I left in my car after I'd talked to the humorless Officer Crawford again. I stopped by the florist, where I explained I'd dropped the arrangement, and could she be an angel and reconstruct it? At my cost, of course.

She would be an angel, she agreed. And within the hour.

I ran out to my house and changed, searching out my only other turtleneck. Luckily, it was cream colored and I could wear it with anything. Anything, today, turned out to be forest green pants. I pitched the soiled clothes into the washer. This was no time to abandon my ultraclean habits, considering my mother had left a message on my answering machine to tell me she'd be showing my house at three in the afternoon.

Quick work, even for Mother.

My face was bruised, as I discovered when I went to the mirror to brush my hair. Apparently I hadn't quite been able to stop myself from banging the pavement. Well, my hands had been full, and I hadn't thrown them up in time. It could have been much worse. What if my attacker had had a knife?

A thought skittered across my mind, and returned to take a deeper look out of my eyes.

Robin's last girlfriend was lying on a slab in Atlanta.

Robin's current girlfriend—and I guess that would be me—had just been shoved down in a public parking lot in broad daylight.

The two incidents weren't exactly comparable, were they? Still... food for thought.

Robin called the library before I got off work to ask if he could come out to the house. I appreciated him not assuming he could show up, and I said I'd be glad to see him. Which was true. But I would've been more glad if I could've seen him somewhere else.

I was still uneasy at having another man out to the house I'd shared with Martin. Surely that was natural? And I could tell my mother was debating whether I was moving because of Robin's reappearance in Lawrenceton. That would be nuts, I knew. Robin said he wasn't leaving town when the movie shoot was finished, but men said a lot of things under the sway of lust. My experience with Arthur had taught me nothing, if not that.

I wasn't moving because of Robin, I assured myself. I was moving because I was ready to rejoin life. And if that life included Robin right now, so much the better.

I was carrying the arrangement when I got out of my car, and he came over to me to help.

"They're beautiful," I said. "Thank you so much."

A little awkward, he bent to kiss me, his hands full with the bowl of flowers. The minute his lips met mine, I felt a sort of solar flare. It was unexpected and violent, and I thought the damn flowers would end up on the ground again.

When we broke for air, I took a deep breath.

"This seems, I don't know, a little precipitous," I said.

Robin's eyes were shut behind his glasses. He was breathing raggedly.

"Feels good, though," he said.

"You're coming off a relationship and a loss, I'm coming off a relationship and a loss," I pointed out. My relationship, and my loss, had been far greater, but he knew that already. We walked over to the house.

"What happened to your face?" Robin said. It was dark already, and I'd just disarmed the security and flicked on the kitchen lights.

"Does it look very bad? I've been dodging mirrors since noon," I said. My fingers anxiously patted the darkened area. I trotted to the downstairs bathroom, Robin at my heels. I leaned across the sink, my glasses folded on the counter, and peered at my right cheek. Not too bad—a dark center and a lighter ring of bruising. It would be gone in a week.

"You want to tell me what happened?" Robin asked.

It crossed my mind that Robin had not expected me to call him about this. He was waiting for me to tell him— not angry at not knowing already. This was a different reaction from the one to which I'd grown accustomed. Robin definitely approached life differently from Martin, and his expectations were different, too. I shook my head at myself. I should not compare.

"You don't want to tell me?" His voice sounded mildly teasing, nothing more. But I could tell from the way he stood that he was more serious, now.

"Someone ran up behind me in the library parking lot and pushed me down. The flowers were in my hands, and I couldn't drop them fast enough—I didn't want to drop them—so I kind of hit the pavement hard."

"Someone attacked you?" Robin was quite rightly astonished. "In the library parking lot?"

"Yeah. Strange, huh? Right out in daylight."

"The police didn't catch him?"

"Or her. No, the police didn't."

"Why ‘her'?" Robin's face was involved in thought, suddenly. I could practically see the lightbulb over his head.

"I thought I smelled perfume." I eyed him. "Does this ring some kind of bell with you?"

Robin looked profoundly embarrassed. "Ah, maybe." He did everything but look up at the ceiling and whistle. "But I ... maybe if I went and talked to her. ... I hate to say anything unless I'm sure."

"That's what people in mysteries say right before they get killed. ‘Yes, I think I know the killer, but I have to check a few things before I talk to the police.' Next scene, they're toast."

Robin was struck by this observation, which as a mystery writer should have occurred to him first. "That's true," he murmured. We'd drifted from the bathroom into the kitchen, and I'd gotten out a pitcher of tea. He nodded when I lifted it, a question on my face.

"Okay, well. This is really... there's this girl. She..." Robin turned a dark red. He took a big swallow of tea. "She has this big thing about me. Like a superfan. She took this job to be..." Robin was overwhelmed with chagrin, shook his head speechlessly. Hollywood had not made him completely egocentric, I thought, smiling at him.

"She's nuts about you?" I suggested.

He nodded morosely. "You know how I found out about Celia and Barrett spending the night together? I knew already when I came to the trailer. I got an anonymous note. I'm about ninety percent sure it was from her."

I began to put two and two together, myself. "Tracy," I said. "Tracy, from the Molly's Moveable Feasts catering company."

"Yep." Robin finished his tea in one long gulp.

I thought this over. "Did you tell the police about Tracy?" I asked.

"No," he said, horror written all over his face. "This isn't exactly something I want to talk about, Roe."

"Robin, didn't you consider the fact that the woman murdered was your girlfriend?"

"Former," he corrected. He looked at me almost angrily. "Of course, Roe. What are you... ?" His face cleared. "Oh."

I saw the tide of realization pour over him. "Oh, no," he said. "Oh, no."

"I hope not," I told him. "But you have to say something."

He fumed and fussed, but he was just postponing the inevitable. "You think she may have attacked you today, too?" he asked, as he pulled his coat back on to drive to the police station.

I shrugged. I remembered Tracy's face, after (I now realized) she had seen Robin and me together in the library, obviously close, obviously in lust. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't pulled out of the parking lot, if I'd waited to talk to her as she'd wanted.

I was really glad I hadn't stopped to find out.