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Still berating myself, I sat by the phone and wondered what other duties I'd neglected. I couldn't think of anything, but it occurred to me that someone should tell Francine about her ex-husband's fiancee. It was twenty minutes to eleven when I called, and Francine's voice sounded heavy with sleep.

“Did I wake you?” I said, feeling as if I'd made yet another faux pas. “I guess I figured you'd be waiting up for Alicia to come back from visiting her friend.”

“No, it's fine,” Francine replied, obviously making an effort to rouse herself. “I just … nodded off on the couch. What's going on?”

It occurred to me that I should have rehearsed my announcement. Instead I blurted out the words: “Ursula drowned tonight. Has anyone told you?”

The muffled exclamation at the other end might have been shock—or exultation. When Francine spoke audibly, she asked if she could call me right back. Naturally I said yes.

The phone rang almost immediately, but it wasn't Francine. Doc Dewey's calm, cautious voice was on the other end. “I just checked in with the sheriffs office,” he began, “and Dustin Fong told me Milo was out but that you'd been brought up to speed on this Ursula Randall business.”

I allowed that that was true.

“I know that you have a Tuesday deadline for your paper,” Doc Dewey went on, his careful voice almost lulling me into a somnolent state. “To be frank, I doubt that we'll have an autopsy report by then. With a three-day weekend in a county as big as Snohomish, there are going to be—unfortunately—more than the usual number of deaths. Even if we get the findings in time for your deadline, the pathologist won't be finished. I hope
I'm not speaking out of turn here, but this is a case where the pathology report is just as, if not more, important than the autopsy.”

I spurred my tired brain to focus on Doc's words. “Wait—I don't understand.”

“Drowning is difficult to determine,” Doc responded. “In fact, it's almost impossible for an autopsy to prove that a person died by drowning. What happens is that the medical examiner tries to figure out if the victim's death was caused by something else—a heart attack, a stroke, an aneurysm. Or,” he added on a sigh of regret, “foul play.”

Though Milo had already prepared me for the possibility, I still winced. “You mean if the person was held underwater?”

“That's always conceivable,” Doc allowed. “But it's unusual. What's more likely in such instances is that the victim was already dead before being put in the water. There was no way that I could tell that from my examination at the river. There were some marks on the deceased's face, but they could have been caused by the current and the rocks and the underbrush. Otherwise I saw no sign of injury. But don't quote me.”

Don't quote me—journalists hate those three little words. Yet in a small town, sources have to be handled with extra-special care. “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly. “What about rigor in terms of establishing time of death?”

“Well …” Doc hesitated, obviously thinking through his answer. “There were no signs of rigor setting in, so I'd have to guess that Ms. Randall hadn't been dead very long. It's complicated, though—the weather is awfully warm, which slows rigor, but her shoulders and face were in the water, which is pretty cold. Still, I doubt that death had occurred more than two hours before Richie Magruder found her.”

Two hours sounded like a long time for Ursula to lie
undiscovered so close to town. But I was a layman and Doc was an expert. Thanking him for explaining the situation, I'd barely hung up when Francine called back.

“My God, Emma, I'm still shaking like a leaf!” Francine cried. “Now tell me how this happened. Was Ursula in the hot tub? Did she have heart trouble?”

As clearly and concisely as possible, I recounted what the sheriff—and to a lesser extent—Doc Dewey had told me. While I didn't mention the possibility of foul play, Francine was still appalled.

“That's just awful!” she declared. “What on earth was that crazy woman doing in lounging pajamas down by the river?”

“That's what Milo wants to know,” I said, taking my cordless phone over to the couch, where I, too, lounged, though in less glamorous attire.

Francine emitted what sounded like a snort. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.”

“Why not?”

There was a pause at the other end. “Oh … I guess it's just that Ursula seems like the kind of person who'd die in some strange sort of spectacular manner. I mean, doesn't she strike you as someone who likes attention?”

The comment struck me as odd. Drowning in the Skykomish River was a peculiar way of achieving the limelight. I said as much to Francine.

