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TV infomercial yelling to get your attention?”
    Okay, probably not. But I still didn’t want to think of the woman as murdered. In my tub.
    “You don’t know who the body is?” Mac asked.
    “No. Except I figure it must be the woman who was wearing the clothes and using the sleeping bag.” And drinking the wine out of those bottles in the garbage can. Could she have been drinking, stumbled in the bathroom, and taken the blanket with her when she fell in the tub?
    “The police will probably find something to identify her. Maybe it’s a renter, someone the rental agency can identify?” Mac suggested.
    “I quit renting the house after that last eviction. But there was food in the kitchen and a few things in the medicine cabinet. I’ve heard about people just moving into a vacant house and living there.” This, I realized, could explain those utility bills I’d received. Somehow the woman had managed to get the utilities turned on, but when she wound up in the bathtub, the bills had gone unpaid. Eventually the utility people had looked up the property owner, me, and sent the bills to me through my complicated forwarding system.
    “How about the unconscious man? Who’s he?”
    I explained about Eric and Tasha coming back to the house with me after I called 911 from their place. “He’s a big, muscular guy. But very sensitive,” I added, repeating Tasha’s words. “They were trying to be helpful.”
    Eric and Tasha came out the back door. Although Eric was conscious now, and the flip-flops were back on his feet, he still looked disoriented. He wobbled as Tasha led him over to the maple tree and nudged him onto the other bench. With his 245 pounds, the bench creaked and groaned and the legs sank deeper into the ground.
    “Are you okay?” I asked him.
    “I don’t understand why that happens. Makes me feel like a big wimp,” he muttered. He jiggled his shoulders and slapped his thigh as if to check it for feeling. “Once back in high school I passed out when a guy I tackled in a football game broke his nose and bled all over me.”
    I patted his shoulder. “It’s okay to be sensitive.”
    “Does anyone know what time it is?” Tasha asked. “I have to get to work.”
    Although it seemed much later, when Mac looked at his watch he said, “Nine-fifteen.”
    “Actress work?” I asked Tasha
    “I’m working at the Heartland Grocery today. I do food demonstrations and hand out samples.” She beamed and pretended to hand me a sample. “Would you like to try our wonderful new tofu sausage? It’s terrific for breakfast or snacks. Anytime! Delicious and healthy too!”
    Tofu sausage? Making that sound irresistible indeed took some acting talent. But Tasha was succeeding, because Mac said, “Hey, I wouldn’t mind trying a sample.”
    “I’d better run back to the house and call to tell them I’ll be late. I didn’t bring my cell phone. You’ll be okay?” she said to her husband.
    He nodded. She kissed him on the forehead and started a long-legged lope toward the sidewalk.
    The woman officer came out of the house. She was on a phone, no doubt calling for backup. This was more than a two-officer job. The Medical Examiner’s office would have to be called in. There would undoubtedly be an autopsy. But when the officer saw Tasha heading down the sidewalk, she waved an arm and yelled at her. “Hey, you can’t leave until you answer some questions!”
    Tasha reluctantly returned. “I don’t know anything.”
    “But you may have talked to the dead woman,” I pointed out. “The woman with the parsnip.”
    “But that was you .”
    “No, it wasn’t. I haven’t been here for almost three years.”
    “No discussing the case,” the woman officer said. Up close she still looked sturdy, but even younger, about junior-high age. Like most doctors these days.
    She separated us so we couldn’t talk to each other. Good police procedure, although her flustered attitude suggested doing it was like trying to