It took me a few seconds to catch my breath. "I'm sorry. It's my first accident. I'll get better."

"Your first? I'll be gentle." He smiled again. I was going to have to sit down soon. "But I'm afraid it was my fault. I was trying to find your house, and you know, you're a little off the beaten path, so I was driving very slowly. It's no wonder you hit me."

"You were trying to find my house?"

He nodded. "Remember? I asked about seeing it? As a . . . study, sort of? I've sent you a few notes through Melissa, but . . ."

"Something tells me she might have . . . forgotten to tell me," I said, glancing back at the station wagon, where Melissa was pretending to ignore us.

"I thought it might be something like that," Mr. Barnes agreed.

I handed him my insurance card. "Here. Just write down the information. I'm sure they'll pay for the repair."

He took a moment to assess the damage again. "What repair?" He handed me the card back. "There's not enough damage to bother. A little rubbing compound and it'll look just like new. Probably better-it'll be the first time I've washed the bumper in years."

"Are you sure?" If I could just see his insurance card, I could finally find out his first name. "I don't want you to have to drive around with a dent just because it's my first accident."

"I'm certain," he said. "But if I could get that tour of the house . . ."

Oh man, not now! Not while my face-I mean, the house-looked like this. "I'd love to show you the house, honestly, I would. But Melissa and I are meeting her grandmother for dinner, and we just don't have the time. Can we maybe set up a time?" I'd apologize to my mother later for using her as a fictional excuse. If I told her about this at all.

"Not a problem," he answered. "But I'm going to hold you to that tour. And listen, Melissa is a terrific student. She's really smart, and she really cares. Those don't often go together."

I never know what to say when someone compliments Melissa. I mean, I think she's wonderful, but I'm her mom. Thinking she's great is sort of reflexive. "Thank you," I said. "It's nice when someone notices."

"It's part of my job," he said. "But yes, I noticed. You and her father must be very proud." What do you know-he was looking at my hand and noting the absence of a ring!

"Her father lives in Los Angeles," I said. "We're divorced."

"Well, then," he said. He took a deep breath. "Maybe we can settle this situation over dinner."

Hey, if he was asking me out when I looked like this, he'd be bowled over if I showed up to dinner disguised as a human female. "I'd like that," I managed to croak out.

"Great. How's Friday night?"

We exchanged phone numbers and agreed on a place and time, and I was about to head back to the station wagon when I couldn't avoid the issue anymore. "There's just one thing," I said.

Barnes, walking toward his car, turned back. "What's that?"

"I don't know your first name. Melissa always calls you Mr. Barnes, and I feel that would be awkward on a date, don't you think?"

He smiled again, and the same dimples appeared. Dangerous. "Ned."

Ned? Really? There are still people named Ned?

"Nice to meet you, Ned." I walked back to the Volvo (which, in accordance with its reputation, had suffered not a scratch) and got in on the driver's side.

Melissa, arms folded, was waiting for me. "That took long enough," she said.

"It's grown-up stuff. You wouldn't understand."

She twisted her bottom lip. "You were flirting with him, weren't you?"

Busted. "I had to," I said. "Our insurance card expired last month."

Eye-rolling.

Nineteen.

"What do you suppose Ned is short for?" I asked Tony.

Tony was studying the plaster mold he'd made of the crevasse in my hallway wall and concentrating. "Edward. Why?" He and Jeannie had been quiet about it, but since he'd heard there had been threats made against me, one or both of them had been calling or dropping by at least once a day. They were watching us, in a nice way.

My mother, who was more obvious without even knowing there was anything to worry about, was in the kitchen unloading groceries she thought I could use, like paper plates, plastic utensils, plastic cups and other things that were destined to destroy the environment.

I was grateful for her help, but wished she'd stay home.

"But there's no N in Edward," I told Tony.

Tony measured the mold for the sixth time, then went back and measured the hole in the wall for the seventh. "Okay, so Nedarsky. Why do I care what Ned is short for?"

"Melissa's history teacher is named Ned Barnes," I told him. From inside the kitchen, I could hear Mom talking to herself. She had done that since I was little. I worried that I'd start soon.

Tony looked up from his measuring. "Uh-oh."

"What? Something wrong with the mold?"

"No, you. Worrying about Melissa's history teacher's name. I'm guessing this Ned isn't some sixty-two-year-old guy with thinning gray hair and liver spots."

I tried not to look him in the eye. "We're going to dinner Friday night," I said.

Paul suddenly appeared through the floor, startling me, but I couldn't say anything with Tony in the room. I gasped a little, and Tony took that as a cute little signal of my interest in Ned. He grinned and said nothing, then walked to the section of wall with the hole in it, and dipped a trowel into the bucket of plaster he'd left on the floor near there.

"With whom are you going to dinner on Friday?" Paul asked. Canadians can be so grammatically correct.

"I don't see why you think a simple friendly dinner with Melissa's history teacher is so significant," I said, ostensibly to Tony.

"You're having dinner with Melissa's history teacher?" Mom, in sneakers so she could, you know, sneak up on me, stood at the end of the hall.

"I'll tell you about it later, Mom," I said. "It's not a big deal."

"When you say that," she reminded me, "it's usually a big deal." Then she turned and walked back toward the kitchen.

Paul glowered. "If the repairs to the house are taking up so much time that you might not be able to investigate our deaths, I don't see how you have time for a social life," he interjected. He already felt I wasn't giving the investigation the time it deserved. He got cranky whenever I came back to the house to work, rather than going out on some mission he'd devised.

"So just calm down," I added.

