"Oh, hell," I said, clapping a hand over the spot she touched with one cool finger.

"Everyone's already seen it," she said with a shrug. "You and Robin seem to have picked up where you left off." My mother's graying brown hair was beautifully styled, as always, and her tailored blouse and gray slacks were as informal as she got.

I took her arm and we stepped into the dining room, which so far was empty of Queenslands.

"The only thing is," I said, with the frankness you can only show your family, "I think about Martin and I just feel so guilty."

My mother took a deep breath. Her eyes looked old, suddenly. "You listen to me right now, Roe. Your husband is beyond all that."

I sucked in my breath.

"Martin—yes, while he was here he truly loved you—but Martin has passed beyond those emotions that plague living people—jealousy, possessiveness, selfishness. He's not here, he doesn't worry about worldly things any more, and he should not affect your decisions."

I was silent—mostly from the shock of her frankness— as I pondered my mother's pronouncements. "You're sure you believe this," I said, half-asking a question. "Because you know... Martin, as he was, would rather have killed Robin, and maybe me, too... ."

"And that wasn't Martin's best side," my mother said calmly. "But these things are no longer his concern."

That idea caused a painful ache. It detached my life even further from Martin's. And yet, I could not deny that I felt a lightening of my heart, as if the fact that it was still emotionally tied to Martin's had been dragging it down.

"You are the best mother I've ever had," I said, and my voice came out shaky. She laughed, and I laughed, and I gave her a hug, and then she went back to her company. "Melinda, have you got that girl's hair braided?" I heard her asking as she went into the living room.

A mumble from Melinda, then Marcy's voice, shrill and piercing, "Is that big man with Aunt Roe a giant?"

The whole house seemed to hold its breath for a second before laughter came from at least three different rooms.

Chapter Nine

"She had Huntington's chorea," Sally Allison said. This was big news, and Sally relished big news.

It was eight in the morning, and I'd just finished getting dressed for work when the phone rang. Sally had called to ask me the same questions Arthur had asked me the day before: had I noticed Celia Shaw exhibit any of a list of symptoms?

"Yes, yes, yes," I had answered. I detailed once again what I had observed. "Now, what does that mean?"

When Sally told me, I was just as ignorant. "What is that?"

"It's a disease, a horrible hereditary disease of the central nervous system," Sally said. She sounded almost awed by the horror of it.

I would have expected a certain amount of zest to Sally's words; after all, reporting on the horrible was her bread and butter. But whatever Huntington's chorea was, Sally truly thought it was awful.

"So, what's the bottom line?"

"The bottom line is inevitable death with your mind reduced to vegetable status. You have no control over your body at all."

"Oh. Oh, gosh." That hardly seemed adequate, but then I didn't know what would.

"There can be lots of symptoms, and it can progress at different speeds in different individuals. Mostly, you begin showing signs in your thirties, and though it may lie almost still for a few years, it begins sinking its teeth into you."

"Oh, that poor girl." I wouldn't wish such an end on my worst enemy, and Celia had hardly been that.

"Well, actually, she was somewhat older than her official bio says," Sally told me.

"I kind of guessed that."

"Yeah, she was at least thirty. That's still young for Huntington's to have manifested itself, I gather, but it happens."

"Do you think she knew?"

There was a long silence.

"Maybe," Sally said. "Maybe she ... I don't know. If she began wondering why she was getting so clumsy—I think she must have known something was wrong, if not exactly what."

"What about her mother?"

"That's it. I called the town where her mother died, as listed in her bio, and though Linda Shaw committed suicide, fairly advanced Huntington's was found at the autopsy."

"Oh, my Lord. That's awful."

"But, we have to ask ourselves," Sally said wisely, "is her mother's death related to Celia's murder at all?"

"How could it not be?"

"It doesn't have to be."

I held the phone away from my face and stared at it. "Sally, are you serious? The mother has Huntington's and dies young, a suicide. The daughter has Huntington's, and dies young, an apparent murder victim. No connection?"

"You didn't realize she was ill. I don't know who did. Maybe the people around her all the time were well aware something was wrong with her—our old friend Robin Crusoe, for example. Wouldn't someone as smart as Robin Crusoe realize his girlfriend had some severe problems? Wouldn't her self-proclaimed best friend Meredith know? Wouldn't you at least suspect something was wrong if you saw me begin to make involuntary movements, begin to show unusual clumsiness? Maybe say something completely off the wall?"

"Yes," I said reluctantly. And you're not even my best friend, I added silently.

I just didn't want to believe that Robin had to have realized that something was up with the woman he'd been sleeping with. But I had to face the facts.

"I just don't see why anyone would kill her. So, she's sick. It's not her fault, and it's not catching, am I right?" I began doodling with a pencil on the pad I kept by the phone in the kitchen. Robin had said he didn't think he was going back to Hollywood. So where would he go?

"No, it's not contagious," Sally said, as if the very idea was stupid. "It's hereditary."

"And it came through her mom. So, who's her dad?"

"No one knows. Linda Shaw didn't list anyone on the birth certificate, but her sister, the one who raised Celia, said Linda was not promiscuous, so she would have known, presumably. And furthermore, the sister says the guy was out in California with Linda when she died, from what Linda would say when she called."

"So finding him would provide a lot of information."

"At least. Maybe he and Celia had been in touch, who knows? She didn't talk about her family life to anyone."

I could see why. A tough way to start your life, with no dad and a doomed and distant mother: I couldn't even imagine it.

"But what was the actual cause of Celia's death?" I asked. "Surely someone killed her?"

"Oh, she was smothered with a pillow," Sally said, almost as an afterthought. "After being drugged with some tranquilizers, probably ground up in her coffee. Maybe she was already unconscious when she was smothered. Maybe she didn't even know. And then, a little later, someone brained her with the Emmy. There again, she didn't know."

But maybe she had, my morbid imagination insisted. To be too drowsy to defend yourself, to feel the pillow against your face, to want air so desperately ... I shuddered, and tried to think of something else. A lot had been happening to Celia's body. "So she was dead when she was hit with the Emmy?" I asked, just to hear it again.

"Yes. She was killed three different ways. The pills, the smothering, the statue."

"That was sure a quick autopsy."

"Since there's so much media interest, she got moved to the head of the class," Sally said cheerfully.

I found this all too depressing. I was just beginning to take a lighter look at my life, and I could not bear to be pulled down. I'd woken up looking forward to the day ahead—a mindset I'd once taken for granted—and I was selfish enough to want to hold on to the feeling. I had brushed my hair back in a ponytail, then rolled it up into a ball and pinned it, topping the whole with a bow low on my neck. I was wearing rust-colored pants and a light sweater, tan with rust-and-green patterns on it. My tortoise-shell glasses coordinated. Before Sally had called, I had been feeling a distinct glow.