“He said it was near the beach. Some college professor went to Europe every summer and rented his house out.”
“Did he ever come here later?” Jesse said.
“Not that I know of. But it was always, pardon the pun, a paradise lost for him. He always talked about it as if it were magical.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed him?”
“No,” she said.
Jesse was quiet.
“But,” she said, “I’ll bet it was a woman, or about a woman.”
“Do you have an alibi for the time of his death?” Jesse said.
“I know you have to ask,” she said. “Yes, I have an alibi.”
“I haven’t told you exactly when he died,” Jesse said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ellen Migliore said. “I haven’t left Italy in five years.”
1 2 6
H I G H P R O F I L E
“And you can prove it,” Jesse said.
“Yes.”
“That should cover you,” Jesse said. “Do you have time to give us a statement today?”
“Of course,” she said. “Will there be any kind of memorial service for Walton?”
“Not that I know of,” Jesse said.
“How sad. Shuffled off the stage so quickly, and with so few trumpets.”
“He may not care,” Jesse said.
Ellen nodded.
“I’ll ask Molly Crane to take your statement,” Jesse said.
“Police chiefs don’t take statements?” she said.
“Police chiefs tend to screw up the tape recorder,” Jesse said.
“I’m not so sure,” Ellen said, “that I believe you’ve ever screwed up anything.”
“Maybe a few relationships,” Jesse said.
1 2 7
28
Some people,” Dix said, “find that they are infertile and are saddened but say, in effect, ‘We still have each other,’
and get on with their lives. Some adopt. Some fear infertility as a personal failure and refuse to be tested, or even admit to it. These people usually blame their partner.”
