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on it!” she said.
    Excavating Ed appeared and, with hands on hips, said the brilliant words “I hope this isn’t a Native American burial ground.”
    Good grief.
“Ed, get a grip. This is Nick Brownelli! He’s Italian!”
    “My Nick!” ACB twisted out of my grip and knelt next to Nick in a clump of sod. “My beloved.”She reached for his hand and held it. “Who did this to you?” She was sobbing and her tears were dropping on his hand.
    I gently pulled her hand away. “Antoinette Chloe, don’t touch anything. The cops will want to preserve the crime scene.”
    ACB’s future drive-in was now a crime scene with a dead body in its dirt.
    Who would have thought that the crime-scene tape would be an omen?
    We waited for an eternity with ACB’s head on my shoulder and my arm around her. The seat of my cute tomato pants was feeling damp.
    Finally, Ty arrived. I could see Blondie in the back of his cop car.
    He rushed down to where we were and looked at me. “Is it Nick?”
    I nodded.
    “Did any of you touch anything?” he asked.
    “I held Nick’s hand.” Antoinette Chloe hiccuped.
    Ty shrugged. “I guess that didn’t hurt the crime scene too much.”
    He took charge. “Joan, would you take pictures, please? All angles.”
    She nodded and walked gingerly around the overturned ground.
    Ty walked back to his car and returned with a full tote bag. He took pictures, too. He asked us all to move back so he could take wider angles. Then he talked to Ed Berger, our puking Mayor Tingsley, and Joan Paris. He must have realized thatACB was too distraught to make any sense, so he didn’t speak with her—at least, not yet anyway.
    Just after he asked me to follow him away from the scene so he could ask me questions, the crime-scene investigation van of the state police rolled in and a team of six exited and walked toward us. They all huddled with Ty like a football team, then broke and spread out around Nick’s body.
    ACB and I sat on the sidelines of the field. I put my arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder. She cried and cried, and out of the blue, she looked at me and said, “At least he didn’t just take off and leave me, right, Trixie?”
    How was I supposed to answer that?
    “Uh-huh.” That was my usual default response.
    “I want to leave here, Trixie,” ACB said.
    “I agree. Come over to my Big House and I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
    “Not right now, Trixie.” We got to our feet with a minimum of grunting. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go home and change and take a shower and take a nap. And tomorrow I think I should drive to Auburn prison and tell Sal about his brother. I know Nick and Sal were on nonspeaking terms ever since Sal tried to kill me . . . but I think he deserves to know that his brother is dead. And I’ll need to know what arrangements he wants me to make for Nick.”
    “Wait until you’re ready, Antoinette Chloe. You just had a big shock. Besides, Hal Manning will be examining Nick for a while.”
    Hal Manning was the owner of the HappyRepose Funeral Home and Sandy Harbor’s coroner. I didn’t want to go into details with ACB, but based on my faux training with my ex, I was fairly sure that Nick’s body wouldn’t be released for a while.
    How did I know this? Deputy Doug, my ex-husband, always brought his work home, and over dinner he’d tell me every detail of every crime scene he ever presided over. Eventually he stopped coming home for dinner—due to his affair with a very fertile twentysomething—and our big Colonial in Philly became silent—other than when I talked to myself.
    But I digress.
    “Antoinette Chloe, I’ll drive you home. You can take a shower or whatever you want, but I don’t want you to be alone. Pack up and move into the Big House. You’ve moving in to chaperone the Miss Salmon contestants anyway, so just do it sooner.”
    “That’s nice of you, Trixie.”
    “What are friends for? Let’s go.”
    ACB gave a last look