean the police station. Did reception work, too. Spent four years slapping Bruyn’s fingers off my ass, pardon my language. When I found out he was telling people we were having an affair, I quit and everyone knew why. I kept my mouth shut, but that didn’t matter. As far as he’s concerned, I made a laughingstock of him. If he could tell the town that my daughter’s daddy was the local wacko? He would have given himself heart failure racing to the diner to spread the news.”

“Well, it looks a lot more suspicious now. Especially when my leads keep taking me back to Alastair’s door.”

She shook her head. “If they are, then you’re looking at someone else in that house. Alastair is a lot of things, but he isn’t a killer.”

“You didn’t want him as the father of your daughter. And that was back when he was, by all accounts, a respectable college student. He got out of town at a damned convenient time. Are you really telling me he didn’t know he was about to be a daddy? Because I’m thinking, for a twenty-year-old guy eager to make something of himself, finding out he got a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant would be plenty of incentive to decide it was time to get the hell out of Columbus and never come back.”

She didn’t answer for a minute. Then she said, “He left before I knew I was pregnant, but I think he suspected it. We’d kept our relationship a secret. His choice. Then I started missing first class every day, sick to my stomach. I wasn’t an A student, but I didn’t skip. It was a teacher who figured out what might be wrong and persuaded me to take a pregnancy test. That was a month after I started missing classes, and three weeks after Alastair gave me the ‘I love you, but I need to grow up, move onto campus, and date girls my own age’ speech.” She gave a wry smile. “As you can tell, he never quite got to that last part.”

“So he left and never looked back. Saved himself a bundle on child support.” I looked her in the eye. “Money you could have used.”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Maybe I should have asked. He’d have paid. I just—I didn’t want to share Ginny with him. I was young and I was hurt and I was stubborn. By the time things started going wrong with Ginny, Alastair was already on his third wife, so I knew there wouldn’t be any money and I couldn’t see how bringing her father into her life would help. I’d go from being the whore who got knocked up by a stranger to the bitch who’d kept her daddy away from her. I decided to stick with my first role. I was used to it.”

“So twenty-five years later Alastair returns to find his ex with a twenty-five-year-old daughter ... and doesn’t connect the dots?”

She didn’t answer. Just sat there until the oven timer chimed, took out the muffins, and began scooping them onto the cooling racks. Then she said, “I imagine the thought crossed his mind. But if he asked, then he’d have to face the truth. Alastair isn’t good at facing truths, Ms. Levine. He’s built his own world and that’s where he chooses to live, blinds drawn to the rest of the universe. In his mind, he’s still a twenty-year-old stud. Having a daughter older than the girls he beds up in that farmhouse? That wouldn’t do at all.”

She pried out a stubborn muffin. “Whatever Alastair is, he still considers himself a therapist. He thinks he’s helping those girls and I’m sure sometimes he does, and that makes him feel good. How long would those girls keep coming to him if they found out his own daughter lived a mile away, an alcoholic drug addict who lets her boyfriend use her for a punching bag? No. It wouldn’t do at all.”

Wasn’t that what we’d call motive? Alastair had himself a sweet deal here. What if Ginny figured out who Daddy was and threatened to expose him? I didn’t say that to Paula. She might not have wanted Alastair Koppel for her baby’s father, but there was obviously still something there, an exasperated affection.

When I made a move to go, though, Paula stopped me.

“Can you wait and talk to Kayla?” she asked.

“I’m not sure she wants to talk to me—”

“That’s why I’m asking. I need her to know that everything’s okay. She likes you, and you’re a good role model for her. A smart young woman working at a good job, living on her own in the city. She doesn’t see a lot of that here.”