"There has to be one more," Cindy allowed as she tugged her micro Lycra skirt a millimeter lower over pencil-thin thighs. "Everything comes in threes, ya know. Maybe we should start drawing names from a hat."

"This isn't a game," Ellen retorted as hotly as Ellen knew how.

Halfway out of the car, Timmie turned to see Ellen sitting as stiffly as a hurt child. Cindy must have seen it, too. Her own expression wilted and she laid a hand on Ellen's knee. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "You're right. It's not a game at all."

Ellen, being Ellen, patted back. "It's okay, Cindy," she said gently. "I know you didn't mean it that way. You've been such a good a friend these last few days."

"My Johnny wasn't perfect, either," Cindy said, her voice soft and almost as hurt as Ellen's. "You want the honest truth, he hit me sometimes. It didn't mean I didn't miss him. It didn't mean that I didn't want to die right along with him."

"I know," Ellen soothed, wrapping her arms around the other woman. "I know."

Timmie shot Mattie a look over the top of the car. Mattie just rolled her eyes. Amazing, Timmie decided. Ellen comforting Cindy. But then, maybe that was what Ellen needed right now.

"Excuse me, Ms. Leary?"

Timmie had just bent over to release the driver's seat so Ellen could get out. She straightened instead at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Yes?" She turned before she'd gotten her balance, and almost lost it again.

The redheaded detective. Standing in the middle of the cemetery drive as if he'd been waiting for her.

"Yes?" she asked again, forgetting Ellen completely.

People passed the two of them like a stream sweeping past rocks, but the detective didn't budge. He was medium height, but wide. Solid. Unsmiling, as if he weren't given to it, not as if it had been taken away. Kuppenheimer suit and Lenscrafters steel-rimmed glasses, regulation-cut mustache and suspicious brown eyes.

"I'd like to talk to you," he said.

Timmie actually laughed. "Now?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Timmie?" Ellen asked, still caught.

Chagrined, Timmie spun around and released the seat. "My name is Leary-Parker."

He didn't answer. He didn't move. Neither, once they managed to get out of the car, did Cindy, Mattie, or Ellen. The rest of the procession, however, was picking its way around tombstones and tree roots to get to the green tent.

Finally Timmie waved her friends on. "Go ahead. I'll be there in a minute."

"You sure?" Mattie asked in her most intimidating mode.

Timmie grinned. "Yeah."

"All right," she conceded. "Just remind that man who he has to come see, if he ever gets hisself shot." And then she turned and led everybody else off.

Timmie turned back to the cop. He didn't seem amused by Mattie's threat. On the other hand, he didn't seem upset by it, either.

"And you are?" Timmie prodded him.

"Detective Sergeant Bernard Micklind. You a friend of Victor's, were you?"

"A friend of his wife. Why? Was I headed to the wrong side of the aisle?"

For just a second, Sergeant Detective Micklind let his gaze drift up the hill to where the ranks were forming up for the service. Then he was right back with Timmie.

"You've been asking questions. Talking to the medical examiner up in St. Louis and the arson investigator here."

"Yes, I have."

He seemed surprised by her honesty. "Why?"

"Several reasons. I knew the St. Louis ME had done Victor's post, and I wanted to make sure Victor's death wasn't preventable in our ER. And, as I tried to explain to your arson investigator, I think that fire was set. I thought he should know."

Actually, he'd laughed. Kind of the way Van Adder had when Timmie had mentioned the words "forensic nurse." Don't teach a grandmother to suck eggs, the fire puppy had told her, and then hung up. Interesting that a cop now showed interest.

"But you said you're a friend of his wife," the officer said, not relaxing his posture a millimeter.

Timmie did her best to keep her patience. "Even assholes don't deserve to end up charbroiled."

A common theme lately, she thought blackly.

"He was a good cop," Micklind retorted finally, with some emotion.

Up on the hill the preacher opened his book and asked the gathering to pray along. Timmie considered the taut line of officers who had come in their off hours in uniform when it hadn't been necessary. She thought of Micklind's instinctive defense.

"I'm sorry," she said, relenting. "You're probably right. Just 'cause he was a lousy husband doesn't mean he was a bad cop. It also isn't reason enough for me to overlook a possible murder. I thought something was wrong, so I told somebody. I wasn't aware that was an indictable offense."

"Not indictable. Just... complicating. We're investigating the fire, Ms. Leary. We'd prefer you didn't interfere."

Timmie would have felt relieved if this guy didn't still seem so evasive. There was a message here, and she wasn't getting it just yet. "So you do think it was arson?"

"The file isn't closed."

"Uh-huh. Well, that's good. I'm glad. I don't suppose you want to tell me if you have a suspect."

He didn't. It didn't matter. Timmie saw it by the way his attention drifted back uphill as surely as if he'd pointed a finger square at Barb's back. "We're looking into that."

Timmie's jaw dropped. "Are you nuts? Barb couldn't have done anything like that! You saw how she reacted when she found out that was Victor. My God, she was there when he came in!"

"She wasn't when the fire started."

Timmie opened her mouth to argue. She couldn't. He was right. Barb had walked in right after the call had come through.

But Barb couldn't have committed murder. Especially not that murder. Because if Barb had, Timmie would have to go back to suspecting Ellen, too, and Timmie simply couldn't stand that. Not Ellen, with her quiet comforts and gentle words. Not either of them.

"No," Timmie said with a definite shake of her head. "It's something to do with the shooting he was investigating. I'm sure of it."

Micklind gave her a stone-faced cop glare. "Shooting? What shooting?"

"At the horse show."

"Don't be ridiculous. He wasn't investigating any shooting. Vic was a patrol sergeant, not a detective."

"Of course he..." It took that long for it to sink in.

Micklind was standing there staring at her as if she'd told him Victor had set the fire himself. Blank, solid, noncomprehension. Micklind was telling the truth. He didn't have a clue that Victor had been making the rounds.

Suddenly everything shifted again. Timmie had just assumed that Victor had come in an official capacity, there to fill out forms until the problem went away or was forgotten. But he'd been serious. He'd also been working outside the loop.

Which meant what? Which meant she should do what?

"Victor was asking questions," Timmie insisted deliberately. "He talked to Daniel Murphy and me. He even showed Mr. Murphy some pictures. Doesn't that even interest you, when you know the fire that killed him was probably set?"

Micklind just stood there as if this weren't the biggest surprise of the day. Behind Timmie the crowd responded to a prayer in hushed tones. A breeze cut through the leaves in the mature trees that survived in the older part of the cemetery. Nearby, a maintenance worker was swinging one of those big tractor-mowers in around tombstones as if it were a timed obstacle course.