No, I didn’t think Brad had killed SueEllen for a hairball. I was going to write the word “Ferrari,” but that’s when Prozac, still miffed over the pastrami affair, decided to sit on my list and cough up a hairball.

I was just about to give her a stern lecture when I looked at the kitchen clock and saw that it was six-thirty. My memoir writing class at the Shalom Retirement Home started in a half hour. I grabbed my car keys and ran.

If there was one thing I didn’t feel like doing that night, it was teaching my class. What if Mrs. Pechter told my students about my humiliating date at the restaurant? What if they thought I was the kind of person who dropped cockroaches into crème brulees to get a free meal?

Reluctantly I strapped myself into the Corolla and headed over to Shalom, hoping to catch all the red lights. Anything to delay the inevitable. But wouldn’t you know, for one of the few times in my life as a Los Angeles driver, I positively whizzed along. Never have I seen so many green lights. Traffic was so snarl-free, I could’ve sworn I was in Omaha.

Before I knew it, I was pulling into the parking lot at Shalom. Oh, well. There was no getting out of it. I gathered my courage and my Altoids (I’m afraid I still had pastrami on my breath), and headed inside to face my students.

As it turned out, the last thing on my students’ minds was my social life. All they wanted to talk about was SueEllen’s murder.

“Jaine, honey,” Mrs. Pechter said. “We saw in the paper that you found the body.”

“That must’ve been horrible,” Mrs. Rubin said, clucking sympathetically.

“What did she look like?” Mr. Goldman asked. “Were her eyes all buggy? Was her body blue? Did she have big bazooms?”

“Oh, Abe. Stuff a sock in it.”

“Hey, inquiring minds want to know.”

“Actually, class,” I said, “I think we should get to our essays—”

“Yes, let’s leave poor Jaine alone,” Mrs. Zahler piped up.

“Poor Jaine?” Mr. Goldman sniffed. “If you ask me, we’re the ones who should be scared. Every time she shows up, somebody drops dead. Remember that actor she worked with on the TV show? He dropped dead. Then she works for this socialite dame, and she drops dead, too.”

Then he turned to me.

“With your track record, cookie, did you ever think maybe it’s not such a hot idea to be working at an old folks home?”

Mrs. Pechter gave an aggravated humph.

“Just take your blood pressure medication, Abe, and you’ll be safe.”

“So,” I said, determined to get the class back on track, “who wants to read their essay?”

Mrs. Zahler’s hand shot up. Thank heavens.

“Mrs. Zahler?”

“It says in the paper that Mrs. Kingsley’s husband is a plastic surgeon. You think she had a nose job?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Of course it was a nose job,” Mr. Goldman shouted.