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work.”
    “That’s very nice of you to ask, young Vicky,” said Wilf. “She’s got a migraine.”
    “Migraines are brought on by stress,” Annabel declared. “She should lie down in a dark room.”
    “I’m sure Barbara knows what to do,” Wilf said stiffly and swung around to face me, his one good eye, sharp and bright. “Were there many people at Ms. Trenfold’s funeral this morning?”
    “I’m afraid it was just the reverend, her brother, and myself, sir,” I said. “Seems she wasn’t very popular.”
    “That’s why the Gazette obituaries are so important,” said Wilf, swelling with pride. “We are recorders of history and keepers of the truth. Another newspaper may not have bothered with Ms. Trenfold. With no husband or children to continue her line, it would have been as if she had never lived at all.”
    “Quite right, sir,” I said. “Which makes me wonder about the dead woman in Mudge Lane last night. No one seems to care about who she was.”
    “Bollocks!” muttered Pete.
    “Pete?” said Wilf sharply. “A word in my office. Now. ”
    Pete shot me a filthy look and followed Wilf’s departing figure.
    “That wasn’t very clever,” said Annabel.
    “It was an innocent question,” I protested, but I felt sick. I would never knowingly throw our chief reporter under the bus. “Why am I the only person who cares around here?”
    The phone rang in Pete’s office again. Annabel picked it up. “It sounds like Olive is having a nervous breakdown. You’d better hurry downstairs.”

7

    P ausing at the reception door, I pulled a comb and small mirror from my safari-jacket pocket and dragged it through my shoulder-length bob. Unlike Annabel, I wasn’t vain, but since I was about to meet a mini celebrity, I wanted to look my best.
    I’d inherited the famous Hill sapphire-blue eyes. They were my best feature but—being so unusually distinctive—had almost brought about my downfall. As a result, I pretended to wear colored contact lenses, which Annabel liked to point out whenever I received a compliment.
    I stepped into reception to find a tall, heavy-set man leaning over the counter.
    Olive heaved a sigh of relief. “Here’s Vicky now.”
    “Hello. You must be Mr. Burrows,” I said. “Vicky Hill.”
    The man turned around and rewarded me with a smile of blinding white Chiclets. Frankly, I’d been expecting a rustic farming type and was taken off guard by his orange fake-tan complexion and designer-spiked dirty-blond hairstyle.
    I guessed he was only a few years older than me, though it was hard to tell. Fake tan can be deceptive. I noticed his hair also sported telltale orange tints, confirming my suspicion that Mr. Burrows had been overzealous with Sun-In hair-care products, too.
    “So! Here is the famous Vicky Hill.” Phil Burrows was dressed in expensive clothes. Designer jeans—something I knew all about thanks to Annabel’s obsession with labels—and a black silk shirt, which was open halfway down his chest, where a fuzz of brown hair exploded over a gold button. “Call me Phil,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
    “All good, I hope.”
    “Oh yes.” He gave a knowing wink.
    “Shall we go somewhere private?” I was considering the nook in the corner of reception, away from Olive’s adoring gaze. She was already on the phone telling her friends he was here.
    I caught a snatch of “Phil and I had a lovely chat” and “autograph.” It was then that I noticed a stack of professional headshots of Phil Burrows on the counter and— good grief —a Phil Burrows look-alike doll dressed in Morris dancing attire. Bells, ribbons, et al.
    “The nook, eh?” Phil’s brown eyes twinkled. “Not sure if I’ll be able to trust myself in there with someone so beautiful.”
    Stifling a groan, I mumbled a gracious, “Thank you.”
    “Wow,” he said, studying my face. “He told me you had the most incredible sapphire-blue eyes and—”
    “I wear contacts,” I