We kept the key under a particular rock in the garden on the west side of the house. I'd have to mention to Meghan that Richard knew where it was now. I couldn't believe he'd left Erin alone like that, not knowing when we'd be home.

"You okay?" I asked.

A little nod. Then, "Sophie Mae? Why's everything else more important than me?"

That b.a.s.t.a.r.d. I kept my answer light. "Actually, Bug, I think you have that backwards. 'Cuz you're more important than everything else." "

I mean at Dad's. It's like I'm..." She twisted her head to look up at me. I let her know with my eyes I wanted to hear whatever she had to say. She snuggled back into my side.

"It's like I'm a pet or something. Like we are with Brodie. We love him and feed him and snuggle him and play with him. He's around all the time, keeping us company..." She shrugged and stroked the dog's velvet ear. "I guess it's not like I'm a pet." There were tears in her voice.

How do you like that, d.i.c.k? Erin thinks she treats her dog better than you treat her.

I hugged her closer and spoke into her hair. "It's okay, Bug. It's just the way he is. It doesn't have anything to do with how he feels about you."

She sniffed. I could tell she didn't believe me, and I couldn't blame her. It sounded lame, even to my ears. How could I convince her without making her dad out as a creep? He was, no doubt about it, but I didn't have the right to tell her that. Especially not after Meghan had been so careful about that taking-the-high-road thing.

I heard the front door open and steps in the hallway. Then Meghan stood in the doorway, two bags of groceries in her arms. She took one look at the three of us on the couch and Erin's wet face, and anger flared bright behind her eyes. Without a word, she went into the kitchen and started putting groceries away. We heard a cupboard door bang shut. Erin dragged her sleeve across her cheek and pulled away, giving me a worried look.

"Mom's mad, huh?"

I nodded. "She'll be back in a minute. She's cooling off."

"I know," Erin said. We waited. The cupboard noises stopped in the kitchen. After a few minutes, Meghan came back in and sat on Erin's other side.

"What was his excuse this time?" she asked her daughter. Her tone was neutral, but I was surprised she put it so baldly.

"He, uh, said something about someone he had to meet who could get him a job," Erin said.

"What happened to the job he had?" I asked.

"He quit." Erin's body tensed in antic.i.p.ation of the storm.

It didn't come. "I see," Meghan said. "Well, if he had to go, then I'm glad he brought you home instead of leaving you alone this evening. Sophie Mae and I were talking about renting a movie tonight-"

I broke in. "But then I decided I had too much work to do, so now your mom won't have to watch it all by herself."

"I went to a movie last night," Erin reminded her mother. Meghan was fairly strict about rationing TV and movie watching.

"Oh, c'mon. Like I don't know you'd be watching TV all afternoon at your dad's if you were over there. I doubt a movie two nights in a row will hurt you. Much." She smiled.

Erin clambered off the sofa. "What movie?"

Meghan stood up and held out her hand to her daughter. "We hadn't decided yet. So now that Sophie Mae has to work, you have to help me pick. Let's go now, before dinner. But first, put your bag up in your room."

Erin started to pick up her coat, which lay over her duffle on the floor. Then she came back and put her arms around me.

"I'm glad you live with us, Sophie Mae," she whispered.

"Me, too, honey."

I cleared the lump out of my throat, and she started lugging her bag up the stairs. I turned to my housemate.

"How do you do that? She was so upset when I came home." "

I think it's like taking a stubborn lid off a jar: you got it started and I just finished it. Besides, she's ten. I have a feeling it won't be so easy when she's fifteen"

I remembered my teenaged relationship with my mother. "I have a feeling most things won't be easy when she's fifteen." "

I guess we'll find out," Meghan said. "Wait a minute. She was here when you came home?"

I told her what Erin had told me, and that Richard now knew where we hid our spare key. Her lips pressed together for a moment before Erin came back into the room. Then she smiled at her daughter and jingled her keys in her pocket.

"Ready, Bug?"

Erin nodded and they left. Richard was going to be hearing from Meghan about this one.

And I was itching to tell her I wasn't the only one who thought Walter might have been murdered. Tonight I'd have to try to grab her away from Erin for a few minutes.

That night while I measured and melted lip balm ingredients, then painstakingly filled three hundred little white tubes, I thought about who would want to kill Walter.

Murder. How odd: even though the concept was far more frightening, it was easier for me to think about than suicide. The specter of Bobby Lee had promptly receded to the shadows at the first suggestion Walter may have died by a hand other than his own. And I didn't miss the heavy weight of that presence at all.

