“What’s the story on this lady?” she asked. “Was she married?”

“It appears she lived alone.”

“Did she work?”

“She ran a business out of her home.”

Something caught my eye.

“What sort of business?”

“Possibly fortune-telling of sorts.”

The feather was very small and sooty, clinging to Jennifer Deighton’s gown in the area of her left hip. Reaching for a small plastic bag, I tried to recall if I’d noticed any feathers around her house. Perhaps the pillows on herbed were filled with feathers.

“Did you find any evidence she was into the occult?”

“Some of her neighbors seemed to think she was a witch,” I said.

“Based on what?”

“There’s a church near her house. Allegedly, the lights in the steeple starting going on and off after she moved in some months ago.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I saw them go on myself when I was leaving the scene. The steeple was dark. Then suddenly it was lit up.”

“Weird.”

“It was weird.”

“Maybe it’s on a timer.”

“Unlikely. Lights going on and off all night would not conserve electricity. If it’s true they go on and off all night. I saw it happen only once.”

Susan did not say anything.

“Possibly there’s a short in the wiring.”

In fact, I thought as I continued to work, I would call the church. They might be unaware of the problem.

“Any strange stuff inside her house?”

“Crystals. Some unusual books.”

Silence.

Then Susan said, “I wish you’d told me earlier.”

“Pardon?”

I glanced up. She was staring uneasily at the body. She looked pale.

“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

I asked.

“I don’t like stuff like this.”

“Stuff like what?”

“It’s like someone having AIDS or something. It ought to be told up front. Especially now.”

“It’s unlikely this woman has AIDS or -“

“I should have been told. Before I touched her.”

“Susan -“

“I went to school with a girl who was a witch.”

I stopped what I was doing. Susan was rigid against the wall, hands pressed against her belly.

“Her name was Doreen. She belonged to a coven and our senior year she put a curse on my twin sister, Judy. Judy was killed in a car wreck two weeks before graduation.”

Bewildered, I stared at her.

“You know how occult stuff creeps me out! Like that cow’s tongue with needles stuck in it that the cops brought in a couple of months ago. The one wrapped up in a list of dead people’s names. It was left on a grave.”

“It was a prank,” I reminded her calmly.”

The tongue came from a grocery store, and the names were meaningless, copied from headstones in the cemetery.”

“You shouldn’t tamper with the satanic, prank or not.” Her voice trembled. “I take evil just as seriously as God.”

Susan was the daughter of a minister and had abandoned religion long ago. I’d never heard her so much as allude to Satan or mention God unless it was profanely. I’d never known her to be the least bit superstitious or unnerved by anything. She was about to cry.