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half-column to Eileen’s murder, but didn’t mention the man’s attempt to kill me.) A number of suspects had been rounded up. Those who couldn’t account for their whereabouts were being closely questioned and Koch expected an early arrest. (Who was covering for Richard, I wondered, Koch or the paper?) Captain Riemann, said the story as it dwindled into a sea of detail, had taken an indefinite leave for his health and couldn’t be reached for comment. (What was he doing now?) The girl’s father had no comment. The girl could not see reporters. Daddy must have said that.
    I was walking up our sidewalk when I heard a car stop on the street. I turned to see a man and a woman watching me from the car. The man wore a suit, the woman wore a straw hat; they looked as though they’d just come from church. They saw me watching and the man started to drive on.
    “Looking for someone?” I asked.
    “Just … driving by. Is this the Crewes residence?”
    Sightseers.
“It was. They moved to Mexico this morning.”
    At the door I turned and watched them drive away slowly. The woman watched me through the rear window.
    The house was empty. I found Gwen out back working in shorts and halter. “Where’s daddy?”
    She finished rooting up a clump of crabgrass, then straightened and squinted over the freckles that sprinkled the bridge of her nose from one high cheekbone to the other. “Police station.”
    “I’ll go down.”
    “No. He wants you to stay away unless he calls.” Her tanned stomach wrinkled as she stooped to dig at a sickly rosebush, her heavy breasts swinging inside the red halter. “He was upset because you left without telling him.”
    “Worried?”
    “Just upset. He wasn’t worried because he figured Captain Riemann was with you.” She looked up sharply. “Was he?”
    Without answering, I slumped into a tree-shaded lawn chair. So many things to do—find Riemann, try to see Richard … Now I was tied to the house by a chance of news from daddy.
    “You had company,” said Gwen.
    “Who?”
    Slowly Gwen picked up the rosebush and carried it to another hole with one gloved hand holding the dirt to the roots. Then she crumbled black dirt into the hole from a basket. There was no hurrying Gwen. For ten years she’d been at war with the back yard, moving the withering plants from one spot to another, where they continued to wither.
    “Reporters,” she said finally. She stripped off her gloves and came toward me, pulling a plastic cigaret case from her pocket. Sweat stood in droplets on her stomach and legs. She was losing one war, I noticed. Her calves had thinned and the flesh had begun to ripple on the inner side of her thighs. Soon she’d be thirty-five.
    “Could I have a cigaret?” She shook one out, lit it, then lit her own. The cigaret gave me something to do. If the tension didn’t ease off soon, I’d get the habit. “I hope those reporters don’t come back.”
    “I told one of them not to.” Gwen sat on the arm of my chair and swung her leg. “He asked me if I was your mother.”
    I started up as the phone rang inside. Gwen put her hand on my shoulder. “Wait.”
    “But it might be daddy.”
    “If it is he’ll let it ring. He was here when we started geting nuisance calls.”
    The ringing stopped and I started to lean back. Suddenly a barb of pain twisted deep in my abdomen, doubling me over.
    “Hurt?” I felt her strong, stubby fingers kneading the small of my back. “If I remember that far back, it’s that way the first time.”
    I rested my cheek on my knee and felt the knot of pain slowly uncoil. “Then why do it?”
    “It’s like beer. You cultivate a taste for it.”
    “I tasted enough.” I heard the phone ring, then stop. “Reporters … detectives … tourists. I’d have had more privacy on the courthouse steps.”
    “My fault, Laurie. Have you thought of leaving town now, instead of next Saturday?”
    “I can’t leave until I know who did it.”
    “I’m not