"No."

"Yes. I know it may sound crazy to you, but hear me out." So I told her how distrustful I was of Bernice's always trying to make other people look bad. How she might be casting suspicion on others to cover her own tracks. How she'd had access to Jane Hanson's drug supply the night Andy died. How she might have lied about the length of the rest room line on top of Mount Pilatus to provide herself an alibi while she pushed Shirley Angowski off the cliff. "You said yourself she's the reigning champ in the five-yard dash," I said, driving home my point. "That makes her one fast cookie."

"Only when there's a blue ribbon involved."

I gave Nana a pleading look. "So what do you think?" I still hadn't figured out Bernice's connection to the death squad, but I figured I could tackle that angle later.

Nana sucked a little on her teeth. "I don't buy it, dear."

"Why not?"

"Three reasons. Number one, I never seen her speak to that Angowski woman. Why would she kill someone she don't know? Number two, she didn't have no good reason to wanna kill Andy. What's her motive?"

I shook my head. "I haven't worked that out yet, but I have a feeling something happened between the two of them that we don't know about yet. What's your last reason?"

"Bernice is my friend. She might be whiny, and snippy, and crabby, but she's no killer. The killer's gotta be someone else."

I'm glad she could be so confident. I wasn't so sure. "Will you promise to stay away from her?"

"How am I gonna do that without havin' her put me through the third degree? She's not gonna hurt me, Emily. I done nothin' that'd make Bernice wanna kill me."

"You won the lottery."

"My money's no good to Bernice, specially if I'm dead."

I hoped Nana was right. Bernice could schedule a lot of face-lifts with seven million and change.

"I went shoppin' today," Nana said, effectively closing the door on our discussion of Bernice. "Seein's how they took away our defense spray, I figured we needed to rearm ourselves, so I got somethin' even better." She removed an object from a white plastic Casa Grande sack and held it up for me to see.

"A Swiss Army knife? Cool."

"I bought two. This one's yours. See, it even has a little clock in the housin'. And it has all these cute little dinguses inside." She began flipping so many metal gadgets out of the housing, she looked like the stunt double for Edward Scissorhands. "Isn't this somethin'? All these jiggers can perform twenty-nine different functions. I don't know what they all do yet, but if this doesn't scare the killer, it'll sure as heck confuse him."

"I went shopping today, too. I picked up another cow watch to replace the one you lent me. It got a little waterlogged when I dived in after George."