Hadn’t they just covered this? A.J. opened her mouth, but Elysia was there first.

“She’s half-crocked on painkillers.” Elysia perched on the edge of the chair on the other side of A.J.’s bed, and A.J. now had the uncomfortable feeling that she was holding court in her jammies. Granted, it had worked for John and Yoko.

“I’m not half-crocked, Mother. I’m very well aware that one of us needs to keep her wits about her.”

“I do admit I’ve felt wittier.” Elysia sighed, apparently trying to disarm her companions with an unconvincing show of vulnerability.

“You’d be best to tell me the whole story,” Mr. Meagher said, looking from mother to daughter.

Elysia beckoned graciously to A.J. A.J. gave her a disbelieving look, and then launched into a terse recital of her morning’s adventures. She concluded in a bitter digression, “And how the heck am I supposed to run a yoga studio flat on my back for who knows how long?”

Elysia said, “This is why you have Lily. You see? There was method in your aunt’s madness when she made the two of you co-managers of Sacred Balance.”

A.J. moaned.

“Is your back hurting, lovie?”

A.J. tossed her head on the pillow. “This is just what Lily has been hoping for.”

“Lily has been hoping you would injure your back?”

“She’s been hoping something would happen that would keep me-” A.J. broke off. “Never mind. Mother, stop stalling. I told my story. Tell yours. Who was the man killed in your front yard?”

Elysia looked uncharacteristically grave. “Dicky. Dakarai Massri.”

The name was vaguely familiar. A.J. cast her mind back to several months earlier. “The man you met in Egypt?” The young, handsome man she had seen in so many of Elysia’s vacation snapshots? She felt a sinking sensation. This was getting worse by the minute.

“Mmm.” That was it. Mmm. What did Mmm translate to in Elysiaspeak? A.J. was almost afraid to ask.

“I thought he was some kind of archeologist. Why was he blackmailing you?” She had a sudden uneasy vision of her esteemed parent thrusting antiquities down her blouse while browsing historic sites.

“Oh, you know. The usual reasons.” Elysia cast a slightly discomfited peek at Mr. Meagher who looked atypically blank-faced.

A.J. looked from one to the other of them. “Well, I mean…” This was unexpectedly awkward. “Was he threatening to expose you?”

“Yes.” Elysia suddenly tittered. “So amusing.”

“Amusing?” A.J. and Mr. Meagher chorused.

“Of course.” Elysia studied their expressions. “My dears. I’m an actress. Do you honestly imagine I could be embarrassed by a few naughty photographs after some of the films I’ve made?”

“But…”

“If those blasted reviews didn’t shame me-”

“Yes, but you paid him?”

“I did. It was great fun.” Elysia sighed. “And he did need the money rather desperately, poor love. This is such a tragedy.” She seemed quite sincere.

A.J. and Mr. Meagher exchanged worried looks. “Let me get this straight,” A.J. said. “You met Dicky on your Egyptian cruise and had some kind of affair. Later he tried to extort money from you to keep him from releasing embarrassing photos. You paid him but… you’re not actually embarrassed by the photos?”

“You do have such a lovely, succinct way of putting things, pump-poppet.”

A.J. narrowed her eyes at her mother.

“Why’d you pay this villain?” Mr. Meagher cut in. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Why? But you’d have put a stop to it.” Elysia clearly thought this was too obvious to need spelling out. “I was enjoying myself.”

Silence.

“How much did you pay him?” A.J. asked when she could.

“About ten thousand dollars.”

“Mother!”

“Sweet Christ in heaven.” Mr. Meagher sounded faint. He had lost color-not so easy with that tan.

“Oh, that was nothing.” Elysia flipped a careless hand. “A bit more than a thousand dollars a month. He wanted much more, of course, but I-”

“You-?” echoed A.J. and Mr. Meagher. They exchanged looks again.

Elysia bit her lip looking a little abashed. “I’m afraid I did rather string him along a bit. Pretended to forget my payment dates, pretended to be hard up, that sort of thing.”

In the astounded silence that followed, the kitchen timer went off-a loud and distinct ping from down the hall.

Elysia jumped up.

“Wait!” A.J. exclaimed, and her mother paused in the doorway. “You teased him? You deliberately teased a blackmailer?”

Elysia’s scarlet mouth twitched with amusement. “You make him sound so sinister. He wasn’t, you know. Not the brightest bloke, darling Dicky. But really rather sweet. And so lovely to look at. Charming manners and a marvelous dancer. I expect I did make his life a misery sometimes. He really wasn’t cut out to be a blackmailer.” She added thoughtfully, “Yes, I suspect he felt a little guilty…”

“One of his other victims must not have been as accepting of Dicky’s bad habits.” Mr. Meagher was game but he looked a wee bit shell-shocked.

“One of his other victims must have murdered him,” A.J. said. “Do you know who else he was blackmailing? I thought he was Egyptian?”

“He was. But any nationality is capable of-”

“I mean what was he doing here in this country?”

“He’d moved here. He said he wanted to marry me.”

A.J. gulped. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Mr. Meagher. “Were you planning to… marry him?”

Elysia’s pencil thin brows shot up. “He was a blackmailer, pumpkin. I would hardly bring him into the family.”

A.J. muttered, “Who knows? You might have thought it was funny to torture him full time.”

Elysia looked unamused. She stalked away down the hall on her way to check on the dinner.

Mr. Meagher wiped a hand across his face. He and A.J. risked looking at each other once more.

“It looks very bad,” he said. “Very bad indeed.”

“But she didn’t kill him. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.”

“Aye. But… imagine hearing this malarkey…”

A.J. didn’t want to imagine it. “She doesn’t even own a gun.” She considered this uneasily. “At least… I don’t think she does.” Now there was a scary thought.

Mr. Meagher didn’t bother to answer. “The affair is bad enough. He was blackmailing her-she makes no bones about it-and he was killed in her very own garden.”

“But that’s just it. If she was guilty, she’d surely try to hide the fact that he was blackmailing her. And she’d hardly kill him in her front yard.”

“This is your mither we’re speaking of. Her lover was murdered on her front step and she’s concerned with not burning the Easter dinner.”

He had a point.

A.J. said feebly, in an effort to spare his feelings, “It sounds more like she was paying him to act as a professional escort than a lover.”

Mr. Meagher seemed to have no reply. From down the hallway Elysia was humming.

They listened without looking at each other. “It’s not possible,” A.J. said finally.

Mr. Meagher vouchsafed nothing. A.J.’s heart ached for him. She had long suspected Mr. Meagher’s feelings for her mother were more than that of a dear old friend.

After a few minutes Elysia returned to the bedroom. “Dinner is ready. Shall we have it here on trays or did you need to rest, pump-poppet?”

A.J. quit rubbing her head, all efforts to soothe the ache in her temples failing. “I don’t think I’m going to get much rest, and I’m not hungry. Mother, do you have any idea who might have killed Dicky?”

“I suppose another one of his birds. Perhaps someone got jealous.” Still maddeningly untroubled, she requested Mr. Meagher’s help in the kitchen. He rose like a somnambulist obeying commands and went to do her bidding.

Shortly afterward they returned with plates laden with ham, cheese potatoes, Jell-O salad, and all the trimmings. Monster rose, wagging his tail hopefully-and was sent packing. Elysia and Mr. Meagher set up trays and arranged the plates and silverware and glasses. The food was all A.J.’s childhood favorites. The smell alone was wonderful, and she was surprised to find that despite all she’d been through that day, she was hungry.