If one of David’s best friends was innocent, however, I’d just done a rude, heartless thing.

The tables were turned during my second try at information gathering, this time with Cheryl Mellace. Walter had evidently had enough of me in San Francisco: as I approached, he turned his back and busied himself serving punch to guests who’d lined up.

“I know how close you both were to David,” I said to Cheryl, with a tsk-tsk sound. It occurred to me that I’d already used that line on her, but if she was guilty it might just make her nervous, which might prove to be a good thing.

Walter kept his back to me, ladling a very pink punch into glass cups, engaged in chatter with a couple I didn’t know but recognized from the cocktail party and banquet.

Cheryl yanked on my arm with what felt curiously like a pinch, through my beige-and-white seersucker jacket. A mild pain ran along my upper arm. She pulled me to the side.

“Listen, Mrs. Porter. You’re not my teacher anymore, okay? And I don’t need you sniffing around or whatever it is you’re doing.” Cheryl’s eyes darted from me to her husband, still working intensely, like hired help, at the punch bowl. “I know Rosie was always your favorite pet and you’re trying to pin this on someone else. But just face it. She did it. I saw that stupid little dollhouse thing she made. She had it while she was stalking David in the hallway on Friday night. And she all but confessed when she wrote all over that thing and destroyed it.”

I bristled at “stupid little dollhouse thing,” but kept my cool. “I thought you were the one who destroyed it,” I said.

“I’m not the one the police are questioning. The police have their ducks in a row; they pulled her out of a hat, not me.”

Cheryl never was any good at figures of speech. By the time I untangled the message enough to ask what she meant, how she knew the police had questioned Rosie (had they?), she’d walked away, the sound of her high heels ringing out on the hardwood floor.

I was left convinced that a woman who called a room box a “dollhouse thing” was capable of murder and deserved her high place on my list of prime suspects.

Two lines had formed in the room, one for the buffet table and one that ended at a couple who looked bereaved enough to be David’s parents. I saw no sign of a man young enough to be David’s son, but perhaps he would make an appearance at St. Bridget’s on Saturday.

I clicked my phone back on, in case there was breaking news from Rosie, Linda, or Skip. I was concerned that I hadn’t seen Rosie, though that didn’t mean she wasn’t present in the crowd.

Before I could decide which line to join first, I saw another attraction-standing by himself looking as though he didn’t know anyone in the room, was Duns Scotus maintenance supervisor Ben Dobson. I was 95 percent certain it was Ben, especially when I caught him in profile. Ben had an unusually large, hooked nose, all the more pronounced on his small frame. I edged closer on the pretext of getting into the Bridgeses’ reception line. I needed another view of him to be sure this was the employee who’d argued with his boss, David Bridges, on the night before he was murdered.

I moved ahead in the line of people waiting to offer sympathy to Mr. and Mrs. Bridges, all the while keeping my eyes on the man I was increasingly sure was Ben Dobson. When I left my house I knew it might come to this-disrespect of a solemn occasion for the sake of an investigation. I hoped it didn’t show.

I was framing an opening line for Ben, hoping to do better than I had with my approach to Barry, when I heard, “May I join you?” I hadn’t noticed that Henry was several people ahead of me in line. He had left his place and walked back to greet me.

I started to answer Henry when a call came in on my cell phone and Ben Dobson left his post. I almost lost track of Ben. My abilities were strained by the need to triple-task.

“Hi, Henry,” I said, clicking on my phone and watching Ben over Henry’s shoulder. My height made it slightly easier to accomplish all of this.

“Go ahead and take that call,” Henry said.

“Do you mind? I’ll just step over here for a minute.”

Henry left the line also and stood far enough away to give me privacy. “I’ll wait,” he said.

I wished it were Ben who’d said he’d wait. I could see him survey the crowd, much the same way Rosie had at the cocktail party. Was he also looking for an old flame as she had been? I doubted it.

Worse luck, Ben Dobson was now headed toward the exit door. I glanced at my caller ID. Linda. One of a very short list of people whose calls I felt necessary to answer today.

I smiled at Henry, picked up Ben’s retreating back, and clicked my phone on.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you during the service,” Linda said. “I hope I waited long enough.”

“It’s over. What is it, Linda?” I kept my eyes on Ben. I hoped the urgency I put into my voice would be Linda’s clue not to give me her customary long lead-in to a status report.

“Rosie’s at the police station.”

I glanced over at Henry. He stood where I’d left him, to the side of the line for David’s parents, arms crossed. I figured he’d planned on having me join him for what could pass for lunch at the buffet table. A pleasant enough thought, if I weren’t so busy.

Ben was less than twenty feet from the exit.

Back to Linda. “I’m glad to hear that, Linda, but I’m surprised Rosie skipped the service for David.”

“She didn’t have a choice. They picked her up in Miller’s parking lot as she was going into the mortuary.”

And Cheryl had seen the action, I realized. Her twisted metaphor had made no sense at the time.

My heart sank, my eyes focusing now on Henry, now on Ben, and back. “They arrested her?” I asked Linda.

“No handcuffs or anything,” Linda said. “She just got in an LPPD car.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know people.” We both laughed at the sinister implication. “I mean, there’s a lot of business between us and Miller’s.”

“Of course there is.” I pictured a large black van making not infrequent trips between the Mary Todd assisted living facility and Miller’s Mortuary.

“It’s awful, Gerry. What are you going to do?”

“It might not mean anything, if they weren’t arresting her. The most they can do is cite her for being uncooperative,” I said. I had to check that little detail in the police handbook, if there was one.

Ben closed in on the exit to the parking lot. I carried my phone with me as I followed him, keeping stragglers between us whenever possible.

He took his keys out.

I took mine out. What was I doing?

“I’m sure Rosie would like it if you went down to the station right away, Gerry.”

Ben approached a late-model sedan at the edge of the lot and got in.

I approached my Ion and got in.

I seemed to be on autopilot as I put my key in the ignition, turned on the engine, and started backing up. “I’ll get to the police station as soon as I can,” I told Linda, breaking the California hands-free law for a car in motion. “I have an errand to do first.”

I turned my head to look over my shoulder as I rolled out of the parking spot in reverse.

Henry Baker was standing in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his light summer jacket. I couldn’t see the details of his face, but his posture seemed dejected, as if he’d been given a brush-off, not that different from the one Rosie had experienced from David.

It couldn’t be helped, I told myself.