“What?”

“Own the place,” I said. “He was the landlord, you know. ”

“Oh, who the hell cares? He had no business walking in on me like that, catching me in the act and scaring my fucking pants off, ruining all my plans for the future. If I’d had the gun in my hand, I’d’ve killed him on the spot! I wouldn’t have had to wait until this morning!”

I looked at the gun in her hand and shivered. Was the muzzle still warm? Were there two bullets left in the chamber just for me? “So where was it?” I asked, in a voice so tiny I could barely hear it myself.

“Where was what?” Elsie screeched. There was nothing tiny about her tone.

“The gun,” I said, in a near whisper, hoping against hope that the softness of my speech would induce a softness in her mind (i.e., make her forget that we were talking about a certain firearm-the same one she was grasping at that very moment).

“It was on top of the TV in the sitting room,” she said. “I’d set it down there as soon as I was sure Judy was dead, right before I began searching for the diamonds. It wasn’t there long, though!” Elsie added, getting agitated again. “When Roscoe came in, the first thing he saw was Judy lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor. The next thing he saw was me kneeling by Judy’s dresser, going through the drawers. And the thing he saw after that was the gun lying on top of the TV set.

“And that gun was in Roscoe’s hand in a flash!” Elsie sputtered on. “He didn’t waste a single second worrying about Judy, or kicking up any kind of fuss, or even asking any questions about what happened. He just grabbed the pistol up off the TV and pointed it at me! Then-acting cool as a cucumber popsicle-he asked me what I was looking for. I didn’t have any choice but to tell him about the diamonds.”

“So he decided to make himself a partner.”

“Give that girl a cigar!” Elsie crowed, tossing her head so hard her hat was knocked off kilter. She laid the gun down on the table and raised both hands to straighten it. I was preparing to leap across the kitchen and pounce on the released revolver, but Elsie snatched it up in her hand again before I could pry the hoofs of my horse slippers off the floor.

Hiding my thwarted intentions behind a sheepish smile, I fired off another question. “So what did you do then? Tear the place up looking for the rocks?”

“Tore it up good,” Elsie admitted. “But as you damn well know, we couldn’t find the goods. We looked everywhere, too-behind the radiators, in the freezer, under a loose floorboard, even down inside the toilet tank-but we never found a single fucking piece. Not even an earring. Finally, Roscoe said I should go play canasta at Milly Esterbrook’s like I do every Saturday night. He said he’d wait for an hour or so, then call the police and tell them he just discovered the body. That way, with the place being such a mess and all, they’d think Judy was killed during a burglary.”

“Nice of Roscoe to provide you with an alibi,” I said. “He could have turned you over to the cops and come off like a hero.”

“Yeah, he covered my ass all right,” Elsie said. “I’ll give him that much. But don’t think for one second he did it to be nice. He figured the diamonds were bound to turn up soon-either the police would dig them up, or somebody in Judy’s family would find them-and since I lived right across the hall, I was in the best position to keep an eye on the scene, keep him posted on the proceedings. So he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me until after the diamonds were discovered. See?”

“I get the picture,” I said, wishing with all my soul that I was gazing at a different landscape.

“So where the hell were they?” Elsie rasped. “Shoved deep in the stuffing of Judy’s mattress? Jammed behind a false wall in her closet?”

“They were buried in a box of oatmeal.”

“Oatmeal?!” she cried, clearly shocked by the utter domesticity of the simple hiding place.

“Here, I’ll show you,” I said, moving slowly toward the kitchen counter, motioning for her to stand up and join me there. (Don’t ask me why I did that. I didn’t-and still don’t-have a clue.)

Elsie rose from her chair and walked toward me, keeping the gun aimed at the center of my chest. Her eyes were burning and her face was smeared with a rapacious smile.

I opened the cabinet over the sink, took out the Quaker container, and placed it on the counter. “This box came from Judy’s apartment,” I said, trying to infuse my voice with Edward R. Murrow-style drama and mystery, but surely sounding more like Speedy in the Alka-Seltzer commercials. “This is where the diamonds were. Terry Catcher found them when he was dumping all the food in her kitchen.” I opened the box, extracted my story notes and tossed them on the counter, then-with an exaggerated theatrical flourish-slowly poured the remaining dry cereal into the sink. (Don’t ask me why I did that, either. I guess I was just trying to keep her intrigued and pass the time.)

Elsie gave my little demonstration her full attention, but lost interest the second the last grain of oatmeal hit the porcelain. “Yeah, so that’s where the diamonds were,” she said, grinding her words through clenched teeth. “Now you can stop all your yakking and stalling and show me where the hell they are.” As she issued these orders, she poked the barrel of the gun hard into middle of my chest, right above the black lace edging on the bosom of my black silk slip.

“Keep your pants on!” I cried, raising both hands in the air again. “I was getting to that!”

“Then get to it now!” Her jaw was set and the veins in her temples were throbbing. Her talkative mood was officially over.

“Okay, okay!” I said, backing a few inches away from the gun and wondering what the devil I was going to do next. (To say that I was panicked is like calling a massive stroke distracting.) Knowing Dan wouldn’t arrive for a good half hour, and unable to think of a safe way of summoning Terry and Abby to my aid (I didn’t want them to get killed, too!), I finally came to the conclusion that my best hope of survival was the Clorox.

“The diamonds are right down here,” I said, giving Elsie a meaningful nod and slowly lowering myself into a squat by the cabinet under the sink. Heart pounding so hard I thought it would knock me over, I opened the door of the cabinet and took hold of the bottle of bleach. As I pulled the bottle forward, praying I’d find a way to open it, splash the bleach in Elsie’s face, and grab hold of the gun, my eyes caught sight of the scrunched-up shopping bag I’d hidden there the day before. The bag with Dan’s Christmas present in it. The Tiffany’s shopping bag.

Presto. There was a sudden change in plans.

“Here they are!” I said, letting go of the bottle and grabbing hold of the bag. I pulled the bag out of the cabinet, smoothed out all the wrinkles, and held it up for Elsie to see. I thought the sight of the famous Tiffany logo would thrill her, dazzle her, confuse her, make her think the diamonds were in the bag. And I was right! Elsie’s eyes lit up like beacons and her face split open in the brightest and greediest of all possible smiles. I had led her to believe-with all her evil, avaricious, murderous little heart-that the treasure was finally hers.

Which was the stupidest thing I could have done, of course. Because Elsie quickly concluded she didn’t need me anymore. And to prove it, she took a wide stance, aimed her gun at me with both hands, let out another hideous hyena laugh, and blasted me to kingdom come.