Clearly unused to compliments, she jumped up from her chair and headed for the coffeepot. “Let me get you some more coffee. And help yourself to another bun.”

“No, no. I couldn’t possibly.”

Okay, so I could. And I did. And it was delicious.

“Anyhow,” I said, “I figure that as long as Marybeth’s killer is at large, we’re all under a cloud of suspicion. So I’ve decided to give the police a helping hand, whether they want one or not.”

“That’s the truly terrible thing about all this,” Rochelle said. “The thought that one of my friends could be a killer.”

“Did you notice any of the club members going into the kitchen alone on the night of the murder, anyone who could have doctored the guacamole?”

“No. But you saw what I was like that night. By the time you showed up, I’d had a margarita or three. I was blotto.

“It had been a terrible day. First the plumbers came to install some last-minute fixtures and they wound up breaking a pipe, which took them hours to fix. And then later in the afternoon the building inspector showed up and said he couldn’t give us a permit—something about a missing gasket. And then, of course, I found that horrible picture of Marybeth.”

She shuddered at the memory.

“That’s when I started sucking up the margaritas. By the time you guys showed up, I was really out of it.”

“What about Colin? He was here before anybody else. Could he have possibly sneaked into the kitchen while you weren’t there?”

She took a thoughtful sip of her coffee. “It’s hard to remember. I thought he went straight upstairs to the bathroom, and didn’t come down again till after you and Pam had shown up. But I could be wrong. I was in such a daze. An elephant could’ve been doing a polka on my microwave and I wouldn’t have noticed.”

So it was possible. Colin could have tiptoed down the steps and added some peanut oil to the guacamole.

Of course, there was one other man I had to ask about: the teddy bear.

“Look,” I said, “this is incredibly awkward, but what about Marty?”

Her eyes widened, shocked.

“What do you mean?”

“His affair with Marybeth had gone sour. He wanted to break things off. And she was giving him a hard time. Are you sure he didn’t sneak home some time after four and touch up the guacamole?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “he couldn’t have possibly done it. He was down in Laguna.”

“What was he doing in Laguna?”