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I knew it was a stupid question the minute it slipped out. Kent Taylor only worked one kind of case—homicide.

7

    “Who . . .?” My mind couldn’t come up with anything more intelligent at the moment. I felt Drake walk up beside me and was aware that Taylor greeted him by name.
    He consulted his notes. “A Paula Candelaria,” he said. “Not a resident of the home, visiting her son and daughter-in-law.”
    “Right.” Paula was dead? It took me a minute to process it. Then the floodgates opened and a thousand thoughts rushed through. Couldn’t happen to a nicer person. At least she can’t move in and take over Judy’s life now. What a pain she’s been. What a pitiful person, so desperate for attention, her drinking out of control . . . I found myself staring at the ground, waffling between feelings of relief that she was gone and horror that I would think that way.
“Do you . . .?”
I realized that Kent Taylor had said something to me and I hadn’t caught any of it.
“I said, do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill her?” he repeated.
“Kill her?” I recited dumbly.
    “Detective, maybe we could take this inside?” Drake requested. He slipped his arm around my shoulders and tried to rub some warmth into them.
    “Tell you what,” Kent said. “I’ve got some more questions to ask here and I need to take a look outside before these snowy footprints get even more trampled. You guys go back into your own house and I’ll come over after awhile and go over this with you.”
“Good idea,” Drake agreed.
“What about Judy? How’s she doing?” I pictured this as just one more thing my fragile neighbor had to cope with.
“We’re checking into that.” He turned away and Drake steered me toward our front door.
    “That was a strange answer, don’t you think?” I asked Drake as he opened the front door. The warmth of our living room felt so good, I rubbed my chilled hands together.
    “What’s going on?” A sleepy Catherine was just emerging from her room, zipping the front of her robe, her hair tousled wildly.
    “There’s been some problem next door, Mom,” Drake said gently. “I think you could go back to bed if you want. The police may be over here after awhile, so we’re going to stay up.”
    “Police? Oh, my god,” she exclaimed, instantly more alert. “Well, in that case I’m staying up, too. Let me make us some hot chocolate.”
    She hurried to the kitchen while I flopped on the sofa. I remembered the jokes Judy and I had made earlier in the day, about bumping off Paula as painfully as possible. God, I hoped she hadn’t taken me seriously. I sat with elbows on knees, my face in my hands.
    “Hon? You okay?” Drake asked.
    I nodded but didn’t trust myself to speak. He stuck his index finger under my chin and raised my head until he could see my eyes.
    “Sweetheart, what is it?”
“What if I had something to do with this?” My throat suddenly felt tight.
“How could you poss—?”
“Judy and I talked about killing Paula,” I blurted out.
“Wait . . . what?” Confusion mingled with horror on his face.
    “Jokingly! I mean when she came over earlier today—well, I guess it was yesterday now. Anyway, she’d been telling me how Paula was driving her nuts and we got into this little banter about ways to get rid of her. It was just . . . You don’t suppose I gave her an idea, do you?”
    He put his finger gently on my lips. “Hush now. No , you didn’t give her any ideas. And no, Judy wouldn’t have really hurt Paula. Saying you wish you were rid of someone is not the same as killing them.”
    His voice dropped as Catherine peeked in from the kitchen. “Marshmallows?” she asked.
    “Cabinet beside the fridge.” I answered in a surprisingly normal tone, but the minute she disappeared my head dropped back into my hands.
    “Charlie, take a deep breath,” Drake ordered. “Now you’re not going to say any of this to Kent Taylor.”
    “What if I’m concealing