“I don't mean it that way,” Francine retorted impatiently. “Didn't somebody say once that the way we die is often a reflection of the way we've lived? Well, there's Ursula for you—she spends her life meddling in church affairs, throwing money around like Lady Bountiful, and owning big houses and fancy cars and expensive clothes that even I couldn't afford at wholesale prices. So when she falls into the Sky and drowns, she does it in a pair of Valentino pajamas and it makes page one in
The Advocate”

“Anybody drowning in the Sky around here would
make page one,” I pointed out, feeling defensive and somehow disturbed.

“Ursula will probably get on page one of
The Seattle Times
and the
Post-Intelligencer”
Francine grumbled, then caught herself. “Now I sound like sour grapes again. But it's not that. Not this time.”

“Of course not,” I said, trying to soothe Francine.

It was only after we said goodbye that I wondered why her remarks weren't sour grapes.

I tried to reach Vida one last time before going to bed around midnight. She answered on the first ring. Before I could deliver my bombshell about Ursula's death, my House & Home editor defused me.

“Really, Emma, it's extraordinary. Ursula Randall was not what I'd call an outdoorsy type. Now it turns out that her car was in the garage at The Pines. How did she get to that part of the river? Why was she dressed like that? Was someone with her?”

“Wait a minute,” I insisted, feeling not only tired, but a little cranky. “I thought you and Buck went to Everett. How do you know all this?”

It was, of course, a silly question. “My nephew Billy told me. Buck and I stopped for dessert at the ski-lodge coffee shop. His brother, Henry, sometimes picks up the tab. Very generous of Henry, but of course he is the manager. Buck had chocolate decadence and I ordered the key lime pie. Frankly, mine wasn't quite up to snuff— they've hired a new chef, I don't recall his name, but it's Helmig or Hjellming or something like—”

“Vida!” I interrupted. “Skip the cuisine commentary. How did you run into Bill Blatt at the ski lodge?”

“I didn't,” Vida snapped. “Darlene and Harvey Adcock were there. They'd been to a movie at the Whistling Marmot. They heard all about Ursula drowning when they came out of the theatre. They'd run into Jack Mullins. Naturally I had Buck take me down to the sheriffs office, where I talked to Billy. Dwight Gould is
interviewing Warren Wells at this very moment. I got home only a minute or two before you called.”

“They found Warren? Where was he?”

“At The Pines, of course. Where else would he be?” Now Vida sounded a trifle cross.

“He wasn't there earlier this evening.” I paused just long enough to let Vida chew over the information. “What else did Billy have to say?”

“Ursula's car was parked in her double garage. Her purse was lying on the bar with about two hundred dollars in cash. Her car keys were in it, of course.” Vida paused. “Let me think…. Well, I assume you knew that she was still wearing her very expensive diamond engagement ring when Richie found her?”

I didn't know, because Milo, curse him, had neglected to tell me. Since Vida seemed to have wound up her report, I told her about Doc Dewey's call.

“Doc frets too much,” she declared. “His father would have been much more forthcoming.” Vida referred to Doc Dewey, Senior, who had passed away some five years earlier. When both father and son had been in practice, they had been known as Young Doc and Old Doc.

“Waiting for those reports out of Everett may screw us up in terms of our deadline,” I noted. “What I hate most is that they'll probably be finished Wednesday morning, and then it'll be a whole week before we can print what's very old news.”

“We are not without resources,” Vida said in a veiled tone.

“Huh?” Midnight was too late for subtleties.

Apparently Vida sensed as much. “We'll discuss it in the morning. Why don't you drop by around ten and I'll fix you a nice brunch?”

“Tea will be fine,” I said hastily. Vida's cooking was to be avoided at all costs. “I'll see you then.”

Replacing the phone in its cradle, I headed for bed. The house had cooled off some, but I left most of the
windows open. As I pulled off the sheet and single blanket, I realized that I was upset. However, my distress was for the wrong reasons: Ursula's passing had shocked me, but I felt no grief. I tried to excuse myself on the grounds that I hardly knew the woman. The rationale was inadequate. The late Ms. Randall was part of the community, both in Alpine and at St. Mildred's. Had I become so callous that the untimely deatli of a fellow Catholic left me spiritually and emotionally unscathed? Maybe the tragedy would sink in later.

Or so I was consoling myself when I heard a noise outside my open bedroom window. It couldn't be the wind. The air outside had been still and oppressive when I'd taken the garbage out to the can in the carport around eleven-thirty. Maybe it was a deer. Sometimes they came through my yard to reach the next-door neighbor's vegetable garden.

