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could fill the bowl so full of crushed soda crackers that I couldn’t see the color of the soup anymore— or the curdles. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a soda cracker in sight, only a platter of what later turned out to be tofu sandwiches that proved to be tougher to choke down than the soup.
    “We’re both vegetarians,” Rachel explained lightly as she passed me the platter of sandwiches. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about Dotty.”
    Dotty evidently wasn’t.
    Al managed to down the meal with every evidence of gusto. Daisy finished her soup, gulped half a sandwich, and left the table, taking both a pith helmet and a motorcycle helmet with her as she rushed out the door.
    Rachel glanced at her watch. “She’s supposed to be there by two, but she’s always early. That’s the way she is.”
    When Rachel disappeared into the kitchen to serve the coffee, I stuffed the remainder of my tofu sandwich in my jacket pocket. Al caught me in the act and gave me a quick wink just as our hostess returned.
    “What’s so funny?” she demanded.
    “Nothing,” Big Al said. “I got something in my eye.” Telling fibs comes naturally to Detective Allen Lindstrom.
    During lunch I had deliberately delayed our questioning in hopes of dealing with Rachel alone. I had a hunch she’d be far more communicative once Daisy was out of the way. Now, over strong coffee and stale cookies, I opened the discussion.
    “You don’t seem to be very curious about what happened to your nephew.”
    “Curious?” she demanded, with bright sparks lighting up her pale blue eyes. “Why should I be curious about him? Whatever happened to him, it was probably better than he deserved.”
    So much for auntlike decorum and sorrow.
    “Oh, I’m sure Dotty will be wild with grief,” she continued. “She always doted on him so, even though he never deserved it, not for a minute. He was just like his father, you
    know.“
    “How’s that?”
    Rachel looked at me carefully, appraisingly. “Don’t you go trying to trick me into talking to you,” she cautioned. “Our mama always told us that the Beasons don’t wash their dirty laundry in public. I married into the Millers, but I’m still a Beason at heart.”
    “Tell me about your sister,” I said.
    “Which one, Dorothy or Daisy?”
    “Dorothy, the one who’s in the hospital. Which hospital is she in?”
    “I told you, she’s in no condition to talk to you. If I tell you where she is, you’ll go straight there and bother her with all this. It’ll be better if she doesn’t find out about it until tomorrow when she’s home here with us.”
    “Rachel,” I said reasonably, “the department does its best to notify the next of kin personally. We don’t release the victim’s name to the media until we’re sure the family has been properly notified. In this case, however, someone else may very well let something slip to a reporter. It’s possible your sister will hear the news over the radio or television when she’s by herself with no one there to help her, to be with her.”
    I watched Rachel’s face as I spoke. My argument made some headway, but she still wasn’t ready to capitulate.
    “Eventually we’ll be able to find her with or without your help,” I went on, “but it would be nice if we didn’t have to fight our way through official channels. It would save us a lot of time.”
    “I’ll have to think about that,” Rachel Miller said.
    “How long has Dotty been in the hospital?” I pressed.
    “Four weeks yesterday. It’s been dreadful. They’re only letting her come home now because there’ll be two of us here to take care of her. The doctor wanted to put her in a nursing home, you see.”
    I took a long, deliberate sip of coffee as I tried to understand her reticence. I wondered if maybe she thought Dorothy Nielsen was a suspect in her son’s murder. That was easy enough to put to rest, so I set about doing just that.
    “Since your nephew died on