I shook my head.

“That's the problem. Nobody else has, either. We need some publicity, and we need it fast.”

“If you want to buy an ad, we still have time to get it into tomorrow's paper,” I suggested.

She grimaced. “That's the second problem. President Godlove thought it would be great to do something different this year, something that would pull in townspeople and maybe even some tourists. Trouble is, I don't have any money in the PR budget to promote it.”

I sensed she was preparing to ask a big, big favor and waited to hear what came next.

“I was hoping you could give us some free publicity.” She smiled hopefully. “Please don't say no,” she said as I began to shake my head. “Maybe we can work something out, something that would be beneficial to both of us.”

I ignored Cassie's groan. “Like what?”

“I've got an article all prepared. If you do a big feature about the reenactment this week and next and scatter some ads throughout the paper, we could… we can…” Her voice faded away as she tried desperately to come up with an idea.

“How about listing the Chronicle as the cosponsor of the event?” I asked. “I'd like to get involved in community work.”

“Cosponsor? I'm not sure President Godlove would approve.”

I stood up and extended my hand. “Well, good-bye then. Maybe you'll have better luck with the other paper in town.” The only “other paper” was the weekly shopper, and she knew it.

“Deal,” she said, quickly reaching up and shaking my hand. I suddenly realized she had cleverly manipulated me into doing exactly what she wanted.

She opened her briefcase and pulled out a folder. “Here's the article I mentioned and some camera-ready ads.”

“You've certainly made it easy for us,” I said. Cassie was standing behind Janet's chair, glaring daggers at me.

“Can you attend a planning meeting on Monday?” she asked. “I'll introduce you to the college president and some of the staff.”

“I'll do my best.”

After she left, Cassie smacked herself on the forehead and looked as if she wanted to smack me. “What on earth were you thinking?” she asked. “We don't have the resources to cosponsor anything.”

“You heard her-it won't cost the paper anything, and we'll get a lot of good publicity for being so community-oriented.”

“P. J. never did anything like this,” Cassie said doubtfully. “I sure hope it doesn't backfire on us.”

“Don't worry about it, Cassie. It's a win-win proposition. How could anything possibly go wrong?”

Friday was our short day. After we plunked the article about the reenactment on the front page, put the camera-ready ads on subsequent pages, and finished the proofing, the paper was ready for Cassie to take to the printer in the next town, twelve miles away. It would never win me a Pulitzer, but I found the work very satisfying.

We left the office together. “What're your plans for the afternoon?” Cassie asked as she put on her sunglasses.

“It's moving day,” I reminded her. This was the day I was to leave the Gochenauer home, where I'd been living for several weeks with Garnet and his sister, Greta Carbaugh, to take up residence as a house-sitter for a college professor who was going to England for a year's sabbatical.

It's funny how things never seem to work out the way I plan. When I accepted the temporary position at the Chronicle to give P. J. time to recover from her lung surgery, I'd done so thinking it would give me time to get to know Garnet Gochenauer better, time to decide if being the wife of a small-town police chief was really the life for me. Ironically, he, not knowing my plans, had accepted a job as a police advisor in Costa Rica and was due to leave this weekend for his training in Washington, D.C. I tried over and over to convince myself that this was okay, that I could use the time alone to finish writing my second novel. Besides, I'd sublet my little apartment in Hell's Kitchen for six months, and I really had no place else to go.

“Good luck with it. See you Monday.” Cassie walked smoothly away on high heels that would have crippled anybody else.

Garnet's blue monster truck was parked under the porte cochere in front of his house, already loaded with my two suitcases, a box of paperback mystery novels I'd picked up for a song at a yard sale, three bags of kitty litter, two 20-pound sacks of Tasty Tabby Treats, various sizes of feeding dishes and water bowls, and two litter boxes. I had a feeling Garnet wasn't sorry to see those last two items go.

I stepped inside, into the dim foyer, where the walls were red, the Oriental carpet on the floor was blue, and the ceiling was paneled with dark brown mahogany. When I flipped the light switch, the hall came ablaze with light from the priceless Tiffany lamp that hung from the mahogany ceiling. In my opinion, the place would look a lot better covered with a coat of antique-white enamel. My two cat-carriers sat side by side next to the door. Noel sat in one, glaring at me with her round gold eyes wide open. The other carrier was open.

I walked into the front living room, where I discovered a body lying facedown on the floor.

The body's head was under the Victorian sofa. What was visible was a crinkled broomstick skirt, a silver concho belt, and a pair of very large feet, clad in Earth shoes. “Hi, Greta,” I said. “What are you doing?”

From under the couch came a mumbled reply. “Trying to get this stupid fat cat out so I can put him in the carrier. Of all the stubborn…”

From my purse I pulled an old prescription medicine container in which I always carried some Tasty Tabby Treats for emergencies like this. “I'll get him, Greta.”

Garnet's sister rolled over and sat up. Her long gray hair was full of dust bunnies. Greta was always too busy saving the whales, the rain forests, and the Chesapeake Bay to worry about something as mundane as housecleaning. She removed a fuzzball from her face and said, “Be my guest.”

Fred always responded to the word treat even when he pretended not to recognize his own name. The poor baby's life was ruled by his stomach. I pulled him onto my lap and plucked lint off his orange and white fur.

Greta sat cross-legged facing me, looking exactly like the aging hippie she was. “You should put him on a diet. He must weigh twenty pounds. And it's all fat.”

Diet. How Fred and I hated that word. “He's just pleasantly plump.”

It took the two of us to get him into the carrier. “I'll get some iodine,” Greta said. “You don't want to take a chance on those scratches getting infected.”

“Maa-maa,” came a plaintive wail from the carrier.

“Did you hear that? He called me mama.” I dabbed at my bloody arm with a Kleenex.

“Mama, indeed! What you need is to settle down and have a real family.”

I saved my snappy retort for later because Garnet chose that moment to come in from the kitchen.

“All ready to go?” In my opinion he sounded much too cheerful for a man whose ladylove was moving out. I thought he could show a little dejection.

“Will you two be here for dinner?” Greta called from the porch as Garnet boosted me into the cab of the truck. “I'm fixing scalloped weiners.”

“No thanks,” we said together, a little too quickly. Garnet and I had fought about any number of things during the past weeks, but we stood united in our dislike of Greta's Pennsylvania Dutch cooking.

I took one last look out the side window at the Gochenaur home, at the white gingerbread trim dripping from the eaves, the Corinthian columns on the front porch, the slate-shingled fish-scale roof, and the four round brick towers topped with onion-shaped domes. The southeast tower was still under repair, a reminder of something very scary that had happened to me a few weeks ago. Then I turned face forward and looked ahead, as I had countless times in the past during my many moves as a foreign-service brat.