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“I’ll be okay.”
    Restarting the Volvo, then shifting gears both automotively and conversationally, she said, “I have to run and get the lobsters! I’ll see you at seven. Do bring the dogs. Everyone else will.” With a smile and a wave, she and the bichon frise drove off. I felt a little bereft. According to the directions with Gabrielle Beamon’s letter, her house was at the end of this road. Therefore, the woman running out to get lobsters just about had to be Gabrielle Beamon. She was clearly not my mother. The letter and directions were from a hostess to a guest, not from a mother to a daughter. And how many wives refer to their husbands as “my hero”?
    As the dogs impatiently dragged me to the side door of the cottage, names danced in my head: Opal and Wally, Quint and Effie, Norman Axelrod, Malcolm Fairley. My father, whose name I didn’t even know. Ridiculous though it may sound, my only memory of my father was that he was unforgettable. Suddenly, for the first time since I’d regained consciousness, I was close to tears. Whatever his name was, he’d be here tomorrow. And for reasons I couldn’t understand, the prospect did nothing to alleviate my anxiety.
    The interior of the cottage was normal and cozy. The back door opened into a tiny, old-fashioned kitchen with a small gas stove, a noisy refrigerator with rounded shoulders, an old white sink, and shelves stacked with cast iron pans, muffin tins, aluminum cooking pots, heavy mixing bowls, and a great many serving dishes, plates, cups, saucers, and drinking glasses. Almost everything except the microwave, the coffeemaker, a set of big pottery coffee mugs, and a few utensils dated from forty or fifty years earlier. On top of the refrigerator, a twenty-pound bag of premium dog food and a wastebasket escaped plunder. Boxes of cereal and crackers, a loaf of bread, and other edible odds and ends had been tucked between dishes and glasses on high shelves.
    The tiny kitchen opened to the living room. Since the one-story cottage was uninsulated, the interior walls and the high ceiling showed bare wooden planks and beams. The grain of the wood and the age-darkened knotholes made the kinds of eye-of-the-beholder pictures you see in clouds. The living room had one obviously new feature: a sliding glass door that led to a deck. At the far end of the room was an old fieldstone fireplace with a raised hearth. Bookshelves filled the walls on either side of the fireplace. Grouped invitingly around a glass-topped coffee table in front of the hearth was a set of white wicker furniture with fat cushions covered in a cheerful print of pastel flowers. At the opposite end of the room, by the kitchen, was an almost antique dining-room table with six mismatched chairs that somehow belonged together. Against a wall near the table, a small desk held a tall pile of notebooks and manila folders, and a combination telephone and answering machine with the message light blinking.
    The digital display showed one message. I didn’t want to hear it. In fact, the innocuous flashing of the tiny red light made my heart pound. In a desperate effort to relieve the stupid, senseless tension, I pressed the Play button. “Holly? Bonnie here." Nothing dire so far. Bonnie, whoever she was, sounded altogether friendly and pleasant. What was I expecting? Not, in any event, what I heard next. “Just wondered about any progress you might’ve made on the arsenic front,” Bonnie added blithely. “Give me an update when you have a chance! Hope you’re getting in some hiking. I can use that, too. Bye!"
    Dumbfounded, I replayed the message four times. Arsenic? Progress I might’ve made on the arsenic front? I struggled to connect the poison to my fear. A phrase came to mind: Arsenic and Old Ladies. I knew there was something wrong with it. I couldn’t think what.
     

Chapter Five
     
    THE AMORAL BONNIE engages Holly Winter, professional assassin, to rid her of an inconvenient husband. Or a