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said to the waiter who showed up to take away her empty glass. She leaned forward to finish more quietly, “—and the police will realize he’s nowhere to be found, and then they’ll start looking for him.”
    “By then someone will probably have found him in the back of a U-Haul.”
    “I think it was a Penske,” Bitty corrected me, and I rolled my eyes.
    “Whatever. There he’ll be, wrapped up like a burrito in L.L. Bean blankets. What if they trace the blankets to you?”
    “What if they don’t? Honestly, Trinket, you’re getting on my nerves. We have a lot of fun to get to tonight, and you’d better not ruin it. I’ve been looking forward to this for ages. Isn’t it just like some nerdy professor to go and get himself killed on the very day I get here to have fun? It’s not like we know who did it, or even need to know. All we have to do is pretend we don’t know anything.”
    I gave her a sour look. “That’s usually much easier for you to do than me.”
    “Are you saying I don’t know anything?”
    “If only it were that simple.”
    Truthfully, I didn’t know what to do. Telling the police was obviously out for us now since we’d already committed a crime by moving the body. But I kept looking at the well-lit courthouse across the street and expecting a cop to come out to arrest us at any minute.
    When I said, “We’ll probably be arrested before we finish eating,” Bitty flapped a hand at me.
    “If it hasn’t already happened, I doubt it will. Now finish your food, and we’ll wander on over to Proud Larry’s to listen to a little music.”
    I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any music, but I knew by then that crossing Bitty when she has her mind made up is usually an exercise in futility. Frankly, I thought we should get the hell out of Dodge. If for no other reason than that I had a guilty conscience and was in danger of throwing myself at the feet of the next Oxford cop I saw to beg for mercy. I get like that sometimes.
    The band at Proud Larry’s club was a rhythm and blues group, and for a while I was able to just enjoy the music and put everything else to the back of my mind. It wasn’t as easy for me as it is for Bitty, but I’m always grateful for small blessings. Of course, Bitty immediately met up with some alumni and former sorority sisters, and proceeded to have more fun than is legally possible in most places. Oxford is a wonderful place to do this, as long as you can handle your liquor and don’t get out of hand. I freely admit, I had fun just watching Bitty in her element.
    My element is more comfortable in jeans and tee shirts rather than stilettos and diamonds, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a good time observing how the other half lives. And I had some lovely conversations with a few people I vaguely remembered from my brief college days.
    One of them used to live in the same dormitory as Bitty and I had in our freshman year. Freshmen are required to live on campus and of course, follow the rules, and we had delighted in constant attempts at breaking those rules—within reason. My daddy would have been livid if I’d gotten kicked out for acting up, so I kept it reasonable. Not that we didn’t have loads of fun anyway. Unfortunately for me, I had to really study to keep up my grades, while Bitty seemed to breeze through all her classes, so she had a lot more time for fun than I did.
    Bitty has always led a charmed life.
    Right before midnight, a small group of ladies came in and made their way to our tables. Introductions were made all around, but one name stuck out in my mind as if put there with a hot iron: Emily Sturgis. Surely, it was a coincidence, I thought. I mean, it’s not as if Sturgis is a terribly common name, but neither is it unusual. There could be two Sturgises living in Oxford, Mississippi, I assured myself, right?
    But then Candy Lynn Stovall said to me, “Emily is married to Spencer Sturgis who teaches ancient history, and she hasn’t been