He’d no sooner put down the phone than the phone rang again. We looked at each other, exasperated and I answered it.

“Harper Connelly,” said a strained voice.

“Yes. Who is this?” I asked.

“Sybil.”

I never would have known this was my former client. Her voice was so tense, her enunciation so jerky.

“What’s wrong, Sybil?” I tried to keep my voice level.

“You need to come here, tonight.”

“Why?”

“I need to see you.”

“Why?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“You don’t need to talk to us,” I said. “We’ve finished our transaction.” I struggled to keep myself calm and firm. “I did what you paid me to do, and Tolliver and I are going to get out of town as soon as we can.”

“No, I want to see you tonight.”

“Then you’ll just have to want.”

There was a desperate pause. “It’s about Mary Nell,” Sybil said, abruptly. “It’s about her obsession with your brother. I need to talk to both of you, and if you’re leaving town tomorrow, it’s got to be tonight. Mary Nell’s talking about killing herself.”

I held the phone away to stare at it for a minute. This sounded wildly unlikely. In my limited experience of Mary Nell Teague, she’d be more apt to be thinking of taking Tolliver hostage and bombarding him with love until he yielded to her. “Okay, Sybil,” I said warily. “We’ll be there in about an hour.”

“Sooner, if you can,” she said, sounding almost breathless with relief.

The waitress brought our food as I was relaying the conversation to Tolliver, who’d been able to hear most of it, anyway.

He made a face.

I wrote SO MO DA NO on an extra napkin with a tine of my fork. I looked at it while I picked at my salad, which was about what you’d expect at a diner in the middle of nowhere. I tried to think myself into the scenario. Okay, Dick’s been making notes to himself while he goes through the family’s medical records for the year, getting ready for tax time. Four separate notations. Four members of the family.

S could be Sybil, M could be Mary Nell, D could be Dell, then N could be . . . who? I’d already gone over the fact that Dick Teague had called his daughter Nelly. But if that took care of the N, what about the M? I stared down at the napkin, thinking about making little notes about myself and my family . . .

Oh, for God’s sake! The M was for Me!

I put the fork down.

“Harper?” Tolliver said.

“Blood types,” I said. “Stupid, stupid, stupid me.”

“Harper?”