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since I was a teenager. It was heady. I felt sixteen again, with all of life’s decisions just ahead of me and Johnny Vincuzzo, the class bad boy, waiting on the corner.
    Lucy drives American. This year it’s a cherry red Chrysler Concorde with sandstone leather trim. According to Lucy she trades up as soon as the new car smell begins to disappear. No one eats chocolate chip cookies or peanut butter in Lucy’s car. No one drips ice cream cones or picks up stray dogs. When she takes my girls on shopping trips or shows houses to clients with children, Lucy borrows her mother’s Chevy or my minivan.
    I gave the Concorde the sniff test, and it passed. This car would be around for months. I was glad. It was a pretty thing that cheerfully screamed Lucy’s arrival, so I always had a moment to take a breath and prepare.
    “Just what are we going to be looking for?” I asked. “Because I don’t want more of what I found this morning.”
    “I’m sure that was awful.” She paused. “Nothing like that ever happens to me.”
    I knew Lucy was genuinely sorry a woman had died. But if someone had to die, she was sorry it hadn’t been on her watch. She was an adrenaline junky. A murder was fuel enough to drive her for weeks.
    “Well, I wish it hadn’t happened to me .” I peeked at my house as we turned the corner. The body was gone now, but yellow crime scene tape fluttered from the railing of my porch. Clumps of police officers still chatted in the yard. “I wish it hadn’t happened to her .”
    “And you never met her?”
    I hadn’t told Lucy about Ed’s relationship with Jennifer Marina, or Teddy’s version of the argument in the church parking lot. “A total stranger.”
    Lucy pulled into the driveway of the house and cut the engine before she reached for her listings book. “Okay, we’ll just wander through. I was here last week. I think I’ll notice if anything is really out of place.”
    “Out of place? It’s furnished?”
    “The owners rented it out for a few months, and they left the renters all the junk they didn’t want in their new house. That’s one of the reasons it hasn’t sold. It’s not a bad old place, but it takes imagination with all that stuff lying around.”
    We got out. I didn’t look at my house, but I wondered if Detective Roussos was one of the men lingering on my lawn.
    The house was standard issue in Emerald Springs. Built sometime in the first half of the twentieth century with a porch that had been enclosed sometime in the second, the house had dull green aluminum siding, trim that needed paint, a narrow front yard with overgrown rhododendrons, and an oak that menaced Church Street.
    “The backyard is lovely.” Lucy was in realtor mode. “It extends all the way back to the park. The inside trim is oak, and so are the floors. They redid the bathrooms not long ago. Nicely, too. Real tile. A double sink upstairs.”
    I followed her up to the porch and inside to the main door. “You don’t have to convince me. I have a house. I live in the barn across the street, remember?”
    “One of the prettiest houses in Emerald Springs.”
    I guess at times the parsonage does have a certain charm. Maybe I’m just afraid to fall in love with it. If Gelsey has her way, our occupancy will be limited.
    I watched Lucy fiddle with the lockbox. “Let’s get inside quickly, okay? I have a feeling we won’t be alone for long.”
    Lucy was frowning at the box. “This is relatively new to me. Be patient. We’ve just gone to this system.”
    The lockbox was a new one, more mini-computer than padlock. Lucy inserted what looked like a credit card into the bottom, punched a series of buttons a second time, squinting as she did, then tried once more, cursing under her breath. This time the key storage compartment at the top opened. She retrieved the key and inserted it in the locks. There were two that looked brand new and no-nonsense, a doorknob and a dead bolt. Neither went quietly. After a lot