She looked at Max comfortably, quietly relishing his presence here in her private space. "I've never felt quite the degree of anger and confusion that I do with Vivi Traynor. You're right, she's not a likable person. And she was so suspicious of me," she said, grinning. "I don't think she saw me meet you, but I can't be sure. She was so prodding and pushy."

"Don't you feel sorry for her husband?" Max said, amused.

Charlie shrugged. "He married her. Poor man. Maybe he got more than he bargained for. Did you get their prints all right?"

"Two perfect sets. Unless they've had company in the last couple of days, we have prints for both Vivi and Elliott."

"And you're not going to tell me why."

"Not yet."

She rose to test the boiling spaghetti and to dress the salad of baby greens and homegrown tomatoes that their local market had been featuring. As she shook the dressing, Harper's cell phone rang. She drained the pasta quickly and dished it up as he talked, afraid he would be called away. She liked watching him, liked his thin, brown hands, his angled, leathery face. She liked the contrast between how he looked in his uniform, a very capable, no-nonsense cop, daunting in his authority, and how he looked in faded jeans and western shirt and hat, with a pitchfork in his hand, or on horseback. That same sense of ultimate control was there, only more accessible.

"Yes, I have them," he said into the phone. "I sent the card this morning, overnight mail. You'll let me know-you can guess we're wanting this one yesterday."

He smiled, glancing at her as he listened. "You bet it will. Answer a lot of questions. Was she dealing with it all right?"

Another pause.

"Very good. Maybe we'll get it sorted out."

He hung up, winking at Charlie, and poured another O'Doul's. He said nothing about the call. She was certain it had to do with the Traynor's prints. Across the table from him, she ate quietly, content in his silence. When he was ready to share information, he'd do that.

But, she thought, that sharing would present a prime dilemma.

Because, was she going to pass on whatever he told her to Joe Grey? Or was she going to guard the confidence Max Harper had in her?

Beyond Wilma's windows, the garden was pale with fog, the twisted oak trees and flowers washed to milky hues. Looking out from the desk in the living room, Dulcie enjoyed both worlds, the veiled garden from which she had just emerged and the fire on the hearth behind her. Near the warm blaze, Cora Lee was tucked up on the love seat, with the afghan over her legs and the kit cuddled on her lap.

Wilma had just this morning brought Cora Lee home from the hospital and gotten her settled in the guest room. It seemed to Dulcie that her housemate was always sheltering one friend or another. Charlie had first come to her aunt when she fled San Francisco after quitting her commercial art job, convinced she was a failure, that she would never make it on her own. Then after Charlie started her cleaning business, she had come home to Wilma's again when she was evicted from her first apartment, dumping her cardboard boxes and bits of furniture back in Wilma's garage. And Mavity had come here from the hospital after she'd been hit on the head and left unconscious in her wrecked car-had come with a police guard, round-the-clock protection. And now another police patrol was cruising the streets, watching over Cora Lee.

Dulcie looked up, purring, when Wilma appeared from the kitchen carrying the tea tray-a final comforting touch on a cold afternoon. The little tabby looked around her at the perfection of their small, private world, with the fire casting its warm flickering light across the velvet furniture and over the shelves of books and the bright oil painting of the Molena Point hills and rooftops. As Wilma set the tray at the end of the desk, Dulcie sniffed delicately the aromas of almond bread and lemon Bundt cake; but she kept a polite distance. Some folks might not like cat noses in their dessert. Wilma flashed her an amused look and cut two tiny slices for her, slathering on whipped cream. Wilma was wearing a new turquoise-and-green sweatshirt, printed in a ferny leaf pattern, and her gray-white hair was sleeked back with a new turquoise clip.

"You spoil her," Cora Lee said sleepily, watching Wilma set Dulcie's plate on the blotter. "What about the kit? Can she have some?" She stroked the kit, who, at the sound of knife on plate, had come wide awake. Cora Lee was dressed in a creamy velvet robe, loose and comfortable, covering her bandages.

"Both cats will feast," Wilma said, preparing a second plate, "while you and I wait politely for our guests."

Cora Lee shivered, pulling the afghan closer around her. "A week in the hospital, and I still feel weird and disoriented."

"It's the residue of shock, from the surgery," Wilma said. "Plus the shock of what happened-of someone intentionally hurting you, and of seeing Fern dead."

Dead, Dulcie thought, after maybe Cora Lee had idly wished something of the kind for Fern. That wouldn't be easy to live with.

Certainly Cora Lee was still pale, her color grayish, her ease of movement, and lithe ways replaced by stiff, puppetlike gestures, though already she had begun a regimen of exercises designed to strengthen her injured muscles. Very likely painful exercises, Dulcie thought, stretching her own long muscles, extending her length with ease and suppleness. She thought of the distress Cora Lee must be experiencing-and was ashamedly thankful suddenly for her own lithe feline body.

"Growing up in New Orleans," Cora Lee said, "murder wasn't uncommon. It was ugly, but we accepted it. Even as a child, street murder, gang murder, drug-related killings, we were well aware of them.

"But here, in the village that I chose for its small-town gentleness and safety, murder and violent attack seem to me far more shocking." Cora Lee smiled. "I guess I haven't come to terms with that yet," she said lightly.

"We should not have to come to terms with it," Wilma said. "And if you hadn't been bringing the kit home-"

"I would have gone by the Pumpkin Coach anyway. You know I stop every Tuesday morning to see if anything in the window is worth getting in line for." She looked solemnly at Wilma, her thin, oval face drawn and serious. "I should have driven away when I saw the window was broken, when I saw Fern lying there.

"I got out to see if she'd fallen. I had this silly notion that she had been decorating the window-you know how they do, different volunteers taking a turn each week. Fern worked for Casselrod's Antiques; I assumed she'd be a natural one to ask. I was so focused on the idea that she had fallen and hurt herself that I didn't think at all to close the car door, to shut the kit in. I felt guilty afterward.

"When I was close to the window and saw the blood, saw the terrible wounds, I knew I should get away. Like a dummy I stood there trying to see back inside the shop, looking for whoever had hurt her. So foolish…

"Then when I turned to the car to phone for an ambulance, there was the pack of letters on the sidewalk. I didn't know what they were but something, a twinge of excitement, made me snatch them up-and then that man leaped out of the window, from nowhere…"

"And you ran…" Wilma encouraged. It was good for Cora Lee to talk about it, try to get rid of the trauma. "The letters… Old paper, you said…"

"Old and yellowed. The ribbon was faded and sort of shredded.

I got only a glance-the handwriting like old copperplate. Then he was after me. I ran, I got up that little walkway and around the corner before he grabbed and hit me and snatched the letters. The pain in my middle was so bad I knew I'd pass out.