Marino explained why we were here as Mrs. Clary moved about nervously, plucking newspapers off the couch, turning down the television, and carrying dirty dinner plates into the kitchen. Her husband did not venture forth from his interior world, his head trembling on its stalklike neck. Parkinson’s disease is when the machine shakes violently just before it conks out, as if it knows what is ahead and protests the only way it can.

“Nope, we don’t need a thing,” Marino said when Mrs. Clary offered us food and drink. “Sit down and try to relax. I know this has been a tough day for you.”

“They said she was in her car breathing in those fumes. Oh, my,” she said. “I saw how smoky the window was, looked like the garage had been on fire. I knew the worst right then.”

“Who’s they?” Marino asked.

“The police. After I called, I was watching for them. When they pulled up, I went straight over to see if Jenny was all right.”

Mrs. Clary could not sit still in the wing chair across from the couch where Marino and I had settled. Her gray hair had strayed out of the bun on top of her head, face as wrinkled as a dried apple, eyes hungry for information and bright with fear.

“I know you already talked to the police earlier,” Marino said, moving the ashtray loser. “But I want you to go through it chapter and verse for us, beginning with when you saw Jennifer Deighton last.”

“I saw her the other day -“

Marino interrupted. “Which day?”

“Friday. I remember the phone rang and I went to the kitchen to answer it and saw her through the window. She was pulling into her driveway.”

“Did she always park her car in the garage?” I asked.

“She always did.”

“What about yesterday?” Marino inquired. “You see her or her car yesterday?”

“No, I didn’t. But I went out to get the mail. It was late, tends to be that way this time of year. Three, four o’clock and still no mail. I guess it was dose to five-thirty, maybe a little later, when I remembered to check the mailbox again. It was getting dark and I noticed smoke coming out of Jenny’s chimney.”

“You sure about that?” Marino asked.

She nodded. “Oh, yes. I remembered went through my mind it was a good night for a fire. But fires were always Jimmy’s job. He never showed me how, you see. When he was good at something, that was his. So I quit on the fires and had the electric log put in.”

Jimmy Clary was looking at her. I wondered if he knew what she was saying.

“I like to cook,” she went on. “This time of year I do a lot of baking. I make sugar cakes and give them to the neighbors. Yesterday I wanted to drop one by for Jenny, but I like to call first. It’s hard to tell when someone’s in, especially when they keep their car in a garage. And you leave a cake on the doormat and one of the dogs around here gets it. So I tried her and got that machine. All day I tried and she didn’t answer, and to tell you the truth, I was a little worried.”