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heels thirsty men followed in such a state that they would have wagged their tails if they’d had them.
    “Anything dead today?” Billy asked her, and found himself wincing at the question.
    “A praying mantis on my back porch, right at my doorstep,” Ivy said.
    “What do you think that means?”
    “What prays has died.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “I’m still trying to figure it.”
    Shirley Trueblood arrived at five o’clock, matronly in a pale-yellow uniform with white lapels and cuffs.
    After her came Ramon Padillo, who sniffed the aroma of chili and grumbled, “Needs a pinch of cumin.”
    When Steve Zillis breezed in at six, smelling of a verbena-scented after-shave and wintermint mouthwash, he said, “How’re they hangin’, Kemosabe?”
    “Did you call me last night?” Billy asked.
    “Who, me? Why would I?”
    “I don’t know. I got a call, a bad connection, but I thought maybe it was you.”
    “Did you call me back?”
    “No. I could hardly hear the voice. I just had a hunch it might be you.”
    Selecting three plump olives from the condiment tray, Steve said, “Anyway, I was out last night with a friend.”
    “You get off work at two o’clock in the morning and then you
go out
?”
    Steve grinned and winked. “There was a moon, and I’m a
dog.
” He pronounced it
dawg.
    “If I got off at two A.M. , I’d be straight to bed.”
    “No offense, pilgrim, but you don’t exactly ring the bell on the
zing
meter.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    Steve shrugged, then began to juggle the slippery olives with impressive dexterity. “People wonder why a good-lookin’ guy like you lives like an old maid.”
    Surveying the customers, Billy said, “What people?”
    “Lots of people.” Steve caught the first olive in his mouth, the second, the third, and chewed vigorously to applause from the barstool gallery.
    During the last hour of his shift, Billy was markedly more observant of Steve Zillis than usual. Yet he saw nothing suspicious.
    Either the guy wasn’t the prankster or he was immeasurably more cunning and deceitful than he appeared to be.
    Well, it didn’t matter. No one had been murdered. The note had been a joke; and sooner or later the punch line would be delivered.
    As Billy was leaving the tavern at seven o’clock, Ivy Elgin came to him, restrained excitement in her brandy-colored eyes. “Somebody’s going to die in a church.”
    “How do you figure?”
    “The mantis. What prays has died.”
    “Which church?” he asked.
    “We’ll have to wait and see.”
    “Maybe it won’t be in church. Maybe it’s just that a local minister or a priest is going to die.”
    Her intoxicating gaze held his. “I didn’t think of that. You might be right. But how does the possum fit in?”
    “I don’t have a clue, Ivy. I don’t have a talent for haruspicy, like you do.”
    “I know, but you’re nice. You’re always interested, and you never make fun of me.”
    Although he worked with Ivy five days a week, the impact of her extraordinary beauty and sexuality could make him forget, at times, that she was in some ways more girl than woman, sweet and guileless, virtuous even if not pure.
    Billy said, “I’ll think about the possum. Maybe there’s a little bit of a seer in me that I don’t know about.”
    Her smile could knock you off balance. “Thanks, Billy. Sometimes this gift…it’s a burden. I could use a little help with it.”
    Outside, the summer-evening air was lemon yellow with oblique sunshine, and the eastward-crawling shadows of the elms were one shade of purple short of black.
    As he approached his Ford Explorer, he saw a note under the windshield wiper.

chapter 6
    ALTHOUGH NEITHER A DEAD BLONDE NOR AN elderly cadaver had been reported, Billy halted short of the Explorer, hesitant to proceed, reluctant to read this second message.
    He wanted nothing more than to sit with Barbara for a while and then to go home. He didn’t see her seven times a week, but he visited more