“You should go to the doctor, the way you’re losing weight. At our age that could be a danger signal,” Rex was saying to her at his desk as he was putting the finishing touches on yet another of their elaborate children’s parties. This one was to bring Peter Pan to the elaborate and expensive birthday celebration of a ten-year-old in the backyard gardens of one of Rosalie’s most historic houses: Wayfield Place. Merrie was to disguise herself—and quite convincingly at that—as the “boy who never grew up.” Rex, meanwhile, was to portray the villainous Captain Hook, complete with a plastic hook at the end of his hand, along with snarling dialogue that he had written to keep the youngsters wide-eyed and attentive.

  “You make me sound like I’m as ancient as the hills. I’m only forty-three, you know. These days that’s young. There’s nothing wrong with me anyway,” she told him, trying her best to disguise her annoyance. “You should just be happy I’ve dropped a few pounds. That Peter Pan costume was too small for me when I tried it on a while back, and now it’ll fit just perfectly for the party.”

  Rex shot her his best skeptical glance and muttered something unintelligible under his breath.

  “What?” she said as a reflex action.

  “That may be true about the costume, but you still look tired to me. What’s up with you?”

  “Maybe I’m tired of all this costuming and makeup and playacting, and that’s what’s making me tired. Is that so hard to understand?”

  “Oh, please. You’re not lobbying for moving to another town somewhere again, are you?”

  Merrie decided it was in her best interests to lie. Moving to another community might indeed be a way to escape her lovesick dilemma that some might find more laughable than anything else. “Now that you mention it, yes, I believe I am. This place makes me nervous.”

  Rex put down his colored pencil, temporarily abandoning the sketch he was making, and made a sweeping gesture. “Do you mean this building or our lovely house in a prestigious neighborhood that you just had to have, that we then restored to your very high standards, as I clearly recall?”

  “No, I meant Rosalie in general. You may not think so, but it can get on your nerves after a while.”

  “I don’t buy that you feel that way for a second. You’ve always said you loved it here—the history, the architecture, the people—even though they’re hard to get to know with all their complicated genealogy and attitudes. There’s something you’re just not telling me. We’ve been married too long, and I know you too well. I want you to come clean with me, Merrie.”

  Adrenaline settled into the pit of her stomach, and she said, “There’s nothing I need to come clean about. Let’s just move on.”

  “And by that I’m assuming you don’t mean to another subject, you mean to another town?”

  “Yes.”

  “No way are we gonna do that,” he said. “We’ve got things humming along here. If you wanna move on, you’ll have to do it by yourself, and I doubt you could make it on your own. You think about that.”

  An image of the guileless Milton Bagdad in his adorable tuxedo occupied Merrie’s every brain cell as she fumed inside. Her obsession was nearly palpable; it was affecting her sleep, not to mention her breathing every second she was awake. How had she let herself get into such a schoolgirl-like predicament? It had been a gradual process, to be sure, but she had done nothing to stop it. She had nurtured it every step of the way. As she kept reminding herself, she was old enough to be the young man’s mother, for Pete’s sake.

  “Are you by any chance talking about a divorce?” she said, not bothering to disguise her significant spurt of anger. “I know you like throwing your weight around with people in general, but don’t you think you oughta take your wife’s needs and opinions into consideration?”

  Rex frowned while studying her objectively, as if she were a piece of their costume inventory that was missing a button or had an ugly tear that was clearly visible and needed his considerable sewing and mending skills immediately. “No, I’m not talking about a divorce. What the hell is wrong with you? I’d like to know what needs of yours aren’t being met at this point in our lives. It’s certainly not a lack of money or a lack of sex or no home of your dreams to live in for the first time in your life. Like I said before, I think you need to make an appointment as soon as possible with Dr. Owens and see what’s going on.”

  Merrie avoided eye contact and waved him off. If she could have gotten away with such a thing, she would have marched across the room and slapped him. “As a matter of fact, I already have an appointment for a checkup with my gynecologist, thank you very much, so stop fretting. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

  “You better keep it, too. I’ve never seen you like this before,” he said, picking up his pencil again. “I don’t know—do you think that it could possibly be menopause you’re going through?”

  Merrie struggled for control at his suggestion but surprised herself by somehow managing to conjure up a halfway-calm reply. “No, I absolutely don’t think that I’m going through menopause. Men always seem to think their wives are going through menopause every time they get into a serious argument about something if they’re anywhere beyond forty. The wives, I mean. Give me a break. In fact, give us all a break.”

  Rex quickly held up his right hand—signaling a truce—managed a perfunctory smile, and said nothing further.

  That hardly settled things for Merrie, however. She considered her bottom line: Was she willing to risk her marriage of twenty years and her place in their lucrative Party Palooza by hitting on a young man who was half her age? And if so, when and where would that even be possible to pull off? She knew she was at a very dangerous crossroads in her life—one she had never experienced before—and she did not know what she was going to do next.

