"About five months. We were at Arthur and Lynn's wedding, I tried to catch you then, but you left the church before I could. I didn't see you at the reception?"

"I had the worst headache, I thought I was starting the flu. I just went on home."

"Oh, it was just another wedding reception. Jack Burns had too much to drink and wanted to arrest one of the waiters he remembered having brought in before on drug charges."

I was even more glad I'd missed it now.

"How's Perry?" I asked reluctantly, after a pause. I was sorry to bring poor, sick Perry up, but courtesy demanded it.

"Thanks for asking," she said. "So many people don't even want to, because he's mentally sick instead of having cancer or something. But I do want people to ask, and I go see him every week. I don't want people to forget he's alive. Really, Roe, people act like Perry's dead because he's mentally ill."

"I'm sorry, Sally."

"Well, I do appreciate your asking. He's better, but he's not ready to get out yet. Maybe in two more months. Paul's been going with me to see Perry the past three or four times."

"He must really love you, Sally," I said from my heart. "You know," she said, and her face brightened, "I really think he does! Bring your plate over, I think everything's ready."

We served ourselves from the stove, which was fine with me. Back at the table, we buttered our biscuits and said our little prayer, and dug in like we were starving.

"I guess," I began after I had told Sally how good everything was, "that you want to hear about Jane's house."

"Am I as transparent as all that? Well, I did hear something, you know how gossip gets around, and I thought you would rather me ask you and get it straight than let all this talk around town get out of hand." "You know, you're right. I would rather you get it right and get it out on the gossip circuits. I wonder who's started the talk?" "Uh, well..."

"Parnell and Leah Engle," I guessed suddenly.

"Right the first time."

"Okay, Sally. I am going to give you a gossip exclusive. There's no way this could be a story in the paper, but you see everyone in town, and you can give them the straight scoop from the horse's mouth." "I am all ears," Sally said with a perfectly straight face. So I told her an amended and edited account. Leaving out the cash amount, of course.

"Her savings, too?" Sally said enviously. "Oh, you lucky duck. And it's a lot?" Glee rolled over me suddenly as it did every now and then when I forgot the skull and remembered the money. I nodded with a canary-full grin. Sally closed her eyes in contemplation of the joy of having a lot of money all of a sudden.

"That's great," she said dreamily. "I feel good just knowing someone that's happened to. Like winning the lottery."

"Yeah, except Jane had to die for me to get it."

"My God, girl, she was old as the hills anyway."

"Oh, Sally, Jane wasn't so old as people go nowadays. She was in her seventies."

"That is plenty old. I won't last so long."

"I hope you do," I said mildly. "I want you to make me some more biscuits sometimes."

We talked some more about Paul Allison, which seemed to make Sally quite happy.

Then I asked her about Macon Turner, her boss.

"I understand he's seeing my new maybe-neighbor, Carey Osland," I said casually. "They are hot and heavy and have been," Sally said, with a wise nod. "That Carey is really appealing to the opposite sex. She has had quite a dating—and marriage—history."

I understood Sally exactly. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. First she was married to Bubba Sewell, back when he was nothing, just a little lawyer right out of school. Then that fell through, and she married Mike Osland, and by golly one night he goes out to get diapers and never comes home. Everyone felt so sorry for her when her husband left, and, having been in something of the same position, I did feel for her. But at the same time, I think he might have had some reason to take off." My attention sharpened. A number of instant scenarios ran through my head. Carey's husband kills Carey's lover, then flees. The lover could have been Mark Kaplan, the Rideouts' vanished tenant, or some unknown. Or maybe Mike Osland could be the skull, reduced to that state by Carey's lover or Carey. "But she has a little girl at home," I said in the interest of fairness. "Wonder what she tells that little girl when she has overnight company?" Sally helped herself to more roast.

I disliked this turn of the conversation. "Well, she was very nice to me when she came over to welcome me to the neighborhood," I stated, flatly enough to end that line of conversation. Sally shot me a look and asked if I wanted more roast.

"No thanks," I said, giving a sigh of repletion. "That was so good." "Macon really has been more agreeable at the office since he began dating Carey," Sally said abruptly. "He started seeing her after his son went away, and it just helped him deal with it a lot. Maybe Carey having somebody leave her, she was able to help Macon out."

"What son?" I didn't remember Mother mentioning any son during the time she'd dated Macon.

"He has a boy in his late teens or early twenties by now, I guess. Macon moved here after he got divorced, and the boy moved here with him, maybe seven years ago now. After a few months, the boy—his name was Edward, I think—anyway, he decided he was just going to take some savings his mother had given him and take off. He told Macon he was going to India or some such place, to contemplate or buy drugs or something. Some crazy thing. Of course, Macon was real depressed, but he couldn't stop him. The boy wrote for a while, or called, once a month... but then he stopped. And Macon hasn't seen hide nor hair of that child since then."

"That's terrible," I said, horrified. "Wonder what happened to the boy?" Sally shook her head pessimistically. "No telling what could happen to him wandering by himself in a country where he didn't even speak the language." Poor Macon. "Did he go over there?"

"He talked about it for a while, but when he wrote the State Department they advised him against it. He didn't even know where Edward had been when he disappeared...Edward could have wandered anywhere after he wrote the last letter Macon got. I remember someone from the embassy there went to the last place Edward wrote from and, according to what they told Macon, it was sort of a dive with lots of Europeans coming and going, and no one there remembered Edward, or at least that's what they were saying."

"That's awful, Sally."

"Sure is. I think Perry being in the mental hospital is better than that, I really do. At least I know where he is!"

Incontrovertible truth.

I stared into my beer bottle. Now I'd heard of one more missing person. Was a part of Edward Turner's last remains in my mother's pink blanket bag? Since Macon told everyone he'd heard from the boy since Edward had left, Macon would have to be the guilty one. That sounded like the end of a soap opera. "Tune in tomorrow for the next installment," I murmured. "It is like a soap," Sally agreed. "But tragic." I began my going-away noises. The food had been great, the company at least interesting and sometimes actually fun. Sally and I parted this time fairly pleased with each other.

After I left Sally's I remembered I had to check on Madeleine. I stopped at a grocery and got some cat food and another bag of cat litter. Then I realized this looked like permanency, rather than a two-week stay while the Engles vacationed in South Carolina.

I seemed to have a pet.

I was actually looking forward to seeing the animal. I unlocked the kitchen door at Jane's with my free hand, the other one being occupied in holding the bags from the grocery. "Madeleine?" I called. No golden purring dictator came to meet me. "Madeleine?" I said less certainly. Could she have gotten out? The backyard door was locked, the windows still shut. I looked in the guest bedroom, since the break-in bad occurred there, but the new window was still intact.