All but one of the doors had been closed off upstairs, leaving the hallway marginally neater than the rooms below, although the pink plush carpeting needed vacuuming and a collection of dead bugs clouded the bottom of the cut glass ceiling fixtures. Nita’s room, with its rose and gold wallpaper, white furniture, and long windows elaborately swagged in rose drapes, reminded Blue of a Las Vegas funeral home. She picked up the pink sweater from a gold velvet chair and carried it downstairs through the white and gold living room, which had a velour chaise, lamps dangling crystal prisms, and wall-to-wall rose carpeting.

Nita shuffled into the doorway, her swollen ankles spilling over her orthopedic oxfords, and held out a set of keys to Blue. “Before you start work, you need to drive me to the—”

“Please don’t say the Piggly Wiggly.”

Apparently Nita had never seen Driving Miss Daisy because she missed the allusion. “We don’t have a Piggly Wiggly in Garrison. I don’t let any of the chains move in here. If you want your money, you have to drive me to the bank.”

“Before I drive you anywhere,” Blue said, “call off your dogs. Tell them to get back to work on Dean’s house.”

“Later.”

“Now. I’ll help you look up the phone numbers.”

Nita surprised Blue by barely putting up a fight, although it took another hour for her to make the calls, during which she ordered Blue to empty all the wastebaskets in the house, find her Maalox, and take a pile of boxes down into the creepy basement. Finally, however, Blue was behind the wheel of a sporty, three-year-old red Corvette Roadster. “You were expecting a Town Car, weren’t you?” Nita sniffed from the passenger seat. “Or a Crown Victoria. An old lady’s car.”

“I was expecting a broomstick,” Blue muttered, taking in the dusty dashboard. “How long since this thing’s been out of the garage?”

“I can’t drive anymore with my hip, but I let it run once a week so the battery doesn’t die.”

“It’s best to keep the garage door down while you’re doing that. A good thirty minutes should take care of it.”

Nita sucked on her teeth, as if she were drawing venom.

“So how do you get around?” Blue asked.

“That fool Chauncey Crole. He drives what passes for the town’s taxi. But he’s always spitting out the window, and that turns my stomach. His wife used to run the Garrison Women’s Club. They all hated me, right from the beginning.”

“Big surprise there.” Blue turned out onto the town’s main street.

“I got even.”

“Tell me you didn’t eat their children.”

“You have a wisecrack for everything, don’t you? Pull in at the pharmacy.”