From my seat at the dining table I saw one of the policemen pick up the X-rated photo of Marybeth from the coffee table. He nudged one of his fellow officers and showed it to him. How ironic, I thought. Not long ago, Marybeth was posing naked in a motel bed for Marty. Now she was posing dead for a bunch of cops, on a carpet she’d probably chosen herself.

The detective on the case, Lt. Luke Clemmons, was a skinny guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a cowlick popping up from a bad haircut. He looked more like an encyclopedia salesman than a man who poked around dead bodies for a living.

He led a sobbing Rochelle back to the living room and sat her down in an armchair, a respectful distance away from the corpse. Then he took out a pad and pen from his pocket protector and began asking questions.

I strained to hear snippets of their conversation: “Deathly allergic to peanuts…. She was fine before sheate the guacamole…. in my husband’s under wear drawer, under a package of condoms.” After that tidbit, she broke out into a fresh batch of tears.

Soon after that I saw an officer approach the homicide detective.

“Sorry to interrupt you, Lieutenant,” I heard him say, “but look what we found in the garbage.”

With rubber gloves, he held up a bottle of peanut oil for the detective’s inspection.

So that’s how Marybeth was killed. Not with peanuts. But with peanut oil.

As the medics rolled in a gurney and a body bag, a trim blonde officer with her hair in a ponytail bustled into the dining room and wrote down our names and phone numbers. She told us we could go, but that we’d soon be wanted for questioning.

We headed out into the foyer and I could hear Rochelle telling the skinny detective, “I swear, Lieutenant, I didn’t put the peanut oil in the guacamole. You’ve got to believe me!”

But I saw the way he looked at her, the way he checked out her T-shirt with its I’m Out of Estrogen and I’ve Got a Gun message. For the time being, at least, Rochelle had Prime Suspect stamped all over her.

“You’ve got to excuse me now,” she said, running her fingers through her already wild hair. “I really must clean up my kitchen. It’s a mess.”

“Now’s not the time to be worrying about your kitchen, ma’am,” the detective said gently.

That was for sure. Now was the time, if I was not mistaken, to be calling her attorney.

Doris stayed behind to keep Rochelle company until her ratfink of a husband got home. “I’d like to punch his lights out,” Doris hissed. “And I would if my arthritis wasn’t acting up.”