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turned to Emma. “Hi, Emma.”
    “Look at Mary-Rose,” she replied, thrusting a slightly battered stuffed monkey in my direction. “She’s from the attic. I picked the name myself.”
    “She looks very well loved!” I responded.
    Emma hugged the monkey and nodded. “She’s a teddy monkey. Like a teddy bear, but a monkey.”
    “What a find!” I exclaimed, awed by Emma’s vocabulary and comprehension.
    Zoë unpacked apple juice, sippy cups, a container of fudge swirl ice cream, and a thermos of apple martinis. “Hell,” she said, “it’s only been two years since I moved in! Of course I’m still going through the stuff in the attic.”
    Her uncle, Mr. Winterelli, had been my landlord and next-door neighbor until he died a little more than two years ago. Apparently my house, a smaller version of his, had been built as an in-law unit in the early 1900s. When Zoë had inherited his entire estate, she’d left a bad marriage on the West Coast and moved back to New Hampshire. From her politely worded comments, I gathered that while Mr. Winterelli had been her favorite uncle and she’d loved him to death, she was having a hard time creating order out of the chaos he’d left behind because he’d been both a pack rat and a bad housekeeper.
    “It’s a pretty name,” I told Emma. “How did you pick it?”
    “I liked it,” she said.
    Emma’s reply reminded me that decisions are often straightforward, based on personal preference or impulse, without any hidden agenda—like Gretchen’s wind chimes.
    “Do you want some apple juice?” Zoë asked Emma, standing nearby, smoothing the monkey’s fur.
    Emma nodded, and Zoë filled two sippy cups about half full. “Go give one to Jake, okay?”
    “Okay,” she said, gently tucking Mary-Rose under her arm and clutching the two sippy cups in her chubby hands.
    “What a great kid,” I said, smiling as I watched her.
    “She really is. They both are.” She double-tapped the wooden cutting board, then teasingly shook the thermos. “Martini, anyone?”
    “You bet,” I replied.
    I watched Zoë pour the pale green, frothy liquid into martini glasses she took from the freezer, and without even being aware I was doing it, I tilted my head back and rolled it side to side, unconsciously trying to ease the ropelike tension gripping my shoulders and neck.
    Zoë handed me a drink. “Okay, what’s wrong?”
    I took a sip. “It’s Gretchen. Did you hear what happened?”
    “Of course not. I’m a stay-at-home mom. The only news I hear is from my kids.”
    I reported the facts, and when I finished speaking, she exclaimed, “Josie, this is horrible! You must be beside yourself with worry!”
    “I am,” I acknowledged, my voice quivering. I swallowed to keep from crying and concentrated on the red pepper I was chopping. “I can’t believe she killed him. If she had, no matter why, she would have called the police, don’t you think?”
    Zoë shrugged. “I don’t know her. Maybe she flipped out—I know I would—and ran to a friend.”
    “Yeah, I’ve wondered about that, too.”
    “You don’t know her friends, right?”
    “Not really. Just a girl named Mandy. She said Gretchen’s best friend is named Lina.” I shrugged and swallowed hard as I used my knife to sweep the pepper bits into a bowl. I began chopping chives. “I’ll tell you my worst nightmare—that Gretchen’s been kidnapped. You hear such horrible . . . such wicked  . . . things, you know?”
    Zoë nodded soberly.
    “Maybe she did run,” I said, pausing with my knife in midair, turning to Zoë. “If, when she entered her apartment, she recognized the dead man, and knew that someone had a motive to kill him, she would have called the police. Unless she knew that the killer also had a motive to kill her. The killer arrives, intent on murdering Gretchen, and finds him there instead. A fight ensues, and the murderer kills him. Gretchen comes home and sees her friend—dead. Maybe she knows