"Well?" Mary Alice said. Behind us, the fire truck was leaving.

"Meg jumped from the ninth floor. Or the tenth. Anyway, I was sitting at my desk on the eighth and she came sailing by. Looked right in at me. I think she said good-bye. Like this. The judge mouthed, "Goood-byyeeeee" and hiccuped. Tears began to run down his face again. "It was awful." His hands were trembling against his pants legs. Old hands. Liver spots.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said truthfully.

"Meg's dead?" Mary Alice asked.

"That's what he said, Sister." I patted the judge's hand.

"Dear God. Why would she have done that?"

The judge said he had no idea, that they had compared their genealogical findings and Meg had left. The next thing he knew, she was sailing past his window looking right in, "Goood-byeeee." He mouthed it again.

"She sure didn't seem suicidal to me." Mary Alice said. "She ate a good lunch, didn't she, Mouse. Three of those veal medallions with orange sauce on them. Green beans with almonds."

"We finished her cheesecake," I offered.

The three of us were quiet for a few minutes, watching as the crowd parted for the rescue squad. Nothing more they could do here.

"Patricia Anne," Sister said. "You need to go tell them who the body is."

"She's your company. Your son-in-law's cousin."

The judge got up. His legs were still shaky, but his

voice was steady. "I'll go tell them," he said.

"Where will they take her?" Mary Alice asked. "Ridout's?" Ridout's has always seemed an apropos name for a funeral home.

"The morgue, I guess." The judge started away and turned. "Will you call her family?"

"I don't know how," Sister said.

"Her sister, Trinity Buckalew, lives in Fairhope. She'll get the word around. Believe me."

"One of us will call," Sister promised.

"You'll call," I said. "She was your company." I watched the judge walking away and thought of what he was walking to, the broken body on the courthouse steps, the blue-gray jacket and flowered dress crumpled and bloody. The black purse with the contents scattered. Shoes flung onto the sidewalk. I shuddered.

"Wait a minute!" I yelled to Judge Haskins.

He turned. "What?"

I jumped up, ran to him, and snatched Meg Bryan's briefcase, the heavier one with the computer inside, from under his arm.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so upset, I don't know what I'm doing."

"Tell me about it." I walked back to the reflecting pool. "Did you see that?" I asked Sister. "He was trying to get away with Meg Bryan's computer, and her lying over there dead as a doornail."

Sister shook her head. "I still can't believe it. She was so nice and quiet. So ladylike." She pointed toward the crowd. "Look at all that commotion. That's not ladylike at all."

"How would you recommend a lady do herself in?"

"Nothing bloody. Taking a whole lot of Valium and then walking into the water might be nice." She