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   I nodded. Reluctantly, but I nodded.

   "So why would Sarah go through all the trouble of buying a rare and expensive dog and then kill herself?"

   I couldn't answer. I didn't even try.

   My reluctance to buy into the theory only made Eve more determined than ever to prove it. "Look around, Annie. Tell me if any of this adds up. Sarah's organized. OK, so she's compulsively organized, but she's organized. Not like she's never going to come back into her kitchen again. More like she knows she'll be back and she wants everything where she knows she can find it easily. And she bought a new cocktail dress. And she loves her dog. She paid thousands for him. It doesn't make any sense."

   There was a stool next to the island in the center of the kitchen. I climbed up and plunked down. "You're right. But if all that's true, Eve, what we need to do is—"

   "Prove it."

   I was going to say,
Call Tyler and tell him what we think
, but Eve didn't give me a chance. Before I could open my mouth, she was already gone.

   I made one last valiant attempt to talk her down. "We're not going to find anything," I called after her. "All we're doing is prying."

   "We're investigating." Her voice came from down the hallway.

   "We're being nosy," I reminded her.

   "We're being detectives."

Ah, yes, being detectives. There was that.

   I tried to stop myself—honest, I did. But even before I realized I was moving, I was out of the kitchen and searching for evidence.

       day's visit to Tyler at the police station. It's an ugly tale and, in the great scheme of things, pointless.

   Let's just suffice it to say that after a long tirade about minding our own business, leaving police work up to the real police and—I mention this reluctantly—a thankfully brief but nonetheless bruising remark about how he'd never had the bad fortune to meet two women who were more incredibly foolish, he didn't buy into our theory that Sarah had not taken her own life.

   Not when we told him about the red cocktail dress.

   Not when we explained about how rare and expensive Doc was.

   Not even when we showed him the other crucial pieces of evidence we found when we looked through Sarah's apartment: a letter from the dog breeder in Japan that showed Sarah had been on a waiting list for a puppy for eighteen months and a ticket on a cruise ship scheduled to sail out of Fort Lauderdale just after Christmas.

   To us, none of this spoke of a woman who was planning on killing herself.

   To Tyler . . . well, like I said, I won't repeat his comments word for word. There are folks who are sensitive about that kind of language.

   It should come as no big surprise that Eve was discouraged by his treatment of us. Personal feelings aside, I think Eve always had and always would think of Tyler as a kind of superhero with a badge, the good guy in blue who could swoop in on wrongdoers and fix the world's woes. This time, he refused to swoop. He stood by the ruling from the medical examiner. The one that said there was Valium in Sarah's system, and her wounds were self-inflicted.

   I on the other hand, felt empowered. Yes, justice had to be served, but this time, it was more personal than that. Sarah's life was too precious to sweep under the rug. If any fixing was going to get done, I knew I was the one who would have to do it.

   The good news is that I was aware from the start that I had options. The better news is that after a rallying speech, I convinced Eve that things weren't as bleak as they looked because (1) the cruise ticket we found was based on double occupancy, and that meant somebody could tell us more about Sarah's plans, and (2) the funeral luncheon was, after all, scheduled for Bellywasher's. If there were murder suspects to be interrogated, surely that would be the place to start.

   This all sounds carefully thought out and enormously logical, I know. Believe me, it was. What I haven't bothered to mention, though, is that while I knew w
hat
I had to do, the
how
of it eluded me. I know, I know . . . Eve and I had solved a murder just a few months earlier. But that was then, and this was now, and as much as I would have liked to believe we'd acted professionally and competently in the matter of Drago's murder, I knew what we'd really been was just plain lucky. This time, I didn't have any idea what to say or where to start. And as always when I was pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, I was scared to death.

   I guess that's what I was thinking about that morning as I took one last look around the restaurant to make sure everything was ready when the crowd returned from the cemetery. There weren't enough tables in Bellywasher's to accommodate the kind of crowd we expected, so with Charlene's approval, we'd decided on a buffet luncheon. I double-checked the table set along the far wall where we would put the food, made sure the vases with their single white roses were on every table, and opened bottles of wine, both white and red. I was so lost in thought, I jumped when Jim came up behind me.

