She didn’t answer at first, just kept staring down into her mug and stirring her coffee so hard I thought she’d scrape the enamel off the mug.

Finally, she looked up.

“I didn’t say anything about this to the police, because my memory’s not what it used to be, but at one point while you and Pam and Ashley were upstairs, I left Rochelle and Colin in the kitchen and went to the living room to lay out cocktail napkins. After a while, I remember Rochelle coming into the living room to spike her margarita at the wet bar.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what she was trying to tell me.

“Which means Colin was alone in the kitchen?”

“If I’m remembering correctly. But I’m not really sure. Nowadays, my life is one big senior moment. That’s why I didn’t say anything to the police. What if I’m wrong?”

It was amazing how different Doris was here in her kitchen. At Rochelle’s, she’d radiated confidence. Here, in the bright morning light, she was a befuddled woman who looked every one of her sixty-odd years.

We sipped our coffees, making idle chat about the murder.

“It’s still so hard to believe that Marybeth is dead,” she said. “All that energy, all that irritating positive thinking. She seemed so…indestructible.

“By the way,” she added, “my condolences to you.”

“To me? I hardly knew her.”

“Not about Marybeth. About that picture of you they ran in the paper. You’ll have a hard time living that one down.”

She shot me a smile. So Wisecracking Doris wasn’t dead, after all.

By now we’d finished our coffee, so I thanked her for her time, and she led me back to the front door. As we passed her living room, I couldn’t resist peeking in. It was strange how she’d whisked me straight to the kitchen when I first showed up. I wondered if her place was a pigsty. Or maybe she had a stash of porn videos on her coffee table.

But no, it was a tasteful if somewhat bland living room. Standard sofa, armchairs, fireplace. And a grand piano in the corner. But then I saw something that caught my attention. There, over the fireplace, was a portrait—of Doris and a man sitting together holding hands. Clearly they were a couple. A couple in love.

I stopped in my tracks.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” I asked.

She nodded, blushing.

I walked up to the portrait and saw that Doris and her companion were both wearing wedding bands. It had to be her husband. But hadn’t Doris said she’d been through an ugly divorce? Not many divorced women I knew had pictures of their exes displayed over their fireplaces. On dartboards, maybe. But not over fireplaces.

“Is that your husband?”