"I am calm," Tony said as he spread plaster on the wooden studs in the wall that he'd exposed when we (okay, he) measured for the mold's dimensions. "I want this to be wet when we put it in," he said. "We can't screw it to the studs the way you would with wallboard; it would break."

"You are a genius," I reminded him.

"We'll see." Tony finished spreading the wet plaster, and motioned me to the right side of the mold, which was resting on two sawhorses a few feet from the wall. "Get over there, and lift when I say."

So I did. "I mean, it's really not a big deal," I said, returning to the topic of my date. "We had a minor fender bender, and he offered to buy me dinner to discuss it." Okay, so I fudged it a bit, but I had to wipe that smirk off Tony's face and the frown off Paul's.

"You're insured, right?" Mom called from the kitchen.

"Unpack!" I shouted.

I had no better luck in this room-Tony's smirk just got bigger, and Paul's frown didn't budge. "Uh-huh," Tony said. He walked to the left side of the mold, took hold of it and nodded for me to do the same. "Gently," he said.

We gingerly lifted the mold, about three feet square, and moved slowly to the wall. "Now, just rest it on the studs," Tony said. "Don't try to force it. It'll be a little bit smaller than the hole; we can fill it in later." We maneuvered the mold into its space. It seemed to fit almost perfectly into the hole, but I was convinced that if I let go, it would fall and shatter.

"Hang on," Tony said. He took a length of two-by-four he'd left on the floor and propped it up against the mold to steady it. "Okay. Let go."

I did, and the patchwork piece did not move. We stood and admired it for a long moment. "I told you," I said. "You're a genius."

"We'll see," said Tony.

"Stop saying that."

We stood and stared at it for some time, hardly believing there was something approximating a whole wall where there hadn't been before. Tony, convinced the patch was steady, removed the two-by-four, and the patch held. We both exhaled.

"So tell me about this history teacher," Tony said.

"Yes, Alison," Mom called in. "Let's hear."

And that was when Maxie appeared, walking directly through the section of wall where we'd just placed the mold. "Ooh, look who's here," she said, whooshing into the room with more gusto than she should have.

The mold began to wobble and, before either Tony or I could reach it, had cracked on both sides where it met the studs and collapsed onto the floor, where it crashed into a ridiculous number of pieces. And some dust. A lot of dust.

"Oops," Maxie said. "My bad."

My jaw moved up and down a few times. No sound came out. Tony sighed and nodded, as if he'd expected this to happen.

"I guess we'll have to think of something else," he said.

Twenty.

When Terry Wright had failed to call back and give me the Prestons' new address, I tried googling them and came up with nothing. But then I remembered what a great friend Bridget Bostero had said she was to the couple, and I figured that since the mayor and I were now tight buddies, I could call and get the information from her.

"Oh, I'm sure they'll be delighted to hear from you," Bridget told me on the phone, although I couldn't think of a reason why they would be. I didn't ask.

"Thanks for the help," I told her.

"I checked on that thing you asked me about," the mayor volunteered. What thing?

"Oh, that wasn't necessary," I told her, although, for all I knew, it might have been vital.

"I love helping," said my public servant. "Chief Daniels assures me that the investigation into those two deaths at your house is ongoing, just as I told you."

She had told me nothing of the sort. "The investigation is ongoing?" I repeated.

"Mm-hmm. The chief says the case is still open. But I can't give you any more details, you know, because the case is . . . open."

Right. "Well, thank you, Mayor," I said.

"Not at all," she said. "And let me know if you're interested in that hair coloring we discussed."

Madeline Preston was a gracious hostess. She had put out a plate of cookies, which appeared to be home baked, and a pot of coffee, which she assured me was decaffeinated because, "I wasn't sure, and when you're not sure, it's better to go without." I couldn't argue with that. I could have used the caffeine, though. After I'd kicked Tony and Mom out of the house and cleaned up the broken plaster and the dust myself, Paul had once again gotten after me about the investigation, without so much as an apology from him or Maxie about the damage done to my wall-repair plans. Ghosts, it should be noted, can be infuriating.

"We were surprised to hear from you," Madeline said.

Her husband, David, walked in and immediately picked up a chocolate chip cookie before I could introduce myself. When he held out his hand to shake, I got a smear of chocolate on my thumb.

"A pleasure," he mumbled through a bite.

Before either of them could start asking questions, I sailed right in. "I've been wondering about why you sold the house," I said. The two of them sat staring at me for a few seconds, and I realized I hadn't phrased my opening in the form of a question. "So, why did you sell the house?" I asked.

"The children had all grown up and moved away," Madeline said politely, but her expression clearly said, Why did this nosy person drive all this way-(it was actually only a twenty-minute drive from Harbor Haven to Eatontown, but I was projecting)-to ask why we've moved out of the house she bought? "The place was just too big and too quiet. And David was tired of all the maintenance the house required."

"Are we starting this again?" her husband said. "I dug up the well for you; I must have dug fifty other holes in that backyard in the last two years. What else did you want?"

I was going to interject, but Madeline just went on. "It wasn't just the gardening," she told me. "It was the painting, and the cracks in the walls, and the kitchen. You know how old houses are."

"I'm finding out," I agreed.

"It's different when you're not in your thirties anymore." David tried to defend himself. "I'm not a young man, and all that digging . . ."

"Oh, enough, David." Madeline scowled. "Poor Alison will think we didn't like the house."

Poor Alison?

"I understand," I said, although the opposite was true. "I'm just getting used to the burdens of homeownership. I'm sure it got difficult for you after all those years." That's right, Alison, butter them up by calling them old. Nice work.

"We didn't even know the house had been sold again," Madeline said. "We sold it to a young woman on her own named Maxie." She smiled, indicating she thought Maxie was a cute name.