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dotted her face and ran down her neck and back. Her temples began to throb.
    “Make notes for the report. Call me when we get word from the coroner,” she said and left the kitchen.
    She crept down the long corridor that served as the spine of the one-story building. Boxes of junk lined the hall. Colleen switched on her Maglite. When Mr. Crepe was alive he had added several rooms over the years, resulting in a strange, funhouselike structure. The hallway turned abruptly in places and the height of the ceiling changed, which forced Colleen to duck at times.
    The floorboards creaked as she went in and out of rooms. The bedrooms at the back of the house were relatively undamaged. Colleen rolled her eyes when she saw Bobby’s room decorated like a child’s, complete with Mickey Mouse lamp and cartoon character wallpaper. The black-and-white bedspread, laptop computer, and biker magazines were the few adult elements. She wondered how a man his age could live like that. Then again, as far as Colleen was concerned, a forty-year-old man shouldn’t be living with his mother.
    The hallway ended with two doors on either side. She opened the door on the left first. Inside she found boxes, an old bicycle, a rusted beach umbrella, a tool box, bags of old clothes, yellowed magazines, and an incomplete dish set among the many items strewn about the room. Myrtle’s house was a good candidate for the television show Clean House.
    Colleen stepped across the hall and opened the final door. Myrtle Crepe’s heart and soul were contained within. The room was packed with Lighthouse Wild Horse Preservation Society materials. Pictures of and newspaper articles about the wild Spanish mustangs of Currituck Beach were tacked on the walls. Copies of the Society newsletter were everywhere. A plaque and painting of Star, a stud who was killed years ago, hung on the wall above a desktop computer.
    Colleen skimmed an article on the wall that had been circled in red and remembered the stir it had caused when it was published. The reporter had claimed that the horses of Corolla were not descendants of the Spanish mustangs brought to the barrier island in 1523 but rather that of common farm horses taken across the water by their owners as a way for them to escape grazing restrictions on the mainland.
    After the article had come out, Myrtle and Nellie had prepared a special edition of the newsletter exclusively devoted to defending the bloodline of the mustangs. Included in it was testimony from veterinarian Doc Wales, who diplomatically pointed out that the more important issue was that the horses somehow connected people to the past. In recent years, DNA evidence had finally put the issue to rest, confirming the Corolla horses’ Spanish bloodline.
    Colleen was unexpectedly overcome with feelings of sadness and guilt. Myrtle was dead and it was her fault. If she hadn’t ordered Myrtle home, her former teacher might still be alive. Why, for the first time in her life, had Myrtle listened to Colleen instead of remaining at the fair? For all her annoying traits—and Colleen thought she had many—Myrtle Crepe had added color and life to the community. She was family.
    She leaned against Myrtle’s desk, exhausted. She picked up the whistle Myrtle had used to blow at people who got too close to the horses. She wondered how Bobby would take his mother’s death. She didn’t envy Bill. He would be the one who would deliver the unfortunate news.
    “Chief? You back here?” Jimmy asked from down the hall.
    “Yeah,” Colleen said.
    “Coroner called. Says it might be a few more minutes but he’ll be here.”
    “I’ll be right out,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. She made her way to the hall, took one last look around Myrtle’s room, and closed the door.
    Colleen paused at the kitchen entrance and stole a glimpse of the now-covered body before exiting the Crepe home. As she emerged she noticed a small crowd gathered at the perimeter. There was