I turned sideways to maximize my stretch and stood on my tiptoes. No go. I was just going to have to switch brands or start eating cereal that tasted like bubble gum. That horrible thought galvanized me into another attempt. "Here, young lady, let me get that for you," said an unbearably patronizing voice from somewhere above me. A huge hand reached over my head, grasped the box easily, and like a crane lowered the box into my cart. I gripped the cart handle as if it were my temper. I breathed out once deeply, and then in again. I slowly turned to face my benefactor. I looked up—and up—into a comically dismayed face topped by a thatch of longish red hair. "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry," said Robin Crusoe. Hazel eyes blinked at me anxiously from behind his wire-rims. "I thought—from the back, you know, you look about twelve. But certainly not from the front."

He realized what he'd just said, and his eyes closed in horror.

I was beginning to enjoy this.

A fleeting image crossed my mind of us in an intimate situation, and I wondered if it would work at all. I couldn't help it; I began to smile. He smiled back, relieved, and I saw his charm instantly. He had a crooked smile, a little shy.

"I don't think we should talk like this," he said, indicating the difference in our heights. "Why don't I come over after I get my groceries put up? You live right by me, I think you said last night? You make me want to pick you up so I can see you better."

That so closely matched a certain image crossing my mind that I could feel my face turning red. "Please do come over. I'm sure you have a lot of questions after last night," I said.

"That would be great. My place is in such a mess that I need a break from looking at boxes."

"Okay, then. About an hour?"

"Sure, see you then—your name's really Roe?"

"Short for Aurora," I explained. "Aurora Teagarden." He didn't seem to think my name was unusual at all.

"Coffee? Soft drink? Orange juice?" I offered.

"Beer?" he countered.

"Wine."

"Okay. I don't usually drink at this hour, but if anything will drive you to drink, it's moving." Feeling naughty at having a drink before five in the afternoon, I filled two glasses and joined him in the living room. I sat in the same chair I'd taken that morning when Arthur had been there, and felt incredibly female and powerful at entertaining two men in my home on the same day.

Robin, like Arthur, was impressed with the room. "I hope mine looks half this good when I've finished unpacking. I have no talent at all for making things look nice."

My friend Amina would have said I didn't either. "Are you settled in?" I asked politely.

"I got my bed put together while the moving men were unloading the rest of the van, and I've hung my clothes in the closet. At least I had a chair for the detective to sit in this morning. They carried it in right as he walked to the door."

"Arthur Smith?" I was surprised. He hadn't told me he was going to interview Robin after he left my place. I'd shut the door assuming he'd get in his car and drive off. He must have left Robin's apartment before I started spying out the front upstairs window.

"Yes, he was checking up on the way I happened to come to the club meeting—" "How did you know about it?" I interrupted with intense curiosity. "Well," he said with reddening face, "when I went to the utility company, I got to talking with Lizanne, and when she found out I write mysteries, she remembered the club. Evidently you told her about it one time." I hadn't imagined Lizanne was listening. She'd looked, as usual, bored. "So Lizanne called John Queensland, who said Real Murders was meeting that very night and visitors could come, so I asked her..."

"Just wondered," I said neutrally.

"That Sergeant Burns, he's a grim kind of man," Robin said thoughtfully. "And Detective Smith is no lightweight."

"You didn't even know Mamie, it's out of the question you could be suspected." "Well, I guess I could have known her before. But I didn't, and I think Smith believes that. But I bet he'll check. That's a guy I wouldn't like to have on my trail."

"Mamie wouldn't have gotten there before 7:00," I said thoughtfully. "And I have no alibi for 7:00 to 7:30. She had to meet the VFW president at the VFW Hall to get the key. And I think after every meeting she had to run by his house to return the key."

"Nope. Yesterday she dropped by the president's house and picked up the key. She told them she needed to get in early, she had some kind of appointment to meet someone there before the meeting."

"How'd you know that?" I was agog and indignant. "The detective asked to use the phone to call the station and I pieced that together from listening to his end of the conversation," he said frankly. Aha, another person who was curious by nature.

"Oh. So," I said slowly, thinking as I went, "whoever killed her actually had plenty of time to fix everything up. He got her to come early somehow, so he'd have buckets of time to kill her and arrange her and go home to clean up." I drained my glass and shuddered.

Robin said hastily, "Tell me about the other club members." I decided that question was the real purpose of his visit. I felt disappointed, but philosophical.

"Jane Engle, the white-haired older lady," I began. "She's retired but works from time to time substitute teaching or substituting at the library. She's an expert on Victorian murders." And then I ran down the list on my fingers:

Gifford Doakes, Melanie Clark, Bankston Waites, John Queensland, LeMaster Cane, Arthur Smith, Mamie and Gerald Wright, Perry Allison, Sally Allison, Benjamin Greer. "But Perry's only just started coming," I explained. "I guess he's not really a member."

Robin nodded, and his red hair fell across his eyes. He brushed it back absently.

That absorption in his face and the small gesture did something to me.

"What about you?" he asked. "Give me a little biography." "Not much to tell. I went to high school here, went to a small private college, did some graduate work at the university in library science and came home and got a job at the local library."

Robin looked disconcerted.

"All right, it never occurred to me not to come back," I said after a moment.

"What about you?"

"Oh, I'm going to teach a course at the university. The writer they had lined up had a heart attack.... Do you ever do impulsive things?" Robin asked suddenly. One of the strongest impulses I'd ever felt urged me to put down my wine glass, walk over to Robin Crusoe, a writer I'd known only a few hours, sit on his lap, and kiss him until he fainted.

"Almost never," I said with real regret. "Why?"

"Have you ever experienced ..."

My doorbell chimed twice.

"Excuse me," I said with even deeper regret, and answered the front door. Mr. Windham, my mail carrier, handed me a brown-wrapped package. "I couldn't fit this in your box," he explained.

I glanced at the mailing label. "Oh, it's not to me, it's to Mother," I said, puzzled.

"Well, we have to deliver by addresses, so I had to bring it here," Mr. Windham said righteously.

Of course, he was right; my address was on the package. The return address was my father's home in the city. The label itself was typed, as usual for Father. He's gotten a new typewriter, I thought, surprised. His old Smith-Corona had been the only typewriter he'd ever used. Maybe he'd mailed it to Mother from his office and used a typewriter there? Then I noticed the date. "Six days?" I said incredulously. "It took six days for this to travel thirty miles?"

Mr. Windham shrugged defensively.

My father hadn't said a word about mailing us anything. As I shut the front door, I reflected that Father hadn't sent Mother a package in my memory, certainly never since the divorce. I was eaten up with curiosity. I stopped at the kitchen phone on my way back out to the patio. She was in her office, and said she'd stop by on her way to show a house. She was as puzzled as I was, and I hated to hear that little thread of excitement in her voice. Robin seemed to be dozing in his chair, so I quietly picked up our wine glasses and washed them so I could put them away before Mother got there. I didn't need her arching her eyebrows at me. Actually, I was glad to have a breather. I'd almost done something radical earlier, and it was almost as much fun to think about nearly having done it as it would have been (maybe) to do it. When Mother came through the gate, Robin woke up—if he'd really been asleep—and I introduced them.