He sat down opposite me on a zebra-skin ottoman.

“Go right ahead. Ask away.”

“Actually, Rochelle thinks the cops have her pegged as Marybeth’s killer.”

“Can’t say I blame them. She was crazy that night.”

“Just for the record, though, did you see anyone go into the kitchen who could’ve tampered with the guacamole?”

“Nope,” he said. “Just Rochelle. But I wasn’t paying much attention. I suppose somebody else could’ve slipped in.”

“Do you know any of the club members who might have had a grudge against Marybeth?”

He shook his head.

“Nobody really liked her, but nobody hated her enough to kill her.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I said.

“Why? What do you mean?”

This wasn’t going to be easy, but I took a deep breath and plowed ahead.

“Look, Colin. I heard you on the phone the night Marybeth announced she was bringing in that guy from New York. If I remember correctly, you said I’d like to kill that bitch. The exact same thing you said to Pam and me the night of the murder.”

Colin rolled his eyes.

“For crying out loud, if I had a dollar for every time I said I wanted to kill Marybeth, I could retire tomorrow. You’re a writer. Haven’t you ever heard of the expression ‘figure of speech’?”

He got up and began pacing on his zebra skin rug.

“I admit I was furious when she announced she’d hired that guy from New York. For years, she’d been promising me that she’d make me a partner, while I slaved like a dog, picking up her dry cleaning and her frappuccinos. And then she turned around and screwed me. So, yes, I was pissed. But I didn’t kill her.”

And I have to admit that, standing there in his Desperate Housewives T-shirt, Colin sure didn’t look much like a killer.

“You’re talking to a man who once liberated the lobsters from a lobster tank in a Chinese restaurant. I’m just not the murdering kind.”

Just as I was trying to picture Colin unleashing lobsters in a Chinese restaurant, his cell phone rang.

“Yes?” he said, snapping it on. “Yes, this is Colin Lambert…. She did? Really?” His eyes litup. “This afternoon? Why, yes. Yes, of course, I can be there.”

He hung up and whooped with joy. “Omigod. That was Marybeth’s attorney. That dear woman has named me in her will! I’m going to the reading of the will this afternoon!

“Max, baby,” he crooned to the parrot, “pack your birdseed, you’re gonna be movin’ on up to that de-luxe birdcage in the sky!”

He plopped down next to me on the sofa and hugged a throw pillow to his chest. “Maybe all those years of schlepping frappuccinos weren’t a total loss.”

Then he saw the look on my face and stopped cold.