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searching the shelves.
    “What are you looking for?” I said. “We just ate.”
    She turned and held up a canister. “Sounds to me like you need a good detoxification. This tea from Africa will—”
    “The red stuff that makes my lips swell?” I asked. “That tea is scary.”
    “No. Something different.” She filled a mug with water and set it in the microwave. “Trust me. This will clear your head.”
    Webster sauntered to Kate’s side and sniffed the air when she removed a tea bag from the canister. If a dog could look disgusted, Webster looked disgusted. He made a beeline for his lamb’s-wool rug by the back door and feigned sleep.
    “Kate, did you hear me say our police expert, Sergeant Kline, failed to mention Ben was never indicted for that murder he supposedly committed?”
    “I heard.”
    “That’s an omission that kind of ticks me off. What about ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and all that founding-father stuff?”
    “If the police think Ben was guilty of his wife’s murder, I’m betting they had good reason to suspect him.”
    “There has to be more to the story. You knew Ben, how kind he seemed. I need to hear what happened, judge for myself.” I unfolded the map on the kitchen table and found the town of Shade, situated sixty miles north of Houston.
    The microwave dinged and Kate took the steaming mug and dunked the tea bag in the water several times. “Okay. Let me go with you. Not today, since I have a client later this afternoon, but—”
    “The sheriff said he could spare a few minutes this afternoon; otherwise, I’d have to wait until next week. It’s not my fault you have a life that actually requires a Franklin Planner. I’m doing this.”
    “Like Daddy used to say,” Kate said, “trying to talk you out of something you’ve set your mind to is like trying to take dew off the grass. But when you get back, I want to put all this aside. We have unfinished business.”
    “You’re talking about the house, I take it?”
    She nodded. “I know you don’t want to live here alone once I move out, so we have decisions to make. Big decisions.”
    “You’re moving in with Terry for sure, then?”
    “I need to live with him before jumping into marriage. I don’t want us to end up like you and Steven. Watching what you went through with him has spooked me, I guess.”
    “Spooked you? Come on, Kate. I found it entertaining—kind of like a circus, really. Steven the juggler, balancing two and three women at once. Steven the magician, disappearing for days on end. Steven the lion tamer, handling Abby’s temper with deft and evasive—”
    “Abby!” Kate cut in. “Did you forget I had a front-row seat for your so-called circus?”
    “Well, I’m a born-again virgin . . . not even angry with Steven anymore. He and I do much better as friends.” I foraged around in the depths of my purse for the ever-elusive keys, avoiding eye contact.
    “You still care about him.”
    “We had chemistry. Strong stuff. But it’s fading.” I waved a hand in dismissal. “Believe me, I can control my feelings.”
    Kate filled a travel tumbler with ice, poured the tea in, and brought the cup to me. “Drink this on the way. Obviously you need a good detox.”
    Once out the back door, I lifted the plastic tumbler to my nose. Even with the lid on, I could smell something herbal enough to drive buzzards off roadkill. Some things I would miss about Kate when she moved out; some I would not.
    I poured the tea out the window at the first stoplight I came to.

    Heat radiated off the blacktop as I drove away from Houston. We needed rain. Thanks to a late-summer drought, the usually vibrant green medians were parched brown stripes stretching into the horizon. As I sped farther from the city, the traffic thinned and I savored the expansive landscape still undefiled by strip malls and Wal-Marts. With the cruise control set at seventy, I considered what I’d learned from hacking into Terry’s computer.