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Library.”
    “Now y’all give me a break. You know I’ve got to work.”
    “You could take off for a little while,” Mary Alice said.
    Bonnie Blue pointed a fork at her. “No way. I get commissions.”
    Our table was near the front door. When it burst open and a man rushed in yelling for someone to call 911, we jumped a mile.
    The restaurant was instantly quiet.
    “911! I need some help!” With that, he turned and ran out.
    It took only a second for the shock to wear off and for me to realize it was Arthur.
    “Call 911!” I was out of the door, running behind him across the parking lot toward his car. The passenger door was open and I could see Sophie Sawyer lying across the front seat.
    He tried to crawl across her, tried to lift her.
    “Wait,” I yelled. I ran around and opened the driver’s door. As it opened, Sophie convulsed, her back arching high.
    By this time, several people from the Hunan Hut, including Mary Alice, had come up.
    “I’m a doctor,” a man in white tennis shorts said. I moved away from the door and he took my place. Someone had called 911; we could already hear the sirens.
    “What’s wrong with her?” Mary Alice asked me.
    “Something bad.”
    Something terrible. By the time the paramedics got there, Sophie was no longer convulsing or breathing. But her body was still contorted.
    “Do, Jesus,” Bonnie Blue said watching the ambulance drive off carrying Sophie’s body and Arthur who still clutched her hand. “I hope it wasn’t the peanut stuff.”
    “Heart,” the doctor in white tennis shorts said, tapping his chest.
    There was a collective sigh of relief from the lunch crowd.
    “Should we follow them?” I asked Sister. “Take Arthur’s car home?” I had the shakes. Sudden death tends to do that to me.
    “We’d better leave it here. I don’t know of anything we can do.”
    “Lord, lord,” Bonnie Blue said.
    We walked back to the Big, Bold, and Beautiful Shoppe in silence, each lost in her own thoughts.
    “Call me tomorrow and let me know how Cedric turns out,” Bonnie Blue said, handing over the plastic hang-up bag.
    “Did I tell you he’s got a little mustache?” Sister asked. “One of those little pencil-thin ones.”
    Bonnie Blue grinned. “You go, girl.”
    Which we did.
    The day was September warm, but I was cold. I wasn’t ready to go home, to think about Sophie Sawyer dying as Iwatched. I suggested to Mary Alice that we run by both our houses, get our tennis shoes and go to Overton Park.
    She frowned. “For what?”
    “Just to walk some. Maybe play a little tennis. Nothing strenuous. We could just bat the ball back and forth.”
    Mary Alice looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “You want to play tennis?”
    “Sure. I need to move around some. I’ve got the shakes.”
    “I don’t do tennis. People who do tennis have heart attacks and die like that woman Arthur was with.”
    “They do not.”
    “Bucky Jasper did. Ran up to hit the ball and just quit running. Fortunately he fell into the net.”
    “Who’s Bucky Jasper?”
    “You mean who was Bucky Jasper. This man who lived down the street from me. I went to Savages and got the family a cheesecake.” Mary Alice turned on her left turn signal for my street. “The neighborhood sent flowers. A big wreath of gladiolas and Gerbera daisies.”
    “That was nice.”
    “Actually, it was kind of tacky. Shaped like a heart.” She pulled into my driveway. “He’d still be around if he’d been doing aqua aerobics instead of tennis. He’d have better knees, too.”
    “Bucky had bad knees?”
    “How should I know, Mouse? I hardly knew the man.”
    “But he shouldn’t have been playing tennis.”
    “Obviously. He should have been taking a nap instead.”
    She and I grinned at each other. I got out of the car after making her promise that she would call me, too, to report on her date with Cedric.
    “Just don’t let him get in your hot tub,” I cautioned. “You nearly lost Buddy Johnson that