   "Look what I found!"

   At the sound of his voice, I spun around, one hand—and the corkscrew in it—pressed to my heart.

   "Sorry." I knew he meant it, but he didn't exactly look regretful. I think my first clue was his ear-to-ear grin.

   I waved away his apology and looked at what he was carrying. Since he was still smiling, my guess is that he didn't notice that my top lip curled.

   It was an old color-tinted photograph, a framed picture of a tiny cottage surrounded by hills blanketed with heather. At least I think that's what it was. It was kind of hard to tell, since the glass that covered the picture was so dusty. The frame was downright nasty, too, pitted and dirty and blanketed with spiderwebs. I was about to tell Jim to toss the picture back in the Dumpster it came out of when he said, "It was my granny's."

   He held the picture against the wall behind the bar and nodded his approval. "I remember it from when I was a kid. It was in the dining room of her home in Glasgow. Uncle Angus must have brought it with him when he came to this country. It was in the basement."

   "Which is exactly where it belongs."

   The fact that I did not appreciate what he obviously saw as fine art bewildered Jim. The picture still against the wall, he looked over his shoulder at me. "Are you saying—"

   "I'm saying one word:
ambiance
. No, wait!" I held up a hand to stop him when it looked as if he might argue with me. "I'm saying two words: Michael O'Keefe. OK, more than two words: Michael O'Keefe's review bringing in customers who spend lots and lots of money and demand a little class in return."

   "And you don't think this is—"

   "It's charming." Without its coating of dirt, this may have been true, so I didn't feel bad saying it. "But remember, we worked hard to create an atmosphere here. A feeling. All summer, you talked about what you wanted. As I recall, you used words like understated and classy. You talked about chic. I hardly think a dingy old photograph—"

   "A dingy old photograph that once belonged to my sainted granny."

   "Who I'm sure was a delightful woman." I tried to find words that were firm without being harsh. "But that doesn't mean her taste is suitable to an upscale restaurant."

   "No. Of course, you're right." Jim's smile faded, and he lowered the picture from the wall. Thank goodness.

   That didn't mean he was done trying. He looked toward the wall next to the front door, bare and elegant in all its white-paint glory. "And you don't think—"

   "Sure, if you want it to look like the Bellywasher's of old." I knew that deep down inside, Jim would react to this as if I'd asked him to cut off a finger. Or forget how to cook. I was right. He cringed.

   He tucked the photo behind the bar, just in the nick of time. The next minute, the front door opened. The funeral service was over. Our guests had arrived.

   Though I had tried plenty hard, I had found it impossible to hire the extra help we needed for the day, so I was taking over some of the front-of-the-house duties myself. For the next half hour, I didn't have time to worry about Granny's old photo; I was too busy taking coats, making folks comfortable, and getting them coffee or a glass of wine. The crowd was bigger than I expected, but then, that shouldn't have been a surprise. Sarah was young, employed in a hothouse of power and prestige, and from what I'd heard, active in her community, a book discussion group, and her church. She was bound to have plenty of friends.

   They crowded into Bellywasher's, a mostly young, upscale crowd of Capitol Hill up-and-comers who milled around in silence and spoke in hushed tones. Of course, the whole point of an after-funeral luncheon is to coax folks into relaxing. It took awhile, but it finally worked. Little by little, people got more talkative, and the noise level rose. Once or twice, I heard someone say something nice about the appetizers and about coming back for dinner. Before long, the welcome sounds of laughter rang through the room.

   With everything under control, I took the opportunity to look around. Did one of these people know what really happened to Sarah? Had one of them killed her? It was a shocking thought, but I couldn't ignore it, not if I was going to get to the bottom of things. While I collected used napkins and dirty glasses, I tried to eavesdrop without looking too obvious.

