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can, Lorene.”
    “Oh, pooh. I’ll just go home to Clearview and sleep in my own bed tonight. I couldn’t sleep in this place anyhow, not after what happened to Henrietta. I’ll get some things together before tomorrow evening, though. I don’t want to miss any of the conference.”
    “That’s fine,” Rhodes said. “That is, it’s fine if Mr. Chatterton can find you another room. We’ll have the other one sealed off for a while.”
    “I hope you don’t think I wanted to stay in there,” Lorene said.
    Rhodes said he hadn’t thought she’d want to.
    “Now then,” he said, “let’s break it up here and see if you can all get some sleep.”
    It was nearly one o’clock by that time, and Rhodes wouldn’t have minded getting some sleep himself. But he didn’t have time for sleeping.
    Thomas Chatterton followed him out of the dormitory.
    “Do you think it will be all right for us to continue the conference?” he asked when they were outside.
    “I don’t see why not,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be back out tomorrow, and I’ll have to talk to some people, but I’ll try not to disrupt things too much.”
    Chatterton didn’t appear convinced, and Rhodes didn’t blame him for being skeptical. It wasn’t easy to have a murder investigation without disrupting things. And he was certain it was murder. People didn’t yell when there was no one around, and Rhodes was sure someone had been in the room when Henrietta had died.
    “This isn’t the way I thought things would be,” Chatterton said.
    “Nobody ever thinks they’ll have trouble like this,” Rhodes told him.
    “Yes, but it’s just so horrible. Especially if that woman was murdered. It means that the killer is right here, taking part in the conference. Doesn’t it?”
    “Probably,” Rhodes said.
    “Good Lord,” Chatterton said.
    Rhodes couldn’t think of any response to that, so he got in the county car and drove away.

6
    T HE APPLEBY PLACE WAS ON A DIRT ROAD JUST DOWN THE HILL from the college. Rhodes had been there before, and he didn’t have any trouble finding it.
    Even in the dark, the place looked better than it had when Cy Appleby had been around. Then the yard had been mostly churned-up mud that got hard as rock when it hadn’t rained for a while, but now there were patches of grass growing on it. The drooping roof had been reshingled, and the windows all had fairly new screens. The two hackberry trees in the yard didn’t look any healthier than they ever had, but then you couldn’t expect too much from hackberry trees.
    There was a light on in the front room, so Rhodes went up on the porch and knocked. One of the twins, either Claude or Clyde, opened the door.
    “Hey, Sheriff,” he said.
    He was a big, moon-faced young man with blue eyes and cottony hair, and he looked exactly like his twin brother, so exactly, in fact, that Rhodes couldn’t tell them apart.
    “I guess you’re here about the naked woman,” Clyde said. Or Claude.
    “Your mother made the call,” Rhodes said.
    “That’s right. She’s here. Come on in.”
    Rhodes went inside and saw that the interior of the house had also been improved. There was a new RCA TV set, a new couch, and a new rug on the old wood floor. The rocking chair in which Mrs. Appleby sat was the oldest thing in the room. The other twin, Claude, or possibly Clyde, was lounging on the couch, with one leg drooping over the arm. He and his mother were watching an ancient episode of Mama’s Family, which he muted with the remote.
    “Hey, Sheriff,” Clyde said.
    Or maybe it was Claude. Rhodes decided to ask and was surprised to discover that he’d been right with his first guess.
    “I’m the good-looking one, if that helps you any,” Clyde said.
    Rhodes said he appreciated the tip.
    “And how have you been doing, Mrs. Appleby?” he asked.
    “Tolerable,” she said.
    Rhodes thought she looked better than that, without Cy there to beat her up.
    “Where’s Twyla Faye keeping