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the coffee. Then I cracked a window frame. Went into town to buy more supplies, but the hardware store was closed."
     
     
So you got sloshed instead. I looked down at the blinking message machine. "How's Barbara?"
     
     
"Don't know, need to call the hospital. You making that coffee?"
     
     
3
     
     
I trotted out the guest house door. When I rounded the corner of the big A-frame, I heard what sounded like cars starting up Cameron's driveway. Visitors? I wondered how many cups Cameron's coffeepot made, and if it would be enough for a slew of guests.
     
     
An orange auxiliary power line snaked out of the concrete foundation for the sun room. On the near side, glass of different hues filled the completed windows: one was slightly pink, one gray, one blue. This, Cameron had told me, was the result of Gerald Eliot trying to get a better deal by ordering windows from three different places. On the far side of the sun room, the plastic-swathed framing looked more like a ruin than a building-in-progress.
     
     
I took hold of the orange cable and stepped onto the concrete floor. I hopped gingerly over another empty Bacardi bottle, pieces of broken window glass, and several open boxes of nails. The cord wormed over one sawhorse and under another, then disappeared beneath a pile of broken drywall. I yanked on the cord: Chunks of drywall skittered across the floor, as did a jagged piece of cornice molding, a nail gun, rope, measuring tape, boxes of tools, a cutting blade, and glazing material. I finally located the coffeepot and picked it up. Then I dropped it.
     
     
Hanging by his blond hair between a pair of studs was Gerald Eliot. His stiff body was clothed in filthy jeans and a bloodied white shirt. His face was dark. His tongue protruded from his mouth.
     
     
He was dead.
     
     
4
     
     
I backed up and promptly tripped over a pile of two-by-fours. My hand came down hard on broken glass. Pain snaked up my arm. A fist seemed to be pushing my voice into my throat. From between the studs, Gerald Eliot's dreadful face and unseeing eyes looked at nothing. Bits of drywall clung to his hair, as if someone had broken a piece of it over his head. His forehead had dark, bloody marks on it and I involuntarily glanced at the nail gun. Oh, God, I prayed, no. I leapt ungracefully off the subfloor and onto the ground, then cried out as I stumbled over a tree root and landed painfully against the house's foundation. Where was I going? What was I supposed to do? My rubbery legs would not move. Nor would my brain cooperate. Where was my cellular? I gained my balance and started to run back to the van. Then I stopped.
     
     
Two Furman County Sheriff's Department cars had pulled up beside Cameron Burr's maroon truck. Assistant District Attorney Andy Fuller and three uniformed deputies slammed out of the first vehicle. Out of the second came my husband, followed by Furman County coroner Dr. Sheila O'Connor and another deputy I did not recognize.
     
     
"Tom!" I yelled frantically, then waved my arms. "Here! Tom! It's Gerald... back there - " I pointed mutely in the direction of the sun room.
     
     
Andy Fuller barked an order at Tom: Tom shook his head. What is going on, I wondered. Did they know about Eliot already? With one of the deputies in tow, Andy Fuller strode toward the guest house door. Tom trotted in my direction. He motioned me away nom the big house. Dr. O'Connor and another deputy followed Tom at a slower pace. The other two cops grimly surveyed the main house and surrounding property. One pointed toward the Burrs' garbage receptacle beside the driveway. As they walked toward the trash, the cop who had pointed talked into a radio.
     
     
"Goldy." Tom hugged me. I clasped him like a life preserver.
     
     
"Goldy, what is it?"
     
     
So they didn't know yet. "Gerald Eliot... He's... he's... in the sun room.... He's..." I choked. "Dead."
     
     
"That's what we heard. A hiker called in a while ago from a pay phone at the