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remembered how profusely she’d been sweating after her short run. She was leaning her head against the glass of the window.
    Angel’s indisposition was worrying me more and more. I’d never seen her anything less than 100 percent physically, and I’d always envied her Superwoman physique—though not enough to work out every day so I’d have one like it. Angel was silent and listless during the short ride into town.
    Dr. Zelman’s waiting room was not as full as I’d feared. There were two elderly couples; probably only one out of each pair needed to see the doctor. And oddly enough, there was blond Mr. Dryden, who was arguing with Dr. Zelman’s receptionist, Trinity.
    “Would you please inform the doctor that I’m here on official business?” Dryden was saying in an exasperated voice.
    “I did,” Trinity said coldly.
    I could have given Mr. Dryden some good advice right about then, had he been in the market for it. “Never alienate the receptionist” is the first rule of all those who have a limited pool of doctors to draw from.
    “Does he realize that I need to get back to Atlanta very soon?”
    “He does indeed realize that.” Trinity’s face under its fluff of brown-and-gray permed hair was getting grimmer and grimmer.
    “You’re sure you told him?”
    “I tell Dr. Zelman everything. I’m his wife.”
    Dryden resumed his seat in a chastened manner. It seemed the only two adjacent seats in the waiting room were the ones next to him. After we’d filled out the necessary “new patient” and insurance forms, Angel and I settled in, with me next to Dryden. I wriggled in my seat, resigned to discomfort. My feet can never quite touch the floor in standard chairs. So I often have to sit with my knees primly together, toes braced on the floor. I was wearing khakis that morning, and a sky-blue blouse with a button-down collar. My hair, loose today since I’d been in a hurry to get Angel to the doctor, kept getting wrapped around the buttons. Since Angel obviously didn’t feel like talking, once I’d disentangled myself I opened a paperback (I always keep one in my purse) and was soon deep in the happenings of Jesus Creek, Tennessee.
    “Aren’t your glasses a different color today?” inquired a male voice.
    I glanced up. Dryden was staring at me. “I have several pair,” I told him. I had on my white-rimmed ones today, to celebrate spring.
    His blond brows rose slightly above his heavy tor toiseshell rims. “Expensive,” he said. “You must have married an optometrist.”
    “No,” I said. “I’m rich.”
    That kept him quiet for a while, but not long enough.
    “Are you the same Aurora Teagarden into whose yard the body fell yesterday?” he asked, when the silence seemed to stretch.
    No, I’m a different one. There are several of us in Lawrenceton. “Yes.”
    “And you didn’t say anything at the Burns house last night?”
    “What was I supposed to say?” I asked, bewildered. “ ‘Gee, Mrs. Burns, I saw your husband’s body. It looked as though someone had run over it with a meat tender izer?’ Actually, she did ask me if he was dead before he hit the ground and I told her I thought he was.”
    “I see.”
    About damn time.
    “However,” he continued, “we need to interview you about the incident.”
    I noted the terminology. “Then you’ll have to do it this afternoon. I have to go to work after I take my friend home. And I have to get my husband off to Chicago.” I added this last out of sheer perversity, since Martin, experienced traveler that he was, always packed for himself and drove himself to the airport in a company car, not wanting his Mercedes to be the target of thieves or vandals in the long-term parking lot. The only thing I had to do with Martin’s trips was to miss him.
    I’d been missing him a lot lately.
    Dryden suggested four o’clock at my house, I agreed, and I returned pointedly to my book. But Dryden had his talking shoes on.
    “So, your husband is