“You look a little shaky, Nell.”

“Just a headache. What can I get you today?”

“Why don’t you get yourself an aspirin? I’ll wait.”

“No, it’s fine. The fruit-and-cabbage salad’s good. It’s a Scandinavian recipe. I’ve had positive feedback on it.”

“Okay, I’m game. I’ll take an iced tea with it. Those two,” she added, nodding toward Biddy and Dorcas. “They chatter like a couple of parrots. It’d give anybody a headache. I guess everybody’s been yakking about the trouble yesterday.”

“Well.” She wanted a dark room, an hour’s quiet. “Big news.”

“Zack did everything he could to help that woman. She didn’t want to be helped. Not everyone does.”

“Not everyone knows what to do with an offer of help, or who they can trust to give it.”

“Zack can be trusted.” Ripley laid her money on the counter. “Maybe he plays it low key, that’s his way. But when push comes to shove, he stands up. You ought to do something for that headache, Nell,” she added, and took her lunch to a table.

She didn’t have time to do more about it than swallow a couple of aspirin. Peg was late, rushing in full of apologies and with a sparkle in her eye that told Nell a man had been responsible for her tardiness.

As Nell had an appointment with Gladys Macey to—please, God—finalize the menu for the anniversary party, she had to rush home, gather her notes and files.

The headache had escalated to nightmare territory by the time she knocked on Gladys’s door.

“Nell, I’ve told you, you don’t have to knock. You just call out and walk in,” Gladys said and pulled her inside. “I’m just so excited about this. I watched this program on the Home and Garden channel just the other day. Got me all sorts of ideas to talk over with you. I think we ought to string those little white lights through my trees, and put those luminaries—with little hearts on the bags—along the walk and the patio. What do you think?”

“Mrs. Macey, I think you should have whatever you want. I’m really just the caterer.”

“Now, honey, I think of you as my party coordinator. Let’s sit down in the living room.”

The room was spotlessly clean, as if dust was a sin against nature. Every stick of furniture matched, with the pattern in the sofa picked up in the valance of the window treatments and the narrow border of wallpaper that ran just under the ceiling.

There were two identical lamps, two identical chairs, two identical end tables. The rug matched the curtains, the curtains matched the throw pillows.

All the wood was honey maple, including the cabinet of the big-screen TV, which was currently running a Hollywood gossip program.