“ ‘Sweet lovers love the spring,’ ” I sang, turning off onto route 137. Over to Green Bay Road, making the loop around to Harbor Road without a single wrong turn. I went on past the Phillips residence and parked the Omega around the southern bend in the road, away from the house. I was wearing my navy Evan Picone pantsuit, a compromise between comfort and the need to look respectable in a house of mourning.

I walked briskly back along the greensward to the Phillips house in my low-heeled loafers, my legs a little sore from the unaccustomed run this morning.

Once on the driveway, I stopped singing. That would be indecorous. Three cars were parked behind the blue Oldsmobile 88. Phillips’s green Alfa. So he hadn’t driven himself down to the Port Sunday morning? Or had the car been returned? I’d have to ask. A red Monte Carlo, about two years old and not kept up as well as the neighborhood demanded. And a silver Audi 5000. The sight of the Audi drove any desire to sing from my heart.

A pale teenager in Calvin Klein jeans and an Izod shirt answered the door. Her brown hair was cut short and frizzed around her head in a perm. She looked at me with an unfriendly stare. “Well?” she said ungraciously.

“My name is V. I. Warshawski. I’ve come to see your mother.”

“Well, don’t expect me to pronounce that.” She turned her head, still holding onto the doorknob. “Mo-ther,” she yelled. “Some lady’s here to see you. I’m going for a bike ride.”

“Terri. You can’t do that.” Jeannine’s voice floated in from the back.

Terri turned her whole attention to her mother. She put her hands on her hips and shouted down the hall, “You let Paul take the boat out. If he can take the boat out, how come I can’t go for a stupid little bike ride? I’m not going to sit here and talk to you and Grandma all day long.”

“Real charming,” I commented. “You read about that in Cosmopolitan or pick it up watching ‘Dallas’?”

She turned her angry face to me. “Who asked you to butt in? She’s back in there.” She jerked her arm down the hall and stomped out the front door.

An older woman with carefully dyed hair came out into the hallway. “Oh dear. Did Terri go out? Are you one of Jeannine’s friends? She’s sitting back in here. It’s awfully nice of you to stop by.” The skin around her mouth had gotten soft, but the pale eyes reminded me of her daughter. She was wearing a long-sleeved beige dress, tasteful but not in the same price range as her daughter’s clothes.

I followed her past the pale blue living room into the family room at the back where I had interviewed Jeannine the week before. “Jeannine dear, someone’s come to visit you.”