“That's great,” I said, suddenly thinking of Milo's heavy face, black brows, bright eyes, slow movements.

“Something to drink?”

“No, thanks.” I sank into a gray-slipcovered easy chair. Feather cushions soft as warm tallow shifted to encompass me. Flanking the cuckoo clock were faded photos of nature scenes. The curtains were brown chenille, the overhead light fixture dusty bulbs in a tangle of yellowed staghorns.

She pulled a beer out of an old Kelvinator fridge. “Worried you're going to catch something because I run a zoo?” Popping the top, she drank. “Well, it's a clean zoo. I can't help the smell but just because I take in hurt animals, why should it mean I want to live dirty?”

“No reason.”

“Tell it to those two.”

“The Botulas?”

“The Botulas,” she said in that same mimicking tone. “Monsieur and Madame Sherlock.” She laughed. “First week they got here, they started driving around in that old car the county gives 'em, as if they had something to do. Like Dragnet-you're probably too young to remember that.”

“Just the facts, ma'am,” I said.

Her smile was briefer than an eyeblink. “What kind of facts are you going to have here? The weeds grew another two inches? Send samples to the FBI?” She sipped more beer. “What a pair. Driving up and down, up and down, up and down. First week they passed by here, saw my herd playing out front, stopped, got out, started rattling the gate. Needless to say, the herd got excited. I had a Golden with three legs back then, really liked to bark, what a symphony.” Smiling again. “I came out to see what the ruckus was all about, there they were trying to count heads, write it down. Then she looks me up and down and he starts reciting the health code- more than such and such in one place means you need a kennel license. I laughed and went inside, had nothing to do with them since. They'll be gone soon enough, just like the others.”

“How many others have there been?”

“Lost count. County sends them over from Fresno to serve a year in Oblivion. No action, no McDonald's, no cable TV, drives them crazy and they're out of here first thing.” She laughed, then turned serious. “The fifty-channel generation. God help the animals and everyone else when they take over.”

She peered inside the crate. “Don't you worry, baby, soon you'll be running with the best of them.”

She shook her head and her braid swung. “Can you imagine anyone wanting to hurt something so harmless?”

“No,” I said. “It's about as unthinkable as murder.”

Straightening, she rested her hand on the counter, put her beer down, and picked up an ampule of medicine. After reading the label, she put it down and came into the parlor. Taking a ragged cane chair, she sat, planting her heels on the linoleum floor.

“Hope, murdered. Do you know what the Greeks did to bad-news messengers?” She ran a finger across her throat.

“Hope you're not Greek,” I said.

She grinned. “Lucky for you, no. I used to teach all my classes about the Greeks but not in the usual way- not that they were cultured and noble and had great mythology and started the Olympics. I used them to make the point that you can be cultured and outwardly noble and still do immoral things. Because they pretty much brutalized everyone they came into contact with, just as bad as the Romans. They don't teach morality anymore in schools except how to have sex without dying from it. Which I guess is okay because what chance do you have to do any good in the world if you're six feet under? But they should also look at other things- what do you expect to learn from me?”

“Something about Hope's background that might help explain her death.”

“Why would her background explain anything?”

Her black eyes were locked into mine, sharp as a falcon's.

“There's some indication she might have been abused as an adult. Sometimes that's related to abuse as a child.”

“Abused how?”

“Physically. Pushed around, bruised.”

“Was she married?”

“Yes.”

“To whom?”

“A history professor, quite a few years older.”

“Is he the one who abused her?”

“We don't know.”

“Is he a suspect in the murder?”

“No,” I said.

“No? Or not yet?”

“Hard to say. There's no evidence against him.”

“A professor and a psychologist,” she said, closing her eyes, as if trying to picture it.

“Hope was a professor, too,” I said. “She'd become pretty prominent as a researcher.”

“What did she research?”

“The psychology of women. Sex-roles. Self-control.”

The last phrase made her flinch and I wondered why.

“I see… Tell me exactly how she was killed.”

I summed up the stabbing and told her about Hope's book, the publicity tour.

“Sounds like she was more than prominent. Sounds like she was downright famous.”

“During the last year, she was.”

Her head moved back an inch and the black eyes got narrow. I felt like corn surveyed by a crow.

“So what does her childhood have to do with it?” she said.

“We're clutching at straws. You're one of them.”

She stared at me some more. “Famous. That's what I get for not reading the papers or watching the idiot box. Stopped both years ago… interesting.”

“What is?”

“Her getting famous. When I first got her as a student, she was shy, didn't even like to read out loud. Do you have a picture of her as an adult?”

“No.”

“Too bad, would have loved to see it. Was she attractive?”

“Very.” As I described Hope, her eyes softened.

“She was a beautiful kid- I can't stop thinking of her as a kid. Little blondie. Her hair was almost white… past her waist, with curls at the end. Big, brown eyes… I showed her how to do all the braids and twists with her hair, gave her a book with diagrams for a graduation gift.”

“Sixth-grade graduation?”

She nodded absently. The cuckoo shot out of the clock and beeped once. “Medicine time,” she said, standing. “Got two others in the bedroom even worse than the Shih Tzu. Collie hit by a truck out on Route Five and a part-beagle choked unconscious and left in a field to die.”

She went to the kitchen, filled two syringes, disappeared through a rear door.

I sat in the dim room until she came back looking grim.

“Problems?” I said.

“I'm still thinking about Hope. All these years I haven't thought much about her, assumed she was fine, but now her face is right here.” Tapping her nose. “Thank you for brightening an old woman's day.”

“You assumed she was fine,” I said. “Meaning you worried she might not be?”

She sat down and laughed. “You are a psychologist.”

Her eyes drifted to the clock and stayed there for a while.

I said, “You don't remember all your students but you do remember her. What made her stand out?”

“Her intelligence. I taught for forty-eight years and she had to be one of the smartest kids I ever had. Maybe the smartest. Grasped things immediately. And a hard worker, too. Some of the gifted aren't, as I'm sure you know. Rest on their laurels, think the world's lining up for them. But Hope was a good little worker. And not because of her home environment.”

The skin around the black eyes tightened.

“No?” I said.

“No,” she said, but this time it wasn't mimicry. “Not because. Despite.”