“Damn,” he said, clearly reading my mind. “I guess this means I had a motive to kill her, huh?”

I nodded.

“But I had no idea she was leaving me anything. Honest. This was a woman who used to give me drugstore candy for Christmas. Who would’ve dreamed she’d remember me in her will?”

He looked at me imploringly. “I swear, I didn’t know.”

And I believed him. He’d seemed genuinely surprised at that phone call from Marybeth’s lawyer.

I thanked him for his time and got up to go, beginning to think he might be innocent after all. But as I was heading to the door, I happened to look up at his bookshelf and saw something that put him right back on my suspect list. There, sitting squashed between an Architectural Digest and a Christopher Lowell decorating book, was a cookbook. And not just any cookbook.

The title of this slim volume was Cooking with Peanuts.

I figured I’d stop by Doris’s place next, to question the PMS Club’s senior member. But when I got into my Corolla and checked my answering machine, I found an urgent message from Nick Angelides, the president of Toiletmasters, asking me to write him a funny speech to give at the L.A. Plumbers Association that night.

As much as I wanted to continue my investigation, I had an impressive collection of bills to pay. So I went home and spent the rest of the afternoon writing toilet humor for Nick. (And so, my friends, I’d like to conclude my speech with this thought: People who live in glass houses should use their neighbor’s bathroom.)

After faxing Nick the speech, and my bill, I ran out to McDonald’s for a quick dinner of a Quarter Pounder with fries, which I ate parked at the curb in front of my duplex. I still felt funny about eating high-calorie food in front of Prozac, what with her being on such a strict diet.

I slurped down the last of my Coke and popped a Listerine Cool Mint breath strip in my mouth so Prozac wouldn’t smell the burger on my breath.

“Hi, honey. I’m home,” I said, as I walked in the door.

I picked her up from where she was stretched out on the sofa on one of my cashmere sweaters. She didn’t seem to have lost any weight yet. But she’d only been on her diet a few days. I’d be noticing the difference soon enough.

“How’s my little angel?”

She sniffed suspiciously.

Is that a Quarter Pounder I smell underneath the Cool Mint breath strip?

I swear, this cat was a CIA operative in a former life.

“Okay,” I admitted. “I had a Quarter Pounder. But that’s it. No fries. Honest.”

She shot me a piercing look.