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way last spring.”
    “But Buddy’s old.” She gave a wave and put the car in reverse.
    And Cedric had been at Dunkirk.
    She started to back out of the driveway, let down her window and called, “I forgot to give you this. Debbie sent it.”
    It was the e-mail from Haley.
    “She’s doing fine,” Sister says. “Got roaches. Wants you to send her some of those Combat things. She can’t find them in Warsaw.”
    I simply had to get my own computer.

Five
    “I ’m telling you, I’ve still got the shakes. I came home and sat in the sun for about an hour just to warm up. I went over to Mitzi’s but she wasn’t home. Not that I know what I would have said to her. They’ve got real problems, Fred.”
    Fred and I were sitting in the den. We’d had the Stouffer’s we hadn’t eaten the night before and watched Wheel of Fortune . He’d read Haley’s letter (which contained a lot more than the information that there were roaches in Warsaw), and had heard all the details of Sophie Sawyer’s death.
    “I’m sure she was just one of Arthur’s insurance clients, honey,” he said.
    I shook my head. “Arthur was stroking her hand like this.” I brushed the fingers of my right hand across my left to demonstrate.
    Fred said, “Rich client.”
    I said, “I don’t think so. You should have seen the wayhe helped her to the car like she was a piece of precious glass. He was hovering.”
    Fred said, “She probably told him she was having chest pains. Where’s the TV zapper? It’s time for the ballgame.”
    He could have at least acted interested.
    After the ten o’clock news, I got him up from the sofa where he was snoring, and we went to bed. Sometime during the night, I woke up and went to the bathroom. The lights were on over at Mitzi and Arthur’s. I wondered sleepily what was going on, and felt bad that I hadn’t called to see about them. I’d check in the morning, I told myself.
    But in the morning, I put off calling. There had been such an air of intimacy between Arthur and the woman, I wasn’t sure what was going on between the two. Regardless of what Fred said, Arthur was not just selling her insurance.
    I fixed coffee, microwaved some oatmeal, and handed Fred a can of Healthy Request chicken noodle soup for his lunch as he went out the door. Wifely duties done, I settled down with my second cup of coffee and the Birmingham News .
    I usually glance over the front page, read “People are Talking” on the second, and then turn to the Metro section. Which is what I did this morning. I was reading about a local judge who claimed he couldn’t help it if he kept dozing off in court because of narcolepsy when Mitzi knocked on the back door.
    “Have you seen it?” She pointed to the paper in my hand when I opened the door.
    “Seen what?” I was so startled at her appearance, it took me a moment to answer. Mitzi looked rough. She had on a pink chenille bathrobe which had seen better days and she was barefooted. No comb had touched her hair. It was totally un-Mitzi-like. I might run across the yards looking like this, but not Mitzi. She’s the neatest person in the world.
    “About the death.”
    “What death?” I don’t know why I asked. I knew, of course. I moved aside and she came into the kitchen.
    “Sophie Sawyer’s poisoning.”
    Mitzi walked to the kitchen table and sat down as if her legs wouldn’t hold her up anymore.
    “Sophie Sawyer was poisoned?”
    “Arthur said you were there yesterday.”
    “I was.” I sat down across from Mitzi, my heart thumping faster. “She was poisoned?”
    “Second page. Crime reports.” Mitzi propped her elbows on the table, leaned forward and put a hand over each ear as if she didn’t want to hear my reaction.
    I turned to the second page. The first crime report, one short paragraph, had the words—SUSPECTED POISONING DEATH—as its heading. Sophie Vaughn Sawyer, 64, had been pronounced dead the day before after being rushed to University Hospital from a