She cut me off with a mother’s glare, part loving, part terrifying. “You were an obstinate child, as I recall, and you’re an obstinate woman. Call your friends. Come in through your front door. All this sneaking around is rattling my nerves.” She pulled the dish out of the microwave, spooned a good helping of the beans in a bowl in front of me, and topped it off with a generous slice of warm corn bread. “Now, what’re you working on that’s got you so het-up?” Her warm, dark eyes lasered in. “This is where you do the talking.”

I was a bit shell-shocked, but also very hungry. I dug into the bowl. “A drowning case. I’m being given the business at the moment. I have no idea what’s going on.” I peered up at her, my eyes narrowed. “If you were a killer, would you waste your time killing a dying man?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Me? A killer? Lord Jesus.”

I waved it off. It was ludicrous. Mrs. Vincent was a churchgoing woman. She sang in the choir, never missed a service. How could she put herself in the mind of a cold-blooded killer? I chuckled. “Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to.” I went back to my bowl. The beans were good, spicy, and the corn bread was sweet and melted in my mouth.

“If I was hell-bent on killing a person,” Mrs. Vincent mused, a faraway look in her eyes, “there wouldn’t be anything that’d turn me from it. I’d have evil in my heart, and my soul would be black as pitch. All I’d be thinking about is how much I wanted the person to crawl and suffer and beg for mercy.” I watched her, my mouth hanging open. “Would I care if the person was already dying?” She stopped, gave it some thought. “I don’t think so. Whatever they did to make me want to kill them would be all I’d be thinking about. I’d want to be the one to make the light go out of their eyes. It’d be the power and control I was after, wouldn’t it?” She shook her head, tidied up the counter, gathering up corn bread crumbs. “Killing is a very selfish act, Cassandra. It’s ‘me, me, me,’ not ‘you, you, you.’”

My spoon held suspended between my bowl and my mouth, the beans going cold. The old woman’s words sent a shiver down my spine and I watched, a little creeped out, as a mischievous grin spread across her face.