“Don’t forget to ...”

  “I know. Aim for the oysters.”

  He chuckled at our old joke. “Guess so long as I’m here, I’ll drop by the feed supply and see if my order’s in. Got anything you want to send back to the sisters?”

  “No, but tell Dove I’ll call in a couple of days. And tell Aunt Garnet I’m sorry she’s feeling bad and couldn’t make it.”

  “Right.” He pulled at his long white sideburns and gave me a slow hound-dog grin.

  “Well, I am sorry she’s feeling bad,” I said, returning his grin.

  I had started walking back to the museum to see how the exhibit was faring when I ran into Sandra. Her face was pallid, and the shadows staining the delicate flesh under her eyes made me guess that she’d slept as little as me last night.

  “I’ve been looking for you for an hour.” Her breath came in hard little puffs. She shifted sixteen-month-old Casey to her other hip. “Wade’s here. You said you’d talk to him.”

  “Right,” I said, wishing I hadn’t made that impulsive promise. Getting involved in someone else’s marriage problems was just asking for a boot in the butt. “Where is he?”

  “Over by the food booths and he’s in a real bad mood. He didn’t get in until after three last night and he was mean as a badger when I asked him where he’d been.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “If he won’t talk to you, I’m sure he won’t to me either.”

  “You were always good with him,” she insisted. “Almost as good as Jack was. I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

  Taking Jack’s place in the Harper family constellation was discomforting and yet, oddly appealing. At least it made me feel as if I still belonged someplace.

  “I’ll catch up with you later and let you know what happened.” I reached over and gave a quick raspberry kiss to Casey’s downy cheek, causing him to giggle. “I can’t believe I’m missing all of Casey’s growing up.”

  “You should come out more,” she said.

  “I will.” But we both knew I wouldn’t.

  Wade stood around the smoking barbeques with a group of men dressed in such a similar manner they could have been a convention of ex-Marlboro Men. Jack would have fit right in. I wondered if I would ever get over the expectation he would just appear one day from behind an oak tree and tell me it was all a big joke.

  “Hey, Wade,” I said. I picked up a soft dinner roll and took a bite.

  “That’ll be a quarter,” he said good-naturedly, and pushed down the brim of my hat. One of the most irritating things about being short is a great many people seem to feel since the top of your head is visible, it is public domain. My head has been ruffled, patted, and tweaked more than most cocker spaniels.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I readjusted my cap and tossed the roll at him.

  “Talk away.” He dodged it and moved the toothpick hanging from his mouth from one side to the other.

  I glanced around at the men lolling around the smoking barbeque.

  “Alone,” I said in a low voice.

  “Sounds serious, Wade,” a thin man with an Adam’s apple as sharp as an arrowhead said as he flipped a rack of ribs with long silver tongs. The dripping juices sizzled when they hit the hot fire. “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothin‘ good, that’s for sure,” Wade replied. He followed me to a grove of eucalyptus trees a short distance away. With the hope he was kidding, I looked at him grimly.

  “Why the long face, blondie?” He pushed his gray cowboy hat back and leaned against the peeling trunk of a eucalyptus tree.

  “Wade, I’m just going to be blunt, okay?”

  “Why change now?” he asked, smiling.

  “Sandra’s upset.”

  The smile froze underneath his stiff brown mustache. “She’s always upset this time of the month. It’s just female stuff. She’ll be okay in a couple of days.” He rolled his toothpick again and gave a lazy smirk.

  He couldn’t have made me madder if he’d held me down and pierced my ears with a ten-penny nail. So I decided to just spit it out.

  “She thinks you’re cheating on her, and as far as I can see, she has pretty good reason to.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “A certain cocktail napkin with the phone number of a certain woman who is now dead. Ring any bells?”

  A surprised look fractured his smile. “How’d she get ahold of that?”

  “Doesn’t matter. What about it?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned. “It’s not what you think.”

  “And just what am I thinking?”

  “Stay out of this. It’s between Sandra and me.”