  * * *

  Wendy had no sooner returned from her dinner at Merleece’s than Ross texted her:

  Meeting ran way late; eating here in Jackson on the Reservoir; home by ten; see you soon, babe

  Full of energy from Merleece’s good food and having the run of the house until Ross arrived, Wendy decided to sit down at her laptop and Google all the definitions of mule. Mary Liz had more than ignited that puzzle-solving spark she was convinced she was born with—inheriting it from her father—and something told her she was in for a relentless session as well.

  Moments later, she was printing out the following definitions:

  a hybrid between a male donkey and a female horse

  (mare)

  a self-sterile plant whether hybrid or not

  a stubborn person

  She dismissed the first two as irrelevant and focused on the last, immediately reviewing all the stubborn people who could possibly be involved in the murders of Aurelia Spangler and Earl Jay Doxey. It did not take her long to realize that everyone fit that third definition to some extent.

  Both Sarah Ann and Dora O’Rourke were a stubborn and disparate pair, even if they had recently called a truce, and Wendy took the time to congratulate herself mentally for being directly responsible for that. As a result, they were taking a back seat on her list of suspects, but her investigative experiences of late had taught her nothing if not to take no one’s innocence for granted.

  Vance Quimby had remained in Rosalie and stubbornly nagged the CID about solving his sister’s death and had even revealed the existence of a life insurance policy that seemed to give him a plausible motive for being the person who had done away with her. Was that still highly unlikely, or was he merely being too clever by half?

  Charlotte Ruth kept turning up with this or that incredulous confession, stubbornly directing a follow spot upon herself, even though her stories fell apart quickly under pressure. But was she secretly the sort of person who needed not only to be in the eye of the hurricane but to steer it to where it could do the most damage in the first place? It would take a certain type of pathology to do something like that. Did she possibly fit the profile?

  Then Wendy considered what Ross had told her about Professor Isaacson. What a surprise he had turned out to be to everyone. An erudite academic with a passion for great literature who was both eye candy for his female students and a stubborn patron of the oldest profession in the world. The dichotomy seemed to be entirely irrational, yet there it was for the taking. And no matter what the rationale, murder was always the ultimate moral transgression at its black-hearted core.

  Finally, Wendy lighted on Milton Bagdad. Of all of those under scrutiny, he was the one person who intrigued her the most. She needed to think that through some more. Why could she not shake the idea that everything always seemed to lead back to him? After all, he was the one who had panicked at Aurelia Spangler’s vision so viscerally that he had skipped town with neither a short-range nor long-range plan, and according to him, Aurelia had apparently shared his horror at what had popped into her head on that life-altering evening. Yes, the lad had majored in theater arts, so there was no denying that he leaned toward the dramatic approach to nearly everything in his life. It was likely buried within his DNA somewhere.

  On the other hand, Milton was the most obvious example of someone “running scared” and gave the impression of being out of control at times and easily swayed to do anything. Despite all of that, he was a highly valued employee of Party Palooza, and Merrie and Rex Boudreaux had gone out of their way to win him back. At first, he had stubbornly resisted their pitches, but then had finally given in and returned to his duties delivering singing telegrams, among other things.

  What was it about those telegrams that would just not leave her alone? Wendy clearly remembered all the high praise heaped upon them by Sarah Ann O’Rourke and even Merrie Boudreaux, herself. They were unquestionably charming presentations and ultimately worth the price of admission, and Wendy even recalled Milton saying at her wedding reception that a few people here and there had paid for at least a second helping. She could see how that might happen. Milton was one of those breathtakingly handsome blond males who in California might be mistaken for a surfer or a beachcomber or something else along those lines. But in rural Mississippi, he was merely a dazzling, fit specimen of young manhood—and with a beautiful voice to boot.

  What happened next in Wendy’s brain was the reason she was born to be the sleuth she had become. The word rural practically stood up and saluted her. The imagery was pressing. This was not a learned process of hers, it merely existed. And she paid attention to it immediately.

  What was the opposite of rural?

  Urban, of course.

  Why had she even played semantic opposites inside her head? Who knew? Some people were athletes, others were musicians. There was room for everything and everyone in the universe she revered. While others dug in stubbornly to the mundane, she preferred going in search of the incredulous. The rest followed quickly as her brain cells lit up: urban, urban dictionary, definition of mule on Urban Dictionary.

  She was already familiar with that particular definition from watching forensic crime shows on television. Her fingers could not move fast enough for her on the keyboard. But suddenly, there it was, greeting her like an old friend who had been hiding out in cyberspace, just waiting to be found:

  mule: a carrier of things for someone else—often used to refer to a carrier of illegal drugs.

  Was that what Earl Jay Doxey had been referring to in his conversation with a person unknown? Perhaps even his killer or someone who knew his killer? That type of mule instead of the more conventional stubborn type—human or animal?

  Wendy’s brain backed up, and she could almost hear it coming to a screeching halt. Conjecture was burning brightly inside of her. Was it really possible that Aurelia Spangler had been a drug mule for someone? Had something gone wrong, and was that why she was dead now?

