“Not that,” Susan said. That was pretty evident. “Didn’t you wonder where I was?” The roses were long stemmed and Susan had to use a dish towel to protect her hands as she folded and smashed down the bouquet on top of decomposing orange peels and tea leaves.

Bliss paused, the wooden spoon in her hand hovering over the pot of caramel. “You called me two hours ago,” she said.

“I mean before that,” Susan said. She jammed the lid on the compost bin and tossed the dish towel aside. “After I disappeared yesterday.”

“Don’t put those roses in the compost,” Bliss said. “They’re soaked in pesticides.”

Aha! So her mother had noticed the roses on the porch. She just hadn’t wanted to pick them up without a Hazmat suit. Susan snatched up the compost bin and emptied the entire contents into the trash.

“Bill told me you’d gone to a party at Leo’s father’s house,” Bliss said, stirring the caramel. “I assumed you’d spent the night.”

“Did he tell you the part about the big man and the black car and me acting strangely?” Susan asked.

Bliss set the spoon down. “Honey, you always act strangely.”

“I was kidnapped, Mom. Held against my will. Like the Lindbergh baby.”

“I thought you were on the island,” Bliss said. She picked up a wooden Popsicle stick and jammed it into the bottom of an apple. Juice bubbled out where the stick separated the flesh.

“I was on the island,” Susan said.

Bliss licked the juice off her fingers. “They wouldn’t let you leave?”

“Not really,” Susan said. “I mean, it was implied that I shouldn’t leave. Leo was supposed to bring me home this morning. But then Archie showed up in a mud-covered tuxedo with blood on his head.” Susan knew this was sounding ridiculous, but she continued. “He got me out of there. Then an FBI surveillance van picked me up. And I had to go to FBI HQ downtown. I’ve spent the last hour trying to identify mug shots of Russian gangsters. They wouldn’t even let me draw masks on any of them, even though I told them that was the only way I’d ever recognize anyone.”

Bliss picked up the apple that was now firmly secured on a Popsicle stick and, holding it by the stick, dipped the apple into the pot of hot caramel. “Was the party fun?”

It was all the yoga and meditation, Susan decided. Her mother had thrown herself into both since Pearl had been killed. It was possible she had actually meditated her blood pressure down to a permanent semiconscious state. Susan threw a glance at the caramel apples Bliss had already finished and laid out on wax paper. “No one eats those, you know. Their moms make them throw them away. It’s got to be store-bought, or it might be poisoned or filled with razor blades.”