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Dawn was her word. Call me cynical, but I didn't think that counted. Besides, I'd heard this song-and-dance before.
    Take my word for it.
    It was just what Dad had said when the news broke that he was being investigated for Medicare fraud. Take my word for it, Pepper. I didn't do it.
    And when the evidence piled up that proved he did…
    A shiver crawled up my back and settled on my shoulders. As heavy as a load of bricks. I sidestepped my way around Didi and my own painful memories. "What I was going to say," I told her, lying through my teeth, "is that I'm not sure I know enough of the facts. I've never even read the book. I can hardly remember the movie. Except for the horses."
    "You think I'm lying."
    Maybe Didi was more perceptive than I thought.
    Without confirming or denying, I stopped and looked her way. That day, she was dressed in a gray pleated skirt that skimmed the bottoms of her knees and a pink blouse with rolled sleeves and a D
    monogrammed over her heart. There was a touch of pink color on her lips, and just at that moment, a tear slipped down her cheek.
    "Oh no!" I backed off and backed away, clutching my brown paper bag and my purse to my chest as if they could protect me from the guilty conscience that was sure to result from thinking that the ghostly waterworks were the result of my insensitivity. Not to mention my skepticism. "Don't pull that act on me." Didi sniffed. "What act would that be?"
    "That crying act."
    "It's not an act." Where it came from, I don't know, but she touched a lace-edged hanky to her eyes.
    "You've shattered my hopes, that's all. You've destroyed my faith in the milk of human kindness. And Gus said you weren't that kind of person. He practically promised. He said you'd help, but here I am, getting the royal shaft. And there you are, being alive and young and pretty, and instead of appreciating everything you've got and everything you're able to do, you're a party pooper. And—"
    "Enough, already!" I managed to not scream, but only because I didn't want to take the chance that someone in the outer office might hear me and wonder why I was in there talking to myself. "I'm sympathetic. Honest, I am. But I've got important things to worry about. Like how I'm going to buy groceries. I can't help you. I'm sorry, but really, I can't."
    Just so she'd know I wasn't going to change my mind, I turned my back on Didi, opened my office door, and stepped into the hallway.
    Out of the realm of the woo-woo and straight into chaos.
    A wall of noise hit me, and I glanced around in wonder at the hallway that was usually empty and as quiet as the tombs that surrounded us.
    There was a guy sitting on the floor right outside my office door. He had a TV camera slung over his shoulder and was shouting into a walkie-talkie, "Testing, one, two, three." I heard a crackle and from the other end of the hallway, the reply from a woman I recognized as the tiny body with the big head with the bigger smile who sat behind the anchor desk on the six o'clock news.
    "That's not good enough, Larry." Her perfectly arched brows dropped low; her perfectly bowed lips thinned into a frown. "We can't afford any glitches. Not with a story this big. I can't understand what you're saying. Talk more clearly, will you? Try again."
    Larry did. His voice, each word spoken slow and loud, lapped over the sounds of a different camera crew setting up in the file room across from my office, the ringing of not one, but two of our phone lines, and the excited purr of conversation from down the hallway. I turned the corner to find everyone from Jim, the cemetery administrator, to Jennine, the woman who made the coffee and welcomed the grieving to Garden View so that they could choose a suitable site for their loved one's eternal rest, was out of their offices and milling around.
    They were also all talking at once.
    "What do you think, Pep?" Because I reported directly to Ella, Jim and I didn't often have the need to talk to each other.