  “So talk to her about it.”

  “I will. When I’m ready.”

  “Not good enough. Besides, I’d like to know myself just how you were involved with Marla.”

  Driving his fist into the eucalyptus trunk, he turned and pointed a work-cracked finger at me. “You need to mind your own business.”

  “You need to talk to your wife,” I snapped back.

  “I said when I’m ready.” He started to walk away, then turned back and scowled at me. “Just butt out, Benni. You’re not part of this family anymore. What happens between us isn’t any of your concern.”

  It was a good thing I didn’t have a shotgun in my hand right then, because I would have loved to pepper the “W” on the back of his jeans with a load of birdshot. I was livid, but a part of me was embarrassed, too—his remark hit too close to home. He was right; they weren’t my family anymore. But after all those years, it was hard to disconnect.

  “Looks like you might make enough today to buy a few more pounds of clay.”

  I turned to face a genial-faced Ortiz. He was casually dressed in faded black jeans, a pale blue sweatshirt with “L.A. Marathon” printed on it, and his beat-up topsiders. The washing machine had obviously lost his socks again.

  “I hate to think the murders helped attendance, but I think they did.” I peeled a piece of bark off the tree and avoided meeting his eyes. Okay, I thought, this is how we’re going to play it—light and easy—as if nothing happened.

  “Probably has. Believe me, people are basically morbid. How are you doing?” He stretched his arm up and pulled off a leaf I would have had to jump to reach.

  “Fine.” I looked up at him suspiciously. Why was he always turning up at the oddest moments? Was he tailing me? Did police chiefs do that sort of thing? And how much of my fight with Wade did he hear?

  “It’s hard not having a place where you fit,” he said softly. He held the leaf he’d picked under his nose. “One of the things I hate the most up here is the smell of eucalyptus. Reminds me of the Vicks my mom used to rub on my chest when I had a cold. Did your mom ever do that?”

  Well, he heard the last part anyway. I wondered if he’d heard the part about Marla.

  “Do you make it a habit of eavesdropping on private conversations?” I asked.

  “Whenever I can.”

  It was such an honest answer, I didn’t know what to say.

  “We know about your brother-in-law’s affair with Ms. Chenier,” he said, tossing the leaf on the ground. “He wasn’t the only one.”

  “He wasn’t?” I looked at the ground and wondered if they knew about Ray, if there were others I didn’t know about.

  “That’s all I’m going to say.” He kicked at the pile of crackly, aromatic leaves we stood in. “I assume that whole napkin business has to do with your brother-in-law’s affair. You really should give it to me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I peeled off another strip of bark.

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, I can’t fault you for loyalty. Technically, I could haul you in right now. You’re just as much a suspect as your brother-in-law.”

  “Me? Are you crazy?”

  “Does ‘You are dead meat, buddy. I’m holding Dack and Cassandra hostage. You know who this is’ sound familiar?”

  My message on Eric’s answering machine. I felt my face turn red.

  “Who’s Dack and Cassandra?” His tone was off-hand but the question wasn’t.

  “It was just a joke,” I said, laughing uneasily. “You don’t really believe I killed him.”

  He let me squirm for a minute before answering. “You’re not my first choice. But I can’t say the same for your brother-in-law.”

  “Wade would never kill anyone.”

  “Everyone has the potential for murder.”

  “Is that the cop or the philosopher talking?” I asked.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “What kind of day I’m having.”

  “So who wins today?”

  “It’s still early. I’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Well, Friday,” I said. “As always, it’s been just the greatest fun talking with you, but I need to get back to the festival. Make yourself useful. Buy something.”

  “I want that napkin,” he said. “And I want you, the man says like a broken record, to stay out of this investigation.” He reached over and pushed down the brim of my cap, a slight smile on his face. “And I told you, the name is Gabe.”

  “Whatever.” I irritably pushed my cap back up. Everyone thinks they invented the wheel. “Why don’t you find someone else to bug, Ortiz?”

