“Can I stay with you tonight?”

“Of course you can, honey. Make yourself comfortable on the sofa. Are you hungry?”

“A little,” she admitted.

“I ordered a pizza for dinner. It should be here any minute. In the meanwhile, let me see what I can rustle up in the kitchen.”

The only thing I managed to rustle up were some olives that had been sitting in my refrigerator for the past three years. Heidi had the good sense to turn them down. When I got back from the kitchen, I found Prozac curled up in Heidi’s lap, doing her best to look adorable. Prozac loves to turn on the charm for guests. I get treated like a motel chambermaid, but for perfect strangers, she’s Little Miss Affectionate.

“What am I going to do?” Heidi said, wide-eyed with fear. “The police think they’ve got another Menendez case on their hands.”

“Are they sure it’s murder?” I asked.

Heidi nodded solemnly.

“But why on earth would they think you did it?”

“I was the only one home. Daddy was at work. Brad was at school. And Conchi was away on her day off. And besides,” she added miserably, “only about 90 million people at my birthday party heard me say I wished SueEllen was dead.”

Oh, jeez. I’d forgotten all about that.

“Couldn’t somebody else have gained access to the house?”

“I told the police about the blonde in the hallway, but I could tell they didn’t believe me.”

“What blonde in the hallway?”

“When I got home from school, I saw a blonde in a sweat suit going down the hallway to SueEllen’s bathroom. She was walking away from me, so I couldn’t see her face. I just assumed it was Larkspur. But it turns out Larkspur was working all day out in Santa Monica. So it couldn’t have been her.”

I wasn’t so sure about that.

“The police think I’m making up the story about the blonde. I can tell by the way they look at me. Really, Jaine. I’m afraid they’re going to arrest me.”

“Heidi, honey,” I said, trying to sound far more confident than I felt. “They’re not going to arrest you.”

“I didn’t kill her. Honest, I didn’t.”

“Of course, you didn’t,” I said, taking her in my arms. If this kid was capable of murder, then I was capable of dieting. “Now how about a nice bowl of cereal?”

I’d long since given up on Sir Speedy, so I hustled Heidi into the kitchen, where I fixed us each a bowl of Cheerios. I was just glad I had milk in the refrigerator that hadn’t turned solid.

Once we were settled back on the sofa, slurping down our Cheerios from chipped Flintstones cereal bowls, I said, “Tell me about the blondes in SueEllen’s life.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe the cops don’t believe you saw a blonde in the hallway, but I do. Now let’s try and figure out who it could be.”

She shot me a grateful smile.