“Sure.” Manfred felt, all over again, the outgoing flow of her spirit, the terror he’d felt when he understood what that meant. Would she have died if he hadn’t contacted her husband? Had Morton come to fetch her because Manfred had called him? Or would he have been there no matter when she had died? I wonder, Manfred thought, if she’d been at home in bed, would she have died at the same moment?

“Manfred?”

“What?” His head jerked up, and he saw that Smith was looking at him with some concern. “Sorry, I was just . . . I feel bad. She was a nice lady, and I wish she were still here. I don’t get to pick, though.”

“You think her time had come? The wheel spun around and stopped on her name?” Arthur Smith seemed genuinely curious.

That was so close to what Manfred believed that he was startled. “Yes, that’s what I think. I hope the exertion of getting out to see me wasn’t too much of a strain on her. This sounds bad, but I hope if she’d been anywhere else—the doctor’s office, watching a soap opera in bed, getting orange juice at the grocery store—she would have passed away at the same moment. I can’t really know the answer to that. What did her autopsy say?”

“That she was an overweight and sedentary woman past her prime who’d had a bad case of pneumonia. But the tox screen isn’t back yet.”

“Do you think there was something in that water bottle?”

“I’m not saying anything right now, because the results haven’t come back yet,” Smith said firmly.

“So what is all this about?” Manfred pointed at his front door as if he could still see the media people outside.

“A lot of Mrs. Goldthorpe’s jewelry is missing,” Arthur Smith said. “The police got the list from her insurance agency. After her son accused you of stealing it from her purse.”

Manfred could feel his mouth fall open. “You mean he was serious?” he said incredulously. “His mom just died and he’s worried about her jewelry?”

“That’s what he says.”

“She said he’d planned to take it.” Manfred couldn’t help sounding bitter.

“What did she say? Exactly?” This was clearly the question Smith had come to ask.

“She told me that she had had to hide her jewelry from Lewis. She was angry, and she was hurt, too. She said that Lewis had told her she was senile, that he needed to keep her jewelry for her own good.”

“What did you say in response?”

With a certain grimness, Manfred said, “I didn’t say anything. But I thought that before she left, I would be sure to tell her to share the hiding place with her daughters. Or to rent a safe-deposit box and give a power of attorney to Annelle or Roseanna.”