More Anna Nicole Smith, actually. I wrestled one hand out of the blanket and felt my cheek under the ice pack. It throbbed. I was going to have a headache soon, too. "What happened?"

"You fell and hit your face on the porch railing. It's just a bump."

I squinted at her. "How long did it take you to get here?"

"Seven minutes from the time you dropped the phone. I left the baby with Rawlins. He'll babysit his brother if I pay him."

"How many of those seven minutes were spent putting on the bra?"

"None. I slept in it last night." She sat up straighter to show off her decolletage. "It's really amazing, Nora. What support! There's only a teensy problem."

"Just one?"

"I can't seem to get it off," she said. "Here. Drink some tea."

The smell wafting from the cup made me feel weak all over again. "What is this stuff?"

"A special tea blended by Potions and Passions. It's supposed to have reviving properties. Go ahead. Drink."

My mind finally cleared enough to suspect the worst. "It's some kind of aphrodisiac, isn't it?"

"It improves blood flow, that's all. It will help reduce the bruise you're going to have on your face. Here's a tissue. Let's wipe your eyes."

I put the stinking cup on the coffee table and sat back against the pillows. "Libby?"

"Yes?"

"It's Kitty Keough, isn't it?"

"Yes," my sister answered, dabbing a tissue to my face. "She's dead."

Once again I felt my head spin and darken. I could not convince myself it had been a sick nightmare. Kitty Keough's dead body was lying on my porch. The woman we'd jokingly wished might choke on her own poisonous venom was gone.

"How?" I asked. "Did she have a heart attack?"

Libby looked at me pityingly. She reapplied the ice to my cheek with a gentle hand. "Honey, with all that blood, I don't think it was a heart attack. And she was tied up, too. Trussed like a Christmas goose with her own panty hose."

"She was . . . ?"

"Murdered," Libby said. "That's what the police think. And Mr. Abruzzo says it didn't happen here. Somebody shot her two times in the back of the head and dumped the body on your porch. That's execution style, isn't it? Twice in the back of the head?"

"Why was she left on my porch?"

Libby frowned. "I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."

Two state troopers waited until I could put a coherent sentence together before they asked to talk with me in the dining room. The younger of the two had dimples, and the older one seemed to think direct eye contact could keep me from rambling off into hysterics. Michael sat next to me at the dining room table, looking capable of fending off an invading army of Mongol warriors if I said the word. I answered basic questions about what I had seen and heard over the last twelve hours.

"And what's your relationship with the deceased?"

I clamped my hands between my knees to keep the trembling to a minimum. "She's my boss. She works with me at the Intelligencer. We're in the Features department. I spoke with her last night. She called around six to ask if I'd cover an event for her-"

"Nora," Michael warned.

"It's the truth. Kitty writes the social column, and I'm her-I was her assistant. She said she had somewhere else to go, and I was to cover a fashion show for her."

"Nora," Michael said again.

"Sir," said Dimples, who had not removed his hat, "will you step into the other room, please, while Miss Blackbird answers a few questions?"

"Do I need a lawyer?" I asked.

"Why would you need a lawyer?" The older trooper sat across the table, still peering intently into my eyes.

"I'd like to call a lawyer," I said.

"Have you done anything that requires a lawyer?" the trooper asked. "How did you get that bruise, Miss Blackbird?"

"I told you, I fainted when I found the body. I must have hit my face on the porch. You can't be insinuating that Kitty might have hit me. She was already dead when I found her."

"That's not what they're insinuating," Michael said.

Still, the beady stare from the older cop. "We want to be sure you're safe in this house, Miss Blackbird."

"Of course I'm safe. Until a dead body showed up on my porch and I keeled over, I was perfectly-Oh, for heaven's sake! You think . . . ? That's utterly ridiculous." The complexity of my situation suddenly made me angry. "Look, I want to call my lawyer."

"You're sure? I mean, we want you to be comfortable, but as soon as lawyers get involved, things slow down. The first few hours of any investigation are critical, so if we could just get a little more information, we'd be grateful."

Since I had watched as much television as the next person, I took the phone into the living room and telephoned my friend Tom Nelson, an attorney in the city. The state troopers hovered in the hallway and talked in low voices with Michael.

Tom had been my dancing partner when we learned the cha-cha from the formidable Miss Markham when we were kids. While determined to avoid learning anything about ballroom dancing, he thoroughly enjoyed scuffing my shoes and telling moronic knock-knock jokes. Now we got along fine. Although his law firm was one of the busiest in the city, he took my call within a few minutes.

"Am I invited to your New Year's Eve party?" he asked when I blurted out my predicament. "Because we'd love to come."

"Tom-"

"Okay, okay. Don't talk to the police. If they want to schedule an interview, I'll set up something tomorrow when you're feeling well enough to talk. Meanwhile, don't say anything else, all right? I mean it."

"Thanks," I said, relieved. "Come about eight o'clock."

"Great! Can I bring my brother and his wife? They want to thank you for writing the letter that got their daughter into Barnard."

I withheld a sigh. "Bring them."