When I heard the sound a second time, I flipped on the bedside lamp and got up. Before I could lift the shade, I heard two or three more furtive noises. Cautiously I peeked outside. A half-moon rose above the trees, but I couldn't see anything unusual in the yard. If it had been a deer or a cougar, perhaps the light had startled the animal. On the other hand, such creatures moved soundlessly. I went into the living room and then the kitchen to look outside. As I stood at the back door I heard a car start on Fir Street. Rushing back to the living room, I peered through the drapes. I saw nothing. The engine faded into the night.

Maybe I was more upset about Ursula than I realized. Her death had made me nervy. Shrugging off the noises, I went back to bed.

But not before I closed all the windows.

Since I'd skipped breakfast, I stopped at the Upper Crust Bakery before going to Vida's house. Carrying my white paper bag with its two Brie-filled brioches, I was
heading for my Jag when Nunzio Lucci got out of his pickup.

“What do you think about that Randall woman?” he called across the Jeep Wrangler that was diagonally parked between our vehicles.

“I think it's a shame,” I shouted back. I
think it's a shame the news is out before we can write the first sentence of the story.
Naturally I didn't say so out loud. Like most nonmedia types, Luce wouldn't understand.

“Did somebody do her in?” Luce yelled.

I gritted my teeth. At least a half-dozen Alpiners had slowed their step to eavesdrop. Clutching the bakery bag, I made an end run around my car and the Jeep. “Why do you ask?” I finally said in my normal voice.

Luce fingered the stubble on his jutting chin. “Seems to me that nobody drowns in the Sky this time of year without some help,” he opined in his gritty voice. “Hasn't she riled up a lot of folks since she came back to town?”

I offered Luce a thin smile. “If everybody who riled up everybody else in Alpine got murdered, we'd have bodies stacked up like cordwood.”

“Well?” Luce glowered at me. “We sure as hell ain't got much cordwood, since they put through all those goddamn logging bans.”

I sighed. “You know what I mean.” Then, to change the subject, I posed a question. “Did you go to high school with Ursula when she was an O'Toole?”

“Naw,” Luce replied, rubbing at his hairy forearm. “She was four, five years younger than me. I was in the same class as Buzzy. Jake was two years ahead of us.”

It would be up to Vida to ferret out Ursula's peers and get some laudatory quotes for the obituary. “So you never really knew her, I take it?”

Luce lowered his gaze and shook his head. The bright morning sun glinted off the Miraculous Medal he wore around his thick neck. “I'd see her on the street, but she'd
never so much as give me the time of day. Maybe she was always snooty—I don't know.”

“Maybe she got that way after she married a doctor,” I said. “That often happens.”

Luce looked at me sharply. “Oh, yeah? And why would she be proud of that?” He slammed a hand against the rusted fender of his pickup. “Why would she be proud of him?”

Startled, I was about to say that I had no idea. B©t Delia Lucci came out of Parker's Pharmacy before I could utter a word.

“Mrs. Lord,” Delia said with the deference I had noticed she reserved for college graduates, “how are you? Isn't this weather terrible?”

“Yes, it is,” I replied. “But I heard on the news this morning that we might have rain by Monday.”

Delia's plump, round face brightened. “Really? Gosh, I hope so! Somebody told me yesterday that we may have to cut back on using water. And just when I've let the wash pile up.”

Judging from Luce's grimy work clothes and Delia's stained summer shift, it had been a while since anyone had done the laundry at the Lucci house. But the unspoken criticism gave me a pang of remorse. Who was I to judge what went on with families who didn't have a steady, viable income?

The Luccis climbed into the pickup while I got into my Jag. The contrast in transportation modes made me feel even worse. Sure, my car was aging, but it was still a status symbol, at least in Alpine. So were my Anne Klein II sandals, and never mind that I'd bought them on sale at Nord-strom's discount outlet by the Alderwood Mall. I had a university degree, I ran my own business, I owned my home, and if everything fell apart tomorrow, I could probably go out into the world to start over. That was the problem with so many Alpiners. They had reached a dead
end. There was no world outside of Alpine; there was nothing on the other side of the forest.