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Albee.”
    “Yes.”
    “And you bought it when you came to Shakespeare?”
    “I rented it at first, with an option to buy.”
    “What exactly do you do for your living, Miss—is it Miss?—Bard?”
    Titles are not important to me, nor is political correctness. I didn’t tell him to call me Ms. But I saw that he had expected me to correct him.
    “I clean houses.”
    “But a few things more than that?”
    He’d done his research. Or maybe he’d always known about me, every detail of my life here in Shakespeare. After all, how much could the chief of police in this town have to occupy his mind?
    “A few things.” He required elaboration, his lifted eyebrows implying I was being churlish with my short answers. I suppose I was. I sighed. “I run errands for a few older people. I help families when they go out of town, if a neighbor can’t. I get groceries in before the family comes home, feed the dog, mow the yard, and water the plants.”
    “How well did you know Pardon Albee?”
    “I bought this house from him. I clean some apartments in the building he owned, but that is by arrangement with the individual tenants. I worked for him a couple of times. I saw him in passing.”
    “Did you have a social relationship with him, maybe?”
    I flared up to speak before I realized I was being goaded. I shut my mouth again. I breathed deeply. “I did not have a social relationship with Mr. Albee.” As a matter of fact, I’d always had a physical aversion to Pardon; he was white and soft and lumpy-looking, without any splendors of character to counterbalance this lack of fitness.
    Friedrich studied his hands; he’d folded them together, fingers interlaced. He was leaning forward, his elbows resting on his thighs.
    “About last night,” he rumbled, shooting a sudden look over at me. I’d seated him on the love seat, while I was in the wing chair. I didn’t nod; I didn’t speak. I just waited.
    “Did you see anything unusual?” He leaned back suddenly, looking straight at me.
    “Unusual.” I tried to look thoughtful, but felt I was probably just succeeding in looking stubborn.
    “I went to bed about eleven,” I said hastily. I had—the first time, when I’d found I couldn’t sleep. “Marie—Mrs. Hofstettler—told me this morning there was a lot of activity outside, but I’m afraid I didn’t hear it.”
    “Someone called me about two-thirty in the morning,” Friedrich said gently. “A woman. This woman said there was a body in the park, across the street from me.”
    “Oh?”
    “Oh yes, Miss Bard. Now I think this woman saw something, something about how that body got into that park, and I think that woman got scared, or knew who did it and was scared of that person, or maybe had a hand in Pardon Albee’s turning up out there and just didn’t want the poor man to lie in the park all night and get covered in dew this morning. So I think whoever it was, for whatever reason, had some concern about what happened to Pardon’s remains. I sure would like to talk to that woman.”
    He waited.
    I did my best to look blank.
    He sighed, heavily and wearily.
    “Okay, Miss Bard. You didn’t see anything and you don’t know anything. But if you think of something,” he said with heavy irony in his voice, “call me day or night.”
    There was something so solid about Police Chief Claude Friedrich that I was actually tempted to confide in him. But I thought of my past, and of its emerging, ruining the sane and steady existence I’d created in this little town.
    And at this moment, I knew the man was dangerous. I came out of my reverie, to find he was waiting for me to speak, that he knew I was contemplating telling him something.
    “Good-bye,” I said, and rose to show him to the door.
    Friedrich looked disappointed as he left. But he said nothing, and those gray eyes, resting on me, did not look hostile.
    After I’d locked the door behind him, I realized, apropos of nothing, that he was maybe the fifth