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have another question.”
    “Shoot.” He grinned, then added, “So to speak.”
    “Why didn’t we hear a shot? We were kind of loud at times, but shouldn’t we have heard it?”
    “Not necessarily. That’s a long driveway, and if everyone was talking at once—”
    “Okay. Did he leave a note?”
    “A note? Why do you ask?”
    “Well, don’t suicides usually leave a note behind?”
    “I don’t expect to find one, Lizzie. It looks like he was murdered.”

Chapter Five

    What do you mean, the police consider me a suspect?
    CORPSE POSE—
DIANA KILLIAN
    T hree miles was not going to do it. But Lizzie had run out of time. Her three-mile running circuit took her down Broward past the old Carnegie Library, now a Civil War museum, across the town square, and over to the bike path along Sawmill Creek; then, cutting through the park, she headed back along Madison and right on Sidcup, to the eighty-year-old two-story white clapboard house with the wraparound porch and two-bedroom addition that she called home.
    Her landlord, Nathaniel Creely, had built the cramped but sunny quarters as an extra income unit when he retired. After his wife died a year later, he rented it out anyway, more to hear the occasional cough and slamming of doors than anything else, Lizzie suspected. She liked the coziness of the place, and being five blocks from the center of town was an added bonus. Creely had readily agreed to put in a paved driveway, paint the place in a cream color she lovedand even plant a row of hibiscus by the front window. She’d immediately signed on the dotted line.
    She delighted in the fact that every second morning, when she ran in the opposite direction, it took her along Cavendish Road and past the blue Cape Cod house she’d grown up in. Her earliest memories had her in the bottom left corner kitchen cabinets, the ones her daddy had removed the turntable shelves from and transformed into a playhouse. She’d spend hours sprawled on the cushions he’d added, playing school with her two favorite dolls, Becky with red hair and the blonde bombshell Barbie, surrounded by the sounds of her mama humming as she worked in the kitchen.
    She’d outgrown her special place by the day the humming stopped. That shattering day when just before dinner, Chief Bob Miller had shown up at the door to tell them her daddy wasn’t coming home again. He’d been killed in a traffic accident out on Broward Hill. It took another six months before her mama noticed ten-year-old Lizzie needed new shoes; another couple of years before she once again smiled. But the smile never reached her eyes. It still didn’t, although Lizzie hadn’t given up hoping.
    A quick shower was followed by a breakfast of veggie protein drink with a banana chaser, and she was back on track. Her Siamese cats, Edam and Brie, had wolfed down the canned food she’d given them for breakfast and now awaited the usual dried food top-ups. She filled each of their bowls, giving the head-butting male Chocolate point, Edam, a few rubs under the chin. Brie, the more regal and older of the two, demanded a rub between the ears. Lizzie promised to brush them both when she got home from school.
    The phone rang as Lizzie was pulling on a tangerine leather jacket. She answered, her free hand smoothing stray hairs back in place.
    “Hello, Lizzie, honey. I’m sure glad I caught you.”
    “Molly, what’s the matter? You sound upset.”
    “I surely am, honey. The police were just here, and it appears the gun used to kill that man last night was mine. Or rather, Claydon’s.” Molly let out a deep sigh.
    “What? I don’t understand, Molly.”
    “Neither do I, and I can tell you, I’m rightly frazzled. The police say it was murder and the gun used is an old antique. Everyone knows about Claydon’s collection, so I checked in his study and there’s a gun missing from the gun case. I’m not sure what to do.”
    “Did the police say anything else?”
    “Yes. She told me not