  “Whether I bug you or not is entirely up to you. I’ll stop when you get out of this investigation. It’s that simple.” He gave me a serene look, then walked away.

  I’d begun climbing the steps to the museum when Carl called to me. He ran up the steps and fell in beside me.

  “I saw you talking to Ortiz. Anything new on the Eric Griffin murder?”

  “I don’t know one bit more than what I told you at six o‘clock this morning and, for your information, I was being given a lecture, not a progress report. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “Just trying to do my job.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m so grumpy. I just haven’t gotten much sleep these last few days. And Ortiz just has a way of getting under my skin. Really, I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Good enough.” He put his arm around me. “Don’t worry about the chief. He’ll quit harassing you once these murders are solved or shelved.”

  “He’d better,” I said, telling myself that wasn’t regret I was feeling, just relief.

  “I’m still waiting for you to come down to the paper for lunch,” he said. “You need some fun in your life. Maybe we should make it dinner and a movie.”

  “Carl Freedman,” I said, laughing. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were asking me for a date.”

  He smiled crookedly, his blue eyes serious. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

  I looked at him in surprise. I didn’t want to say it had never crossed my mind. He was Jack’s best friend. One of my oldest and dearest friends. I’d never even considered him in that context. Since his divorce four years ago, Carl had entertained me and Jack more times than I could remember with hilarious reenactments of some of his unbelievable dates. I couldn’t imagine being one of them.

  “What’s wrong, you need some new joke material?” I asked, not entirely sure if he was kidding or not.

  “Benni,” he said in a pained tone. “You know it would be different with you. You’re not just some bimbo. Give me a break. Just think about it and call me.”

  “I will,” I said to his back as he turned and ran back down the steps.

  Sitting at my desk, I thought about the complicated path my life had taken. A week ago, I was coming home to a lonely chicken pot pie and chocolate no-bake cookies and now I was involved up to my ears in two homicides and my brother-in-law’s affair with one of the victims, was contemplating dating my dead husband’s best friend and having uncomfortably erotic feelings for a blue-eyed Hispanic man from Kansas, of all places, whom I couldn’t be around for ten seconds without starting a fight. So I did what most women do when faced with a life too complex to sort out. I decided to clean out my purse.

  I discovered at the bottom of my saddlebag-style purse, one of the parking tickets I’d forgotten to pay. It was only five months old. That cheered me. I thought it had been much longer than that since I cleaned out my purse.

  Also down at the bottom, next to a paperback book I was looking for a few months ago, lay a small red-labeled computer disc. Eric’s book. I swallowed hard. We’d never know what happened to Dack and Cassandra now. I knew I should give it to the police. It was possibly evidence, but the thought of a bunch of cops sitting around laughing at Eric’s writing made me feel sad and a bit protective. I wasn’t sure what family he had, but this really belonged to them. Out of curiosity, I flipped on my word processor and slipped it in.

  Dack’s carnal capabilities were impressive, though I doubted the technical accuracy of six times in less than an hour. Eric had obviously overestimated what women who read romance novels were expecting. His writing was overdone and superficial, but there was something humorously appealing about his abuse of almost every basic writing rule I’d learned in the one creative writing class I’d taken in college.

  Write what you know. The words of my professor flooded back to me. There was an elaborate subplot threaded through the eight finished chapters, concerning a blackmail scheme Dack and Cassandra had going. No hint about who they were blackmailing. Just someone with a very nasty secret.

  Write what you know. Eric seemed to know a lot about blackmail. Too much. Or maybe, it suddenly became apparent to me as I stared at the words on the screen, just enough to get himself killed.

  13

  IT STARTED RAINING again Monday morning, but I lay in bed and enjoyed the sounds of the whooshing river running through the gutters.

  The festival turned out to be a bigger monetary success than we’d hoped, with the co-op’s cut being over a thousand dollars and most of the artists getting enough orders to keep them busy for a few more months. Though the studios were open, the museum was closed for the day, so I intended on catching up on some of the sleep I’d lost in the last few days. However, something niggled at the back of my semiconscious mind and kept me from drifting back to sleep.

