“I do take calcium. Go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I’ll wait.” Haley bent and stretched and then sat down beside me. A round patch of sunlight, a perfect spotlight, brushed down the beach toward us. Several appeared on the water. “There goes the fog,” she said. “Look at the sky.”

I did; blue holes were scattered across it.

When we got back to the seawall, rinsed the sand from our feet, and climbed the stile steps, there was no sign of Eddie or Fairchild. The sun was out and the lifeguard was putting up the beach umbrellas. For some reason, I remembered what Eddie had said about Emily and Jason Marley, that they were going to be married, and told Haley.

“Do you think it’s true?” she asked. “He certainly was upset last night.”

“I don’t know. She’d been dead for two days right in her apartment. I wonder why he wasn’t trying to find her, especially to tell her about Millicent’s death.”

“Maybe he was trying. She was supposed to be out of town.”

“Ask me, he wasn’t trying very hard.”

“True.” Haley looked under the bench for a missing sandal. “You know what I wonder?” She came up with the miscreant hooked around her finger. “I wonder how that Blue Bay Ranch thing is set up. If it’s like Berry said, then Jason Marley came out with a bundle when those women died.”

“What are you saying?”

“That he would have had a motive, God knows, to kill them.”

“You sound like your Aunt Sister, Haley. You’re forgetting it was a murder and a suicide.”

“Who says?”

I thought about this for a moment. Mary Alice and I had both just jumped to the conclusion that Emily had killed Millicent because of the “Forgive me” note. But what reason would she have possibly had? They were good friends.

“Nobody says,” I admitted. “It just seems to fit. The note and all.”

“Why?”

I tried to think of an answer. “God knows. That’s probably one of the things the police are trying to figure out.”

“Hey, y’all!” We looked up and saw Frances waving from the balcony. Next door to her, Fairchild leaned against the bannister in his navy robe and looked down at us, too. Smoke from the fat cigar he was puffing on floated in the air like the fog had earlier.

Laura Stamps was posting the information about Millicent’s funeral on the bulletin board beside the elevator when we came into the lobby. “Did you hear about this?” she asked us.

“From Eddie,” I said.

She looked at the notice. “I added that instead of flowers, memorials be made to the Wildlife Rescue Service. Fairchild says that’s what she would have wanted, and I agree.”

“That’s very nice.”