Shrugging off that bit of introspection, I returned to theorizing. Love and greed were supposed to be the two most common motives for killing someone. Debby and the lottery. Or something else? What about an insurance policy? Walter wasn't someone I thought of as having life insurance. I'd have been surprised if his old International Scout was insured for anything beyond liability, never mind his own life. But I hadn't thought of him as someone who would win the lottery and donate the winnings to charity, or be engaged to the charming Debby, either. And those two things together could be a reason for him to have life insurance he'd want to pay out. If he'd given all the money away from the lottery and then it turned out he had someone to take care of, he might be prompted to take out a policy.

I warmed to the idea. Was there an insurance policy in the boxes upstairs? Meghan and I could have missed it while packing up Walter's papers, all our attention focused on finding his will. We could have missed the will, too, considering how fast we'd packed the boxes. And a will would open up a whole new bag of possibilities, greed being what it was.

So how did the person who had been in Walter's house play into this? Had I been alone with a killer? My stomach quivered at the thought. Could it have been a coincidence, a break-in? Unlikely. When Mrs. Gray had let us in, the front door hadn't looked like it had been forced open. Debby could have a key. Or, Jacob might have dropped by, though neither of them had given any indication of having seen me before. But I hadn't seen whoever was hiding in the kitchen that night, so maybe he-or she-wouldn't recognize me either. In fact, I sincerely hoped not.

But if someone had used a key, why was the key under the flowerpot out back missing and the door still open? And if you had a key, why would you take the one under the flowerpot? To divert attention away from yourself. To confuse the issue. Because you didn't have your key with you. Or maybe the key hadn't been under the flowerpot for a long time-Walter had told us about it a year ago or more-and maybe he was the one who left the door hanging open when he left that morning, as I had first believed. The key, or rather the absence of the key, might not mean a thing. Come at it from another direction.

If Walter did have a policy that named Debby as the beneficiary, she could have wanted the money, since any hope of getting her hands on his lottery winnings after they married faded with each check he wrote to charity. Jacob could have killed him because he wanted Debby. And either or both of them could have known about my soap-making business and the lye from Walter himself.

I stopped still. Had someone intentionally tried to frame me? I lowered myself slowly to a stool, setting the lip balm tube I'd been filling on the counter in front of me. c.r.a.p. Oh, c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p, c.r.a.p. I'd involved myself in finding out what had happened to Walter because I wanted to understand his need to kill himself, and that desire had segued into wanting to know why someone else would want to kill him. But, I realized now, a lot of my interest came from the fact that he'd died right here, right here, on the floor under this very stool. This was the first time it had occurred to me that I, personally, could have been on someone's mind as they thought about needing Walter to be dead.

Could I really be framed for killing Walter? Was there some manufactured evidence waiting for the police to find it?

I felt a little nauseated and walked to the back door, opening it and walking out into the backyard. The air was cool and damp and I sucked it into my lungs, trying to steady my sudden onrush of nerves.

Oh, for heaven's sake, Sophie Mae. Stop being so paranoid. Sheesh.

How exactly do you make someone drink lye? At gunpoint, maybe? Only if the victim is stupid or believes they can survive the lye, but not the bullet. Or, you might threaten something, or someone, they wanted to keep safe. I could see Walter drinking lye to save someone else. Debby. Or-I had a horrible thought-Erin. Or maybe it would be possible to trick a person into drinking lye. Disguised as water?

When lye is first mixed, the chemical reaction results in heat. The lye on the floor had been room temperature, so it had been mixed long enough before to allow for cooling. How long was that? A couple hours, I thought, maybe more. I hadn't really paid attention. And, of course, you could speed it with ice, but not too much or the granules would precipitate out of the liquid. Also, the volume of the mixture would affect how quickly it cooled. So, the fact the lye had cooled to room temperature didn't mean anything more than it had been mixed at least some time prior to Walter drinking it. No, it didn't even mean that. Maybe he drank it hot, and it had then cooled on the floor before I got home and found him.

I grimaced. The only thing worse than drinking lye would be drinking hot lye. Still, it was a possibility.

I went back inside and continued filling lip balm tubes out of sheer stubbornness. My eyes were bleary as I finished the tedious and exacting process, and it was after eleven by the time I poured the last one. My bed beckoned, but I wanted to make a start on Walter's paperwork. On a tea run upstairs, I'd managed to pull Meghan aside and tell her Ambrose had at least implied Walter might have been murdered. Her face had pinched at the news, the fear of lawsuits replaced with a more primal one.

Settling cross-legged onto the wood floor of the spare room, I dumped one of the boxes of papers out in front of me. As I sifted each individual piece out of the jumble, it received a thorough perusal and my judgment regarding any relevance to anything. All I ended up with after an hour was a pile of charity receipts held together with a stray paperclip and a box full of unmitigated junk. Sure, a particular check stub or movie theater ticket might provide the telling clue, but not with the dearth of information I had. I'd be happy to turn the whole lot over to Ambrose.

Just as soon as I went through the other two boxes.

FOURTEEN.

