“Oh, she’s been through them,” Mrs. Harvey said. “A doctor here and there, different folks from the hospital. I remember last year she started seeing this man who had been her patient. Nothing lasted very long, it seems to me. She’s so beautiful, that’s the problem. The men wanted one thing, and she had something different in mind. I know because she used to make remarks about it.”

“But nobody recently?” McGovern asked.

Mrs. Harvey had to think.

“Just her girlfriends,” she replied. “She has a couple people she works with, and sometimes they dropped by or went off somewhere together. But I don’t remember any activity that night. I mean, that’s not saying I would know. Someone could have come over, and I wouldn’t necessarily have heard a thing.”

“Have we found her cat?” I asked.

McGovern did not answer.

“That darn cat,” Mrs. Harvey said. “Pumpkin. Spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.”

She smiled and her eyes filled with tears.

“That was her child,” Harvey said.

“An indoor cat?” I then asked.

“Oh, absolutely. Kellie never let that cat out of the house, treated him like a hothouse tomato.”

“His litter box was found in the backyard,” McGovern told her. “Did Kellie sometimes empty it and leave it out all night? Or for that matter, did she have a habit of emptying it at night? Going out after dark, the door unlocked and the alarm off.”

Harvey looked confused, and I suspected she had no idea that her neighbor had been murdered.

“Well,” she said, “I do know that I’ve seen her empty the litter before, but always in a trash bag that went into the super can. So it wouldn’t make sense for her to do that at night. My guess is, she might have emptied it and left it outside to air, you know? Or maybe she just didn’t have time to hose it off and was going to do it the next morning. But whatever the case, that cat knew how to use the toilet. So it wouldn’t be any big deal for him to be without his litter box for a night.”

She stared off at a state police car cruising by.

“No one’s said how the fire started,” Harvey went on. “Do we know?”

“We’re working on it,” McGovern said.

“She didn’t die . . . well, it was quick, wasn’t it?”

She squinted in the setting sun, and she bit her lower lip.

“I just don’t want to think she suffered,” she said.

“Most people who die in fires don’t suffer,” I answered, evading her question with gentle words. “Usually carbon monoxide overcomes them and they aren’t conscious.”

“Oh, thank God,” she said.

“I’ll be inside,” McGovern said to me.

“Mrs. Harvey,” I said, “did you know Kellie very well?”