When I hung up and leaned back shakily into the sofa, Michael came over and sat on the coffee table. He handed me the ice pack.

I touched it to my cheek and met his gaze. "The police think you slugged me."

"I know." He said, "It's going to get worse."

"How's that?"

"Chances are," he said calmly, "the cops are going to take me in."

"For hitting me?" I dropped the ice.

"No."

"Not for Kitty's death!"

He picked up the ice pack again and held it gently to my face. "When somebody steals a candy bar, the cops assume it's me. It's not an arrest, just questions. There's nothing to worry about. I've already called Cannoli and Sons."

His lawyers, whom he frequently took on his famous fishing trips and paid enormous sums of money, were known lovers of pastry from a bakery in Newark, and Michael had fondly bestowed them with a nickname.

He said, "There's this other thing."

I didn't like the sound of that. "Oh?"

"The way she was tied up."

"With her panty hose. Libby told me."

"A few years back, there was another killing," Michael said slowly. "A baseball fan owed some significant play-off money. He didn't pay and got himself whacked for it. His body floated up in a toxic retaining pond in Jersey."

Trying to keep my courage up, I asked, "Is there any other kind of retaining pond in Jersey?"

"He'd been tied with panty hose."

I started to sense that huge tidal wave of disaster building over my head. "What does this have to do with Kitty?"

"The killer turned out to be a relative of mine."

I looked into his face and tried to find some emotion. "How can you be so calm about this?"

"It's the usual drill." He shrugged. "I'll go with them and let my lawyers answer their questions."

"You have no reason to murder Kitty."

"These particular officers don't seem to care about that. I'll be back in time for dinner, I promise. I'll take you out, someplace nice."

"No, Michael-"

"Okay, we'll stay in and cook." He smiled, but it didn't last. He kissed the top of my head. "This is what it's like, being with me."

The police asked us a lot more questions, but they could not look beyond the man in my house. Motive and opportunity didn't matter. Michael's connection to organized crime always set off more alarms than a gun-wielding maniac in a convenience store.

An hour later, as the police folded him into the back of a cruiser, Libby said, "Even I can see how unfair this is."

On the back porch, the worker bees of the crime scene team were busy with cameras and little plastic bags and lots of Styrofoam cups of coffee from Wawa. They still hadn't covered Kitty up. Her hair shivered in the winter wind. I could see she needed a pedicure, too. I turned away from the window.

Libby helped herself to a bagel and slathered it with cream cheese. "But the Incredible Hulk didn't seem too upset about it. His arrest, I mean."

"It's not an arrest. And he's not a hulk."

"Well, for all his shady dealings, I can't really see him bumping off Kitty. And leaving her body practically on his own doorstep wasn't exactly the move of a master criminal. I talked to that handsome guy outside, the one with the blue jacket?"

I glanced out the window. They were all wearing blue jackets. "Are you trying to get a date with a crime scene investigator?"

My sister's Cheshire-cat smile appeared. "He might be interested in the Potions and Passions catalog. Maybe law enforcement people should be my target customer. Carrying guns is surely a sign of inadequacy elsewhere, right?"

"I've always thought so."

"Anyway, he told me that Kitty probably died between seven and nine last night, depending on how long she was out in the cold."

"She died during the fashion show," I said.

With a mouthful of bagel, Libby nodded. "That's useful information, right?"

"It only means whoever killed her didn't attend the show."

The phone rang again, and Libby went to answer it.

I took Michael's oatmeal back to the pantry, unopened. The thought that he hadn't had any breakfast suddenly brought a stupid lump to my throat. The police had no evidence against him except that he'd been conveniently on the premises when they arrived and a silly coincidence with panty hose. And now, while they wasted precious hours interrogating him, the real killer could be off enjoying brunch at a picturesque country inn while Michael went hungry. I blinked back tears.

Libby hung up and appeared at the pantry door. "The newspapers have heard about Kitty's death. I guess it's true reporters listen to police scanners."

I leaned against the cupboard. "I can't stand it, Libby. It's happening again."

Libby came over and put her arm around me. Between the two of us, we had coped with a lot of death and loss over the past few years, and we didn't need words to communicate how we felt anymore. But she said, "Let's go to my place, Nora. Tons of people will be tracking you down for quotes and interviews."

"Any reporter worth his salt will find me at your house. Besides, I don't want to hide."

Her face clouded. "Nora, honey-"

The phone rang again. Libby winced.

"Go ahead and answer," I said. "I'll be okay."

She went out and picked up the telephone while I tried to steel myself for what was surely to come. A moment later Libby returned, clutching the receiver to her bosom. "It's your editor. Stan Rosenstatz."

I took the phone. "Stan?"

My editor at the Intelligencer managed the ragtag misfits of the Features department-me among them-with the air of a man who calculated his pension twice a day and hoped none of us would screw it up for him. But once in a while, like an old hunting dog seeing the shotguns come out, he woke up eager for the chase.

"Nora, we just heard the news about Kitty. We're all in shock."

"So am I, Stan."

"Was she . . . Do you think she suffered?"