I WAS HAVING ONE of those crazy dreams that you can't describe when you wake up but you know was crazy because you remember something about Captain Kirk and a pecan orchard and someone losing a piece of Swiss cheese. The siren in the background fit well enough, and it took me a while to realize it wasn't in my dream. Brightly revolving lights flashing through my window added to the surreal effect when I got around to opening my eyes.

Groggy, I dragged myself out of bed and looked out. My bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking the backyard and the alley and Walter's little house. Which now had flames licking out the windows.

I threw on my robe and a pair of tennis shoes and ran into the hallway. Erin stood in her bedroom doorway rubbing sleep from her eyes, Brodie woofing low in his throat beside her. Meghan rushed past me to her daughter.

"It's Walter's place," I said. "Fire"

She nodded and began speaking to Erin. I went past them and down the stairs, through the living room and kitchen and down to my workroom. I unlocked the back door and trotted out to the alley.

The smell hit me like an open-handed slap. Bitter, harsh, and acrid, it was nothing like the pleasant wood smoke from a friendly hearth fire. This reek contained destruction. Wisps of ash floated down like snow from h.e.l.l, settling on my shoulders and in my hair. My eyes started to burn.

Two figures in bulky fire gear appeared, lugging a huge hose around the corner of the little house. Another appeared behind them, speaking into a radio. They aimed, and a column of water gushed forth. They trained it on the roof. The hose seemed to flex and pulse with a life of its own.

Walter's old international Scout, painted the same bright yellow as the suspenders he'd always worn, flared like a torch. The firefighters, concentrating on the house, let it burn.

None of the windows had gla.s.s in them anymore; fire shot out of one, and black smoke poured out of the others, accompanied by flickers of flame. One of the firefighters shouted something, and the other one nodded. They shifted the plume of water to the left. The flames roared, as if trying to fight back, but the abundance of water tamed them somewhat. The roofing sputtered and steamed as water worked into the burning interior.

Up and down the alley and on the street in front, neighbors stood around watching in their varied night garb. Sensing movement behind me, I turned to find Meghan approaching, Erin's hand clasped tightly in hers. Erin wore sweat pants, and a coat over her nightgown, though heat shimmered through the air and made them unnecessary. She wrinkled her nose and blinked rapidly.

There wasn't much to say. We stood and watched as the firefighters worked to contain the fire, to keep it from spreading to any of the other homes. There was a bad moment when the siding on Mrs. Gray's house flared up near the roofline, but the men extinguished it in seconds. The whole thing took less than two hours, and half of that was spent soaking the dying embers. Walter's house was a complete loss, a charred skeleton reaching up from the soggy black mess of scorched furniture and unrecognizable flotsam and jetsam.

Meghan took Erin back to bed after the worst was over and came back to stand by me for a while. Then she left again. I couldn't seem to go inside, though. A gawker knot had gathered around Mrs. Gray at one end of the alley, but I ignored them, more stunned than morbidly curious. I was sure this fire hadn't been an accident any more than Walter's death had been.

I picked my way through the sodden detritus in the alley, walking to where the firefighters were packing up their equipment. After a few moments of watching them, I decided on who looked to be in charge. I walked toward him, but another man ran in front of me, shouting.

"Chief Blakely. Please, Chief, what can you tell us about this fire?"

Us? I looked around. A sudden flash of light blinded me, and I put a hand over my eyes. Squinting, I lowered my hand, and another flash went off.

"Stop that!" I said.

The photographer, a tall angular woman with short blonde hair, ignored me, turning to take a couple shots of the chief talking to the man I'd figured out was a reporter. I waited until she had moved on to the smoking mess behind me, then walked toward the fire chief.

He was saying, "I have no comment, Randy. You know it's too early for me to be able to tell you anything more. We have to complete our investigation."

"Anyone inside?"

"Nope. We didn't find anyone, and the owner confirmed it was empty."

"Can you speculate on what caused it?"

"C'mon. You know better than that. Check with Lucy in a couple of days. We'll know more then."

"That's past my deadline-we go to print on Monday night," the reporter said. He must have been from the Cadyville Eye, our local weekly.

The fire chief shrugged. "Sorry. Not a lot I can do about that."

"c.r.a.p. All right, then. Can't blame me for trying. See you on the next one."

"I'm sure I will."

As the reporter picked his way to where the photographer stood arguing with another firefighter, the chief looked up and saw me.

"And what can I do for you, ma'am?" He sounded tired, and I could tell he wanted me to leave.

I said, "I'm from across the alley there, and I saw how hard your crew worked to keep this house fire under control. I just wanted to let you know how much we appreciate it."

His expression softened. "Well, that's real nice of you. Offsets the three complaints I've heard so far about how we disrupted someone's sleep."

"You're kidding." I shook my head. "Sometimes I wonder about people."

"You and me both."

"So the house was empty? No one got hurt?"