“Smacking my lips over it. ‘Oh, Louise, these are so good.’ Which is just brilliant, because of course she offers me another. ‘No, I don’t dare,’ I said, and truer words were never spoken. So I sat there and waited for her to pick the candy with the prize in it.”

“Couldn’t you just go home?”

“And wait for nature to take its course? No, because I had to search the place, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

“And I also had to hear all about my boyfriend and how Jupiter trined Pluto in his twenty-second house.”

“I think there are only twelve houses.”

“There used to be, but then the developers came in.”

“I never understood that part, the houses. Anyway, what boyfriend?”

“The one I made up. A handsome widower who had taken an interest in me. Keller, I had to have some reason to go see her again. I made up a boyfriend and made up a birthday for him, and she was doing his chart and seeing if it was compatible with mine.”

“And was it?”

“We were going to have problems, and it wouldn’t work out in the long run, but she felt it was worth pursuing for the time being. Of course he didn’t exist and she had the wrong birthday for me, but other than that it was right on the money.” She rolled her eyes. “And I’m pretending to listen to all this crap, and what I’m doing is waiting for her to pop a chocolate. But she’s too caught up in what she’s telling me, and when she finally stops to catch her breath and actually does take a piece of candy, it’s the wrong one. Which I don’t know, of course, until she bites into it and nothing happens.”

“Jesus.”

“What’s interesting,” she said, “is the way my mind worked. You know, I started out feeling sort of bad about the whole thing. She was a nice woman, and she was trying to help me out, and it was a shame what I had to do. But then, when she keeps not picking the right chocolate…”

“You got angry with her.”

“That’s right! She was making my life difficult, she was refusing to cooperate, she was not doing what she was supposed to do. Does that happen with you?”

“All the time. Like it’s their fault that they’re hard to kill.”

“I wanted to yell at her. ‘Eat the chocolate, you fat slob!’ But I just sat there, and I got to a point where I almost forgot about it, and then she took a piece of candy and bit into it, and bingo.”

“And?”

“It was worse than the other time. She made these sounds, got this expression on her face. Thrashed her arms around, flopped all over the place. There was a moment there when I would have stopped it if I could. But of course I couldn’t.”

“No.”

“And then she stopped flopping and gave a long sigh and it was over. And then I didn’t feel anything, not really, because what was the point? She was dead. She didn’t feel anything and neither did I.”

“You must have wanted to get out of there.”

“Of course, but I had things to do. First I waited to make sure she was dead, and then I went on an expedition. I found a file with your name on it. It had what I guess was your chart, and some notes I couldn’t make head or tail out of. I found my file, too, under the name I’d given her. I took them both and got rid of them.”

“Good.”

“I went through her appointment book. This was my third appointment, so I was in there three times. Just a name, Helen Brown, with no address and no phone number, and nothing in her files, so I left it. It wasn’t going to lead anywhere. You were in there, but so many months ago I couldn’t believe anybody would check that far back. Still, I inked out your name with Magic Marker, but then I decided they’d have ways to see what was originally written there, so I just tore out the page.”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“I had a quick look-see through her things. That felt weird, so I didn’t spend much time on it. I found some cash in her underwear drawer, a few thousand dollars.”

“You take it?”

“I thought about it. I mean, money doesn’t care where it came from, right? But what I did was leave all but five hundred right where I found it, and I put the five hundred in her handbag.”

“So it wouldn’t look like a break-in.”

“Right. But that doesn’t really make sense, because what burglar slips his victim a poisoned chocolate? I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“If you got away with it,” he said, “your thinking was clear enough.”

“I guess so. I left her there and went home. I thought, should I call it in? But the people at 911 have got Caller ID, they know where all the calls come from.”

“Besides, what’s your hurry?”

“That’s what I decided. The longer it takes before the body’s found, the less likely they are to smell a rat.”

“Bad choice of words.”

“Bad choice of… oh, right. Anyway, the stuff I gave her winds up looking like a heart attack. It actually gives you one, that’s how it works. Of course it would show up if they looked for it, but why would they look for it? She was a good fifty pounds overweight, she led a sedentary life, she was old enough to have a heart attack-“

“How old do you have to be? Never mind, I know what you mean.”

“I wore gloves all the time, like a nice little suburban lady, so there were no fingerprints to worry about. And I left and pulled the door shut, and it locked behind me, and I went home.”

“Steeped in the satisfaction of a job well done.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said. “I got home and poured myself a stiff drink, and then I poured it down the sink, because what do I want with a drink?”

“You were never a drinker.”

“No, but this time I had the impulse anyway, which shows how I felt. I sat there and watched her die, Keller. I never did anything like that before.”

“It was different with the old man.”

“Apples and bananas. He didn’t kick his feet and throw his arms around and make noises. He was asleep, and I just made sure he wouldn’t wake up. And you know what he was like. It was an act of mercy.” She made a face. “With the star lady, it was no act of mercy. The picture in my mind, the expression on her face, mercy had nothing to do with it.”

“It’ll fade, Dot.”

“Huh?”

“The picture in your mind. It won’t go away, but it’ll fade, and that’s enough.”

“Keller, I’m a big girl. I can live with it.”

“I know, but you can live without it, too. It’ll fade, believe me, and you can make it fade faster. There’s an exercise you can do.”

“I just hope it’s not deep knee bends.”

“No, it’s all mental. Close your eyes. I’m serious, Dot. Close your eyes.”

“So?”

“Now let the picture come into your mind. Louise in her overstuffed chair-“

“Looking overstuffed herself.”

“No, don’t make jokes. Just let yourself picture the scene.”

“All right.”

“And you’re seeing it from up close, and in color.”

“I didn’t have much choice, Keller. I was there, I wasn’t watching it on a black-and-white TV set.”

“Let the color fade.”

“Huh?”

“Let the color drain out of the picture in your mind. Like you’re dialing down the color knob on a TV.”

“How do I-“

“Just do it.”

“Like the shoe ads.”

“Is the color gone?”

“Not completely. But it’s muted. Ooops-it came back.”

“Fade it again.”

“Okay.”

“Closer to gray this time, right?”

“A little bit.”

“Good,” he said. “Now back off.”

“Huh?”

“Like a zoom shot,” he said, “except it’s more of a reverse zoom shot, because the picture in your mind is getting smaller. Back off twenty yards or so.”

“There’s a wall behind me.”

“No there’s not. You’ve got all the room in the world, and the picture’s getting smaller and smaller, with less and less color in it.”

They were both silent for a moment, and then she opened her eyes. “That was weird,” she said.

“Whenever the picture comes into your mind,” he said, “just take a minute or two and do what you just did. You’ll reach a point where, when you try to picture that scene, it’ll be in black and white. You won’t be able to see it in color, or up close.”