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won’t do anything now.” Cliff Eggers’s voice was choked and unsteady. He was fumbling with the keys to the door and he managed to open it.
    They stepped in their hall, and Tamsin beckoned me in behind them. I caught a glimpse of a large, friendly room. There were pictures hung over an antique chest to the right of the door. In the framed grouping I saw a wedding picture with Tamsin in full white regalia, and her husband’s business college diploma. There was a big brass bowl of potpourri on the chest, and my nose began to stop up almost instantly.
    Tamsin said, “We’ll call them tomorrow morning.” Her husband nodded. Then he turned back to us. “We appreciate your coming to help us. I’m sorry to involve you in something so unpleasant.”
    â€œExcuse us, please,” Tamsin said. She was obviously just barely containing her anguish. I felt she knew she’d made a mistake asking us in, that she was just waiting for us to leave so she could drop that facade, crumble completely.
    â€œOf course,” Jack said instantly. He looked at Cliff. “Would you like us to…” and he nodded toward the squirrel.
    â€œYes,” Cliff said with great relief. “That would be very kind. The garbage can is at the rear of the backyard, by the hedge.”
    We stepped back out on the porch, and Cliff and Tamsin had closed the door before Jack and I chanced looking at each other.
    â€œHuh?” I said, finally.
    â€œDouble huh,” Jack said. He fished a pocketknife out of his jeans and leaned over the waist-high railing to cut the string. Holding the little corpse at arm’s length, he went down the steps and around the house to the garbage can. Cliff’s telling Jack that the garbage can was “by the hedge” was unnecessary, since everything in the Eggers-Lynd yard was “by the hedge.” It was an older home, and the original owners had believed in planting. The front yard was open to the street, but the clipped thick growth followed the property line down both sides and across the back of the yard. The surrounding greenery gave the yard a feeling of enclosure. While I waited, I thought I heard voices, so I went around the house to look into the backyard. In the darkness by the hedge at the rear of the property, I saw two figures.
    Jack came back after a few more seconds. “Their neighbor was outside, wanted to know what had happened,” he explained. “He’s a town cop, so at least law enforcement will know something about this.” I could tell Jack had suspected Cliff Eggers wouldn’t call about the incident.
    I wondered belatedly if I should have tried to deduce something from the state of the squirrel’s body. But I was clueless about squirrel metabolism, especially in this heat, and it would be way beyond me to try to estimate how long the poor critter had been dead. After a last glance at the blood, and a pang of regret that I had nothing with which to swab it up, I joined Jack on the driveway and we resumed our walk.
    We didn’t say anything else until we were a block away from the house, and then it wasn’t much. Someone was stalking Tamsin Lynd, and from all the cues in the conversation we’d had with the couple, this persecution had been going on for some time. If Tamsin and her husband were unwilling to ask for help, what could be done?
    â€œNothing,” I concluded, straightening up after washing my face in the bathroom sink.
    Jack picked up on that directly. “I guess not,” he agreed. “And you watch your step around her. I think this therapy group is good for you, but I don’t want you catching some kind of collateral fallout when her situation implodes.”
    As I composed myself for sleep thirty minutes later, I found myself thinking that it hardly seemed fair that Tamsin had to listen to the group’s problems, while her own were kept swept under the rug of her marriage.