  Then it dawned on me. Today was Marla’s funeral. I groaned out loud and hit my pillow. My dramatic response was wasted on an empty room. The clock-radio on my oak nightstand read nine o‘clock in cheery red numbers. The funeral was at eleven and I still had to get to the florist, so I dragged myself out of bed and headed for the coffee maker.

  An hour later, I was dressed in what was my most respectful funeral garb—a narrow navy blue wool skirt, white linen blouse and navy cardigan. An idea slowly took shape as I dressed. Maybe I would be able to talk to Marla’s mother alone and find out something. Wade’s relationship with Marla pricked at me, though I knew better than anyone that he certainly didn’t have the resources to pay her blackmail.

  After a quick trip to the florist, I pulled up in front of the mortuary wondering why they always looked like miniature versions of Tara. Though it couldn’t have been more than fifty degrees outside, the temperature dropped ten degrees in the spacious pink foyer, pink being the operative word. It was like being trapped inside a bottle of Pepto-bismol.

  The lobby’s fuzzy brocade wallpaper mirrored the upholstery on the slightly darker pink French provincial love seats. The freshly vacuumed rose carpet was marred only by the tracks of Marla’s friends and family.

  A black-suited man with surprisingly robust skin seemed to appear out of nowhere and took my raincoat and the wet, bulky spray of yellow roses. Handing me a cream-colored program, he directed me toward the double doors of the small chapel.

  A dozen or so people were scattered throughout the chapel. No one looked familiar to me. I chose a seat two pews behind a tall woman with skin as weathered as an old piece of harness, whose resemblance to Marla was unnerving. Two women flanked her, protective arms encircling her narrow shoulders. They were of such similar size, age and puckered complexion, they had to be her sisters.

  The service was brief and, thankfully, the coffin closed. The minister ended with an announcement that a luncheon was being served at Mrs. Chenier’s house and all in attendance were invited. He ended the service with a tape of what he claimed was Marla’s favorite song— “The Impossible Dream.” Marla’s mother broke into sobs during the song and was patted and cooed at by her sisters while the rest of us picked at our hands or studied our printed programs. I wondered if anyone was thinking what I was: that Marla, in a manner of speaking, wouldn’t have been caught dead with that song being sung at her funeral. “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About” by Bonnie Raitt would have been more her style.

  There was no opportunity to question Mrs. Chenier at the funeral, so I decided to go to the house. Maybe it would happen more naturally there. I walked up to Mrs. Chenier, extended my sympathies on behalf of the co-op and picked up a photocopied map with directions to her house. When I walked out into the cotton-candy foyer, I ran into Detective Cleary.

  “I thought the police only attended the victim’s funerals in the movies,” I said.

  “No, ma‘am.” His coffee-colored face was impassive as he tucked a brown notebook inside his jacket.

  “So, does anyone look like a killer here?” I flashed him an encouraging smile.

  “I don’t know, ma‘am. I’m just following orders.”

  “And doing a fine job of it.” I knew full well I wouldn’t get an opinion or a single piece of information out of him. Ortiz had probably threatened to demote him to parking patrol if he as much as breathed in my direction.

  “Yes, ma‘am.” He folded his hands in front of him like a preacher.

  “Well, it was nice talking with you again, Detective Cleary. You can tell your boss you successfully squeezed past me without letting slip so much as a smidgen of information.”

  “Have a good day, ma‘am.” He smiled and gave me a wink before he walked out into the rain.

  After a short, damp service at the cemetery, I drove to Mrs. Chenier’s lemon-colored stucco house. It was located in a small middle-class neighborhood north of the university. The forgotten tricycles and Big Wheels scattered across wet sidewalks and the neatly trimmed front yards gave testimony that the thirty-year-old houses were going through their second, or third, generation of enthusiastic young homeowners.