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trembling fingers. Struggling with a bout of hiccoughs, she told the operator how she had found Whitehead and gave her the address.
    “I don’t … I don’t think he’s alive,” she told the operator in a thin, trembling voice, her hiccoughs escalating.
    The operator promised to dispatch an ambulance from Westonville Medical Center and told Lexie to stay at the scene.
    Lexie did not want to look at him again, so she stumbled into the front room and sat stiffly on his black vinyl couch. She wrapped her arms around herself to try and quell her shaking, then her nose began to twitch. Lord, it smelled in here. Henry had an even stranger odor than before. But of course, that was to be expected. He had an excuse to smell now.
    How crude.
Lexie mentally kicked herself for having such wicked thoughts of the recently departed.
    Lexie managed to dial one more number on her cell phone. Moose Creek Junction’s sheriff, Otis Parnell. He was pretty incompetent, but he was Lucy’s husband, and he wore the badge. Also, he was the only law around for miles.
    “Hello?” Lucy answered groggily.
    Lexie hiccoughed. “Lucy?”
    “Well, it’s sure not the Avon lady at …” She must have glanced at the clock. “Six a.m.? Gracious,we’re still in bed!”
    “Something t-terrible has happened.” Lexie hiccoughed.
    “Lexie? What’s wrong? You sound like a chipmunk on steroids.”
    “Otis needs to come over to Henry Whitehead’s place immediately. I think … I think somebody murdered him.”
    “Lord have mercy.” Silence thrummed on the cell for a second and Lexie heard her sister say something to her husband, then she heard Otis’s corresponding grunt and a string of gruff expletives. “He’ll be right over,” Lucy told her.
    Lexie flipped the cell phone closed and slipped it back into her pocket, numbness seeping into her limbs. Even her toes had gone numb and her mind reeled with disbelief.
    Who killed Henry Whitehead? And why?
    The man might have been a creep, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered. Lexie’s hiccoughing got worse and she held her breath. It seemed inappropriate to do the burping backward thing with a corpse in the next room, so she held off.
    As Eva would say, this whole thing was
so
not good. Lexie was probably the last person who had seen Whitehead alive, besides his murderer, and Otis would rip her apart. Just thinking about it made hiccoughs ricochet through her diaphragm with a vengeance.
    Suddenly, there was noise on the front porch and Lexie nearly jumped through the roof.
    “Get your lazy butt up and answer the door, Henry,” a female voice called through the open screen. “I thought you was gonna pick up the kids this morning!”
    Whitehead’s ex-wife, Violet, Lexie thought. Maybe she’d off’d him last night after Lexie left. She seemed resentful enough toward him, so she had the motive. But why would she show up on his doorstep this morning after she’d murdered him last night? Maybe to throw off suspicion? And what would she do if she found Lexie here?
    Stop being paranoid, Lexie told herself, remembering Lucy always complained she had a wild imagination. What did she know? She was no Sherlock Holmes.
    She walked toward the screen door, immediately recognizing Violet standing on the porch in a gray sweat suit and running shoes. The heavyset brunette gave her a she-devil look, just like the one at the picnic. She was indeed creepy, as Whitehead had said.
    “What the hell’s goin’ on? Where’s Henry?” Violet scowled. “Oh, I recognize you. You’re one of Henry’s new floozies, ain’t ya?”
    Lexie’s face flushed with embarrassment. “This isn’t what it seems.”
    “Geez, I knew Henry was a sleaze ball, but couldn’t he at least lay off the broads long enough to pick up his kids like he promised?
Crud.
He was supposed to be over to my place a half hour ago.”Violet heaved herself inside.
    “I don’t think you should be here,” Lexie said. “There’s been an …