  She was so excited that she had to text Ross:

  Hurry home, I have a new theory of everything

  Ross’s reply was nearly immediate:

  Still at dinner with Bax, you sound almost metaphysical—LOL—the theory of everything—yuk, yuk, you think it’s funny, but I’m onto something, see you soon, XOXO

  Wendy focused again on her computer, surfing around until she had discovered an article titled, “Drug Mules Gone Wrong.” She excitedly printed it out and devoured the paragraphs, smiling triumphantly as if she had discovered the raison d’être for the entire known universe. When Ross returned from Jackson, would she have everything tied up neatly with a ribbon for him? Could it truly be this easy?

  The essence of the article was that people sometimes body-packed themselves to smuggle drugs in and out of places, taping them securely to every appendage and their trunks as well; at other times, they swallowed the drugs in many small balloons or condoms, waiting for them to pass out of their systems—hopefully without incident—and then selling them on the streets and elsewhere for an exorbitant profit. Despite Vance Quimby’s protestations that his sister had not relapsed from her youthful dalliance with cocaine, had she actually done so and gotten in over her head with fatal consequences?

  The case was turning into nothing short of a maze of unexpected twists and turns that kept reinventing itself as time passed.

  Wendy struggled to remember the details of Aurelia’s autopsy that either her father or Ross had shared with her—she couldn’t remember which. She did recall that the nasal passages and snorting were the focus of the cocaine overdose diagnosis. That seemed to fit the recreational use of the drug, but not necessarily the activities of a drug mule. Still, Wendy was left with the lingering impression that there was something that had gone drastically wrong. They had all thrown out the possibility of a suicide long ago.

  Then she started watching the clock excitedly. Ross could not get home soon enough.

  * * *

  Over their Amaretto nightcaps at the kitchen table, Wendy and Ross were considering the implications of the drug mule theory; even if Ross was in the midst of scotching it at the moment, perhaps because he was dragging a tad bit from the trip up and back from the meeting—all in the same day. In fact, Bax had turned down an invitation to join them when he had dropped Ross off.

  “Thanks, daughter a’ mine, but I’m bone-tired,” he had said, giving Wendy a quick peck at the front door and then heading off for a good night’s rest in his bungalow on Lower Kingston Road.

  “But there was no mention of Aurelia’s gastrointestinal tract in the autopsy,” Ross was saying with some conviction. “The ME’s office is quite thorough in cases like this. I mean, I could double-check at the station tomorrow, but I know I’m remembering that right.”

  Wendy stood her ground, emphatically tapping her finger on the table, although she knew Ross had had a long day. He simply had to grasp and truly appreciate the research she had done to arrive at her latest theory.

  “But there are other ways she could have been involved in drug trafficking, and her brother just may not have known anything about it. We already know the two of them were masters of illusion and deceit. They were expertly prepared to dupe as many Rosalieans as they could convince to walk through the front door of Overview into that dark, gloomy Victorian atmosphere. If it hadn’t been for that big bay window letting a bit of light shine through, the parlor would have felt like somebody’s basement. Anyway, I think their plans would have worked quite well in an old, moneyed town like Rosalie. Most people we know already worship their ancestors here. It’s practically a requirement. Why wouldn’t they pay handsomely for the opportunity to say hello to them and ask them how they’re doing every now and then in Aurelia’s parlor? They’d get used to dropping in to Overview to get their fix.”

  Ross’s half shrug was clearly one of agreement more than disinterest, but he said nothing.

  “Not to mention the other angle of that whole thing I brought up about hiding in plain sight,” Wendy continued. “Vance Quimby has helpfully volunteered everything the CID could have ever wanted to know from the very beginning—the whole psychic scam, the life insurance policy. By pushing it all to the front burner the way he did, he could have been playing all of us by withholding nothing. Maybe it defies logic, but I’m sure it’s been done before with very successful results.”

  Ross let a sip of his liqueur work its magic in silence for a short while, but could not disguise the body language from his drooping shoulders and half-lidded eyes that indicated he was past ready to fall into bed. “We could bring him in again, of course. That’s easy enough to do. We could tell him there’s a new development and throw the drug mule thing at him and see what his reaction is. Suspects have been known to fall apart completely when confronted with the truth. If what you’re proposing ends up being the truth.”

  “I think you and Daddy should do that as soon as possible and not try to second-guess this.”

  “I still don’t see Vance offing his sister no matter what was going on, though,” Ross added. “If she was up to something as dangerous as drug trafficking, then I think the more likely scenario is that he just didn’t know about it because she didn’t want him to know. She could have been on her own and ended up paying the ultimate price by going solo.”

  “Even as close as he says they were?”

  Ross tilted his head, first one way, then the other. He looked for all the world like the scales of justice trying to locate the sweet zone of balance. “But we only have his word that they were that close. We’ve confirmed that they were brother and sister, so that much we don’t have to doubt. But we mainly have his version of why they came down to Rosalie and what they intended to do in the first place. Sure, Aurelia had leased Overview, and it does make sense that she needed a setting like that to wave her wand, so to speak. But we were never able to hear from Aurelia on anything substantive. She’s no longer here to defend or explain herself to us. Perhaps, you could shed some light on that for me.”