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stop by in a bit. I need to be here for him. It’s the least I can do.”
    I could level with IdaMae about snooping around for Hollis’s sake, but then word would get out fast, and everyone would have their guard up. IdaMae may be a Southern belle, but she was also a Southern blabbermouth. “You need fresh air. You’ll feel better. I’ll watch the office.” I gave KiKi a pleading look that said
Do something
.
    She took IdaMae’s arm and they stood. “Just a turn around the block, honey, I insist. It’s for your own good.” Not giving her any choice, Auntie KiKi escorted IdaMae out the front door, just like she escorted reluctant teenage boys around the dance floor. They didn’t have a choice either.
    I counted to twenty to make sure the duo was really gone,then took my purse to Cupcake’s desk and fished out a pen and a receipt from McDonald’s so I could write notes on the back. I flipped open the laptop. Nothing but files on homes sold, homes for sale, loan applications, and a lot of other real-estate stuff.
    I faced two months of Bernard and smashed toes for this? The computer wasn’t even password protected. I clicked on the file marked “Homes and Gardens Tour” and pulled up schedules for radio and TV spots, interviews with home owners, and local-celebrity interviews like Raimondo Baldassare and Urston Russell. I scribbled down the schedule, because it had Urston’s name, and shut the computer.
    I pulled open the long, thin drawer across the front of Cupcake’s desk to find pens, business cards, promotional magnets advertising Janelle Claiborne, and a bottle of Essie’s Adore–a–Ball Pink nail polish. Cupcake had her faults, but she had excellent taste in polish. The side drawer held expensive hand lotion from that chichi boutique on Broughton Street. There were more real-estate brochures and a flyer for a “Family Values Rally,” with Reverend Franklin and his wife and five kids on the front.
    The back of the flyer listed rally dates and locations, with every other one circled in red marker. Cupcake at a family-values rally was hard to imagine; going to three of them boggled my mind. According to IdaMae, Franklin didn’t like Cupcake, and I assumed the feeling was mutual. So why the flyer?
    Footsteps sounded on the front stoop. I quickly shut the drawer and dropped the flyer, pen, and receipt in Old Yeller. Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I jumped out of Cupcake’s chair, looking all sweet and innocent as Hollisshuffled in. His jacket was wrinkled; his shirt, worse. He looked like something a dog dragged out of the river.
    “What are you doing here?” he asked.
    “I brought IdaMae lunch, and she’s out taking a walk with Auntie KiKi to get some air while I clean up and mind the phones. What did Boone have to say?”
    “He told me to get out my checkbook and pray a lot.”
    I gave in to my curiosity. “What did you and Janelle argue about last night?”
    Hollis looked at me for a long moment, then let out a deep breath. “I’m an idiot, a big fool. Janelle used me, and I bought it, the whole shebang.”
    Hollis ran his hand through his hair and sank into a chair. He had never suffered from low self-esteem. He never called himself an idiot or a fool. Hollis thought he was adorable; just ask him.
    “What did Janelle do?”
    He shrugged. “It’s not important now. She’s dead, and my life goes back to normal.”
    “Uh, Hollis, normal is not you in the slammer. We have a long way to go before we hit normal around here.”
    “I don’t know who killed Janelle. Her death had nothing to do with me or our argument last night. She wasn’t the woman I thought she was, that’s for sure.”
    The door opened, and this time Detective Ross and two uniformed policemen came in. My heart stopped, and Hollis was no longer breathing.
    Ross said, “Hollis Beaumont, you are under arrest for the murder of Janelle Claiborne. You have the right to remain silent.” She droned on with the rest of the