   ". . . not how anyone thought she'd end up, that's for sure," a lady with red hair who was standing near the door said, and because I knew she was talking about Sarah, I moved nearer in an effort to hear more. "You'd think with the way she's been acting, it was more likely she would have been—"

   "Ambition." The single word boomed out of a middleaged man over on my left. The crowd was thick, and I'm short, so I couldn't tell who he was talking to, but I saw him nod in response to whatever his companion said. "She had plenty of it, that's for sure. You'd think a girl with those kinds of smarts would know better than to do stupid things. But then, I've never been a big believer in—"

   "Suicide. Who would have believed it. It's so very sad." The emotion that edged this voice was real, and heartbreaking because of it. I looked to my right where a woman dressed head to toe in black touched a hankie to her eyes. "I can't stop crying. I can't help but think that maybe if we just listened to her a little more, if we paid attention to the things she was telling us, we might have been able to—"

   "We're here."

   I'd been so busy watching everything going on around me, I didn't see Eve approach. She arrived with Charlene. I hugged them both, before giving Charlene my condolences and assuring her that everything was under control and the food would be out in a couple minutes. I was about to go into the kitchen to make sure that was true when Eve tugged on my sleeve.

   "Oh my gosh! Can you believe it?" Her stinging whisper brought me spinning around. She pointed across the room. "That's Dylan. Dylan Monroe."

   "The TV newsman?" I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, but like I said, I was short, and the room was crowded. The only thing I could see of the man Eve pointed to was his left ear.

   "I thought he was in Afghanistan or somewhere," Eve said. "I saw something on the news about it last night. He's preparing some sort of special hour-long show on the everyday life of a soldier. Can you believe he's got the nerve to show up here after he dumped Sarah? The creep." Eve shot daggers across the room. I don't know if Dylan got the message, since I couldn't see if he knew we were looking at him. She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back. "Hey, you don't suppose he's the one who bumped her off, do you?"

   With a look, I reminded Eve to keep her voice down. "If he's been out of the country, that seems pretty unlikely. Besides, we don't know anything about the man."

   "We know he's a lowlife scum weasel who took Sarah's heart and ground it to smithereens under the heel of his expensive loafers."

   I was not so sure we did know that, and I reminded Eve. "We'll talk to him. We'll talk to them all," I said. "For now . . ." I checked out the outfit she'd chosen to wear and realized that our minds were running in the same direction. Like Eve, I was wearing black pants, a black jacket, a white blouse. I looked like a nun. Eve looked like a million bucks.

   "You'd better get an apron on and help with the salads," I told her. "That's the first thing Jim wants us to bring out; then we'll get the hot stuff on the buffet."

   I was going to help, too, and I had just turned to head into the kitchen when the front door opened again. A hush fell over the crowd, and the people standing nearest the door parted like the Red Sea in front of Moses.

   Senator Douglas Mercy had arrived.

   Standing where I was, I had the perfect opportunity to check out the man, and I will say this: the pictures I'd seen of the senator did not do him justice. He was taller than I expected. Tanner, too. Though he must have been at least sixty, his skin was taut and wrinkle-free, except for around his eyes. There, a spider-work of creases attested to hours spent in the sun, and I knew from tabloid pictures and news reports that it was just as likely he'd whiled away that time skeet shooting or fishing as glad-handing constituents in his Southern home state.

   The senator had neatly cropped, silver hair and eyes the color of the November sky outside the window. Iron gray and steel hard, they were the eyes of a man who held great power and relished every moment of it. His nose was wellshaped. His chin was square. In an instant, his gaze took in everything and everyone around him, and as if it was second nature, he didn't miss a beat—he started shaking hands.

   "Thank you." The senator pumped the hand of the redheaded lady I'd noticed earlier. "Thank you so much for coming. You know this would have meant a great deal to Sarah. Thank you." He moved on to the next person, and the next one after that. "She always liked working with you, Renee," he told the woman in black who'd been talking about Sarah's suicide and crying softly. "She told me you were more than just the best administrative assistant we have on staff. She told me you were her friend."