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judging from the one that was showing, were pale ivory, and let me state now that watching a beautiful woman breast-feed a child is something I’ll never get used to, and not just because I was a bottle baby myself.
    Lori and John had a lot to talk about, so I kept fairly quiet for the first half hour. They hadn’t seen each other since his emergency leave when their mother died, which had been just before he left for his second tour in Vietnam. John didn’t say much about his overseas duty, but he did have a few words to say, mostly bitter, about California and the wife he’d briefly had out there. Lori told John that her husband Frank wasn’t in a rock group anymore, but was playing four evenings a week in a local bar with a country-western band, which was helping to supplement the salary from his job at the alcohol plant. Shewas going to try to stay at home with the child, Jeff, and hoped she wouldn’t have to go back to secretarial work.
    Finally I said, “Lori, I wonder if you’d mind if I butt in for a moment.”
    Her brown eyes flashed sexily, an unsettling thing for a mother breast-feeding her child to do (unsettling for me, that is), and she said, “Not at all, Mal.”
    “John told me this morning that you used to know a girl named Janet Ferris.”
    Lori nodded. “I still do. I mean, we’re not real close, but I know her.”
    John and I exchanged glances.
    “And,” she said, “her name isn’t Ferris anymore. She got married to a guy named Phil Taber. They’re split up, but she’s still using the name.”
    “Have you seen her lately?”
    “Sure. Last week. She moved back to Port City several months ago.”
    John said, “You better tell her, Mal.”
    Lori shifted the child from one breast to the other. “Tell me what?”
    I said, “Janet Taber was killed last night.”
    “God, no! But... how? What happened?”
    John said, “A car crash.”
    “An accident?”
    “That’s what it looks like,” I said. “But I think there’s a chance it was something else.”
    “God,” Lori said. “And after all she’s been through.” She shook her head. “I wonder what’ll happen to her boy. That freaky husband of hers won’t take care of him. The kid’s in bad shape, you know. Very bad shape.”
    “How bad?”
    “Bad shape like in open heart surgery.”
    John said, “The appearance of the accident was that Janet was drunk at the wheel and went over the side out at Colorado Hill.”
    “That’s a load of bull,” Lori said. “Booze made Janet nauseous—she couldn’t stand the stuff! I’ve seen her smoke a joint now and then, but hard liquor? No way.”
    “Well,” I said.
    Lori eased her child away from her breast and rose up from the couch, saying, “Excuse me.” Several minutes later, having tucked the baby away in his crib, she came back, buttoning her white blouse.
    “What’s your interest in Janet, Mal?” Lori said, sadly, sitting back down on the couch. “I didn’t realize Janet and I shared a mutual friend in you. She never mentioned you.”
    I told her the story. I’d been through the bus station incident so many times I was beginning to feel prerecorded. Lori leaned forward, intent on my words, the intelligence sharp in her brown eyes. When I finished up, she said, “Wow,” and shook her head. “Some story.”
    “And,” I said, “since I’m on Thanksgiving vacation...”
    “Don’t mention the word Thanksgiving,” she said. “I’ve been wrestling with a turkey all morning. I’ll be glad when tomorrow’s out of the way. I’m having Brennan and John over and...”
    John interrupted, “Mal’s not changing the subject to his holiday plans, sis. He’s really caught up in this Janet Taber thing. He wants to do something about it.”
    “The only thing to do,” Lori said, “is fill Brennan in on it. He’s a little right-wing, I’ll grant you, but then Port County isthe most Republican county in this Republican state. Brennan’s a good sheriff—don’t let his