“It’s, uh, you know, a thing. One of those female things.”

“Is she in the hospital?”

“Yeah, she’s in the hospital. He was going to go see her as soon as he closed up the shop.”

“Is she having an operation? A hysterectomy? Is it cancer?”

For a writer, I was having a hard time making this up as I went along. The black puddle on the concrete garage floor was getting larger, ever so slowly.

“I think it’s some sort of an injury,” I said. “She might have fallen.”

Sarah was thinking. “So it’s a female thing, but it might be an injury. What did she do, Zack? Fall on her uterus?”

“I could have some of the details wrong. Kenny doesn’t seem to know. Or at least he didn’t tell me.”

I could picture Sarah shaking her head on the other end of the line. Even though she’d never met Kenny’s wife (I had never met Kenny’s wife; I wasn’t even sure that Kenny had a wife), that didn’t make her any less sympathetic.

“You’re a good friend of his,” Sarah said. “I mean, God knows, you’re in his store all the time. You tell him that if there’s anything we can do, just ask.”

“I’ll do that. He’ll appreciate that.”

“Just take whatever time you need. We’ll do up the steaks when you get home.”

“No, you go ahead and eat. I’m not, honestly, I’m not even that hungry anymore.”

“Okay. I’ll see you when I see you.”

I pressed the “end” button on the phone, but I didn’t slip it back into my jacket. I held it in my hand for a moment, thinking that it was time to press 911. This was no crank call. I wasn’t pretending to be dead at the bottom of the stairs. There was no car hidden around the corner. What we had, ladies and gentlemen, was a legitimate emergency on our hands here.

I pressed the “9” on my phone. Then I pressed the “1.” I was about to press the “1” a second time, but my index finger hung over it, half an inch away.

Just hold it a minute there, pardner. Think about this. Think about this really hard.

What would Detective Flint’s first question be? How was it, exactly, that I came to be at this address, and to have found Stefanie Knight’s body?

Was I a friend of Stefanie Knight’s? No.

But I knew Stefanie Knight? Not really.

Then how was it I happened to be in her garage and found her body?

Well, that was an easy one. I was here to return the purse I’d stolen from her.

And slowly I pulled my finger away before I punched in the last digit of 911. I slipped the phone back into my jacket.