“I hope you don’t believe that for an instant,” she said, before slipping the sausage into her mouth. She couldn’t seem to make eye contact with her landlady. She moved the sausage around with her tongue, unsure she’d be able to get it down.

“I don’t know Jesse Williams well,” Miss Myrtle said, her eyes gazing into space as though deep in thought. “I know he comes from a good, hardworking colored family, though. I just don’t like people thinking that way about you. You never should have gotten into the habit of staying after dark in that place. It gave people the wrong idea.”

Anna nodded, still moving the sausage from one side of her mouth to the other. She wished she hadn’t gotten into that habit herself. She thought of how the warehouse lights kept blinking out. Martin, working his evil magic from the grave.

“They don’t think Mrs. Drapple killed him, at any rate,” Miss Myrtle said. “That was my hunch, but I guess they’ve been able to rule her out for some reason.”

Anna finally swallowed the sausage, then looked across the table at Miss Myrtle’s kind face with its plump pale cheeks. She had the strongest urge to confess: It was me, she wanted to say. Me, me, me!

But before she could open her mouth, Freda walked into the room carrying the silver coffeepot. She held it in the air in the gesture that meant Who’d like more?, and Miss Myrtle held up her cup, while Anna covered hers with her hand.

Later that morning, Jesse and Anna were in the warehouse when they heard a car driving up the dirt road. They looked at one another. Anna was sitting on the chair by Jesse’s easel; he was on the crate in front of the mural, adding some fine detailing to a clothesline in the yard of one of the Mill Village houses. Anna figured they both knew who it was. She raced to the window and peered out to see Karl and another policeman getting out of the big black Ford V8.

“The police,” she said.

In an instant, Jesse opened the can of blue paint and used a wide brush to slap some of it over the tire and red fender of the motorcycle that—thanks to Anna—kept emerging no matter how many times he scraped it off or painted over it. His hands shook as he set down the paint can, resting the brush across the top of it.

Anna opened the door and drew in a tremulous breath. She needed to keep her wits about her. Not say anything crazy. Although the truth was, she no longer trusted herself to know crazy from sane.