“Good for you.”

“I would’ve never been able to do it without you, Jaine.”

“Me?”

“The other night, when you said you weren’t going to eat dessert if I couldn’t have any, SueEllen was really mad. But you didn’t care. You stood up to her. Not many people do. I figured if you could do it, I could, too. You gave me the courage to stick up for myself.”

Then we launched into one of those mushy hugs that were becoming part of our repertoire.

“Look, Heidi. There’s something I’ve got to tell you. I’m quitting. You said nobody ever lasted with SueEllen more than a week. And you were right. She’s impossible.”

Heidi blanched. “But you can’t quit. When will I see you?”

“We can meet after school.”

“What happens when you get another job?”

She had me there.

“Can’t you stay a little while longer, until I get used to this ‘stick up for myself’ thing?”

The thought of one more day on that damn toilet bowl made me cringe, but she looked so vulnerable, I couldn’t say no.

“Okay,” I sighed. “But just for a few more weeks.”

As it turned out, I didn’t even have to stay a few more hours. Because when I walked into the bathroom to report for work, the first thing I saw was SueEllen floating face down in the bathtub.

“SueEllen?” I called out, hoping maybe she was doing some new age water aerobics.

But she didn’t answer. Dead people rarely do.

At first I thought it was an accident; maybe SueEllen slipped in the tub. But then I saw something floating alongside SueEllen’s loofa sponge and triple-milled French soap: A hair dryer. Plugged into an electrical outlet.

Good Lord. SueEllen had been electrocuted!

I managed to keep my cool for a whole three and a half seconds. After which I went screaming down the hallway like an extra in Nightmare on Elm Street.

Heidi hurried out from her room, her walkman still hanging from her neck.

“Jaine, what’s wrong?”

“SueEllen,” I managed to gasp. “She’s dead. Electrocuted in the bathtub with a hair dryer.

“Oh, my God.” Heidi’s eyes widened with disbelief.

“I think it was murder.”

“Murder? Are you sure?”

“SueEllen would never have been stupid enough to use a hair dryer in a tub full of water. Besides, her vanity table was clear across the room. She would have dried her hair over there.”

Someone else tossed that dryer in the tub. Of that I was certain.

“Let’s go downstairs,” I said, wanting to put at least a staircase between me and SueEllen’s corpse, “and call the cops.”

A half hour later, the place was swarming with Beverly Hills cops. Who were, I couldn’t help noticing, an unusually attractive bunch. Clean-cut and strong-jawed, they looked like Dudley Do-Rights with suntans. Leave it to Beverly Hills to hire beautiful cops to match the beautiful houses.

The detective who questioned me bore a striking resemblance to Clint Eastwood. Lieutenant Jonathan Webb was tall and craggy, with a cleft in his chin the size of a dime. He asked me a bunch of questions about what time I’d shown up and how I knew the deceased, and if I’d seen anyone suspicious entering or leaving the premises. As I answered him, I kept staring at the cleft in his chin, wondering how he shaved around it. It’s funny what you think about when you’ve just seen a dead body in a bathtub.