“No.” Her blue eyes gazed out mournfully from behind the gunk on her face. “I’m afraid the only one I saw was Rochelle.”

“What about Colin? He showed up at the house before any of us. Do you think he might have done it?”

She waited a beat before answering.

“I didn’t want to say anything to the police, but to tell you the truth, if I had to guess one of us, I’d pick him. He was furious when he found out Marybeth had passed him over for partner. And he does have a temper. I remember Marybeth telling me that he once got so frustrated over a job they were working on, he punched a hole through the wall with his fist.”

Very interesting, I thought, filing that tidbit away for future reference.

After a half-hour of marinating in seaweed, Ashley and I were hosed down and then polished off with a final coat of body lotion.

“Made from genuine algae,” Aloe informed me, proudly holding out the jar.

Great. I always wanted to smell like the bottom of a fish tank.

But actually, it didn’t smell too bad. Just a faint musky odor. And I have to confess that when Ashley and I headed off to the locker room to get dressed, I felt marvelous. Relaxed and invigorated at the same time. Maybe there was something to this seaweed therapy after all.

“What I don’t understand,” Ashley said, slipping into a pair of pink velour sweats that cost more than my wedding dress, “is why anyone would want to kill Marybeth. Sure, she got on everyone’s nerves, but underneath it all, she was a wonderful person.”

“Really?”

Somehow I had a hard time believing that.

Ashley smiled wryly.

“Okay, maybe she wasn’t so wonderful. Not at the end. But I remember when I first met her, back in college. She was a lot different then. Very sweet and unaffected. That Little Miss Sunshine act of hers that drove everybody crazy? Back then, it wasn’t an act. She was a genuinely sunny, happy person.”

She smiled at the memory.

“As the years went on, she got to be a pain in the ass, but I never stopped loving her.”

Quickly, she reached for her imported British hairbrush and started blow-drying her hair. But not before I saw the tears well up in her eyes.

Well, alert the media. Somebody out there actually cared about Marybeth.

Or at least wanted me to think that she did.

Ashley hugged me good-bye in the parking lot of the Brentwood Day Spa, enveloping me in a cloud of massive boobs and designer perfume.

“Good luck, hon,” she said. “I hope you catch Marybeth’s killer. I’m just praying it turns out to be a dreadful accident, that whoever did it thought they were adding lime juice or something. Not very likely, though, is it?”

I shook my head no.