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selling my house when you sold yours? Do you still think you could have made more money if I’d done what you wanted?”
    A couple of people moved away from Carlotta. Lois looked at her, too.
    “You didn’t tell me that when you talked about her,” Lois said slowly. “You just said she was mixed up in that murder case last year. You made it sound like she’d gotten away with it.”
    Tamiko shook her head. “That is very serious. My daughter—”
    “You’re nuts, all of you.” Carlotta’s voice turned shrill. “I’m not the one who should be sued. She is!” She pointed at me. “She’s breaking your rules. You should just kick her out!”
    “That’s not up to you, Carlotta. It’s not even up to Lois or any of you.” I looked at the hangers-on again. The ones who liked a scene were riveted, but several people had already drifted away. “If anyone is going to throw me out, it’s Rita. And I think she has a better idea of what constitutes evidence than you do.”
    “Where is Rita?” Tamiko glanced around the garden. “She should be here to put a stop to this kind of thing. I don’t like mean-spirited attacks in a place that should be devoted to peaceful horticulture.”
    “I’m going to go get her.” Lois wheeled around. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.”
    “In the meantime,” I said, picking up my bucket and pushing past Carlotta, “I’m putting my squash away. And I’m sure not inviting you over for a harvest dinner.”
    It was a mean crack, but I hadn’t been so angry in a while. I try to avoid anger—it’s a dangerous emotion that takes a person out of control, and control is very important to me.
    I carried the bucket out to the parking lot and slid open the side door on my ‘69 VW microbus, nicknamed (because of its blue color and ox-like disposition) Babe. Barker greeted me enthusiastically. He’d been curled up on the backseat of the bus, which is the camper version (although without a pop-top).
    Though I no longer had to live in Babe, both Barker and I regarded it as our traveling living room. When he saw I wasn’t going to let him out, he hopped back up on the seat and assumed a long-suffering look. He took up a lot of room there.
    I talked to him for a few minutes, and made sure his water dish was accessible. The sun had warmed the inside of the bus since I’d parked, so I cranked the side windows wider and opened the roof vent.
    Leaving Barker with the squash, I went back to the garden for my tools. Tamiko was no longer working in her plot beside the gate; Webster, too, was not in sight. A low murmur swept through the garden on the wind, coming from the side near Lois’s plot. I could see a group of people congregated there. For a minute I hesitated, not willing to run the gauntlet of yet more suspicion and malice. Finally I walked along the path past other plots, some well-tended and some overgrown, past the tall stalks and empty heads of sunflowers, the various composting methods people had devised, the thick hedges of raspberries and the twining stems of grapevines.
    The path grew crowded, blocked by people, who glanced at me and moved away until I could see into the center of it. The noise of busy whispering filled the air like a swarm of bees.
    Straight ahead, Lois knelt in the dirt of her garden plot beside a trench she’d been working on as part of a course of double-digging, her hands pressed to her chest. The trench so carefully emptied of dirt was instead full of a tumble of pale flesh and spandex and brassy blond hair.
    Rita. It took only a cursory look to see that, with her head twisted so uncomfortably away from her body, she couldn’t still be alive. Even though her bright blue eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the sky.
     

Chapter 5
     
    At least no one was looking at me, for the simple reason that they couldn’t take their eyes off Rita’s body. I could feel the speculation, the sense of being branded. It would seem very pat to the