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waitress came over, Singe ordered a vodka on the rocks and Dill said he would have the same.
    â€œI’m very sorry about Felicity,” the Singe woman said almost formally.
    Dill nodded. “Thank you.”
    They said nothing more until the waitress came back with the drinks. Dill noticed that Singe had a little trouble with her R’s, so little he really hadn’t noticed until her “sorry” came out almost like “sawwy,” but less pronounced than that. Then he saw the faint white scar on her upper lip, barely visible, that had been left by the skilled surgeon who had corrected the harelip. Her R’s were the only letter that still seemed to give her any trouble. Otherwise her diction was perfect with not much trace of a regional accent. Dill wondered if she had had speech therapy.
    The rest of her, in the straight dark skirt and the candy-striped shirt with its white collar and cuffs, seemed well tanned, nicely put together, and even athletic. He tried to decide whether she went in for running, swimming, or tennis. He was fairly sure it wasn’t golf.
    He also noticed that she had very dark-blue eyes, as dark as blue eyes can get without turning violet, and she squinted them up a little when looking at things far off. Her hair was a taupe color that had streaks of blond running through it. She wore it in what Dill thought was called a pageboy bob, a style that he understood from someone (who? Betty Mae Marker?) was making a comeback, or had made its comeback, and was now on its way out again.
    Anna Maude Singe’s face was oval in shape and her eyebrows were just a little darker than her hair. Her nose tilted up a bit, which gave her an air of being either shy or slightly stuck-up—or both. Dill thought they often went together. Her mouth was full and reasonably wide and when she smiled he noticed her teeth
had had a good dentist’s loving care. She had a long slender neck, quite pretty, and Dill wondered if she had ever danced. It was a dancer’s neck.
    After the drinks came, he waited until she took a sip of hers, and then asked, “Did you know Felicity long?”
    â€œI knew her just a little down at the university, but when she graduated, I went on to law school, and then when I came back up here and opened my practice, she was one of my first clients. I drew up her will. I don’t reckon she was more’n twenty-five or six then, but she’d just transferred into homicide and—well, she just thought she’d better have a will. Then about—oh, I’d say sixteen, seventeen months back—she bought her duplex and I helped her with that, but in the meantime we’d become good friends. She also sent me some clients—cops needing divorces mostly—and she talked about you a lot. That’s how I knew they called you Pickle in grade school and all.”
    â€œShe ever talk about her work?” Dill said.
    â€œSometimes.”
    â€œWas she working on anything that might’ve caused someone to plant a bomb in her car?”
    Singe shook her head no. “Not that she ever told me about.” She paused, took another drink, and said, “There is something I think you should know.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œShe worked for a man called Strucker.”
    â€œThe chief of detectives,” Dill said. “He called me this morning.”
    â€œWell, he’s pretty upset about Felicity. Two hours after she died he called me and the first thing he wanted to know, even before he told me she was gone, was whether I was the executor of her estate, except he didn’t say executor, he said executrix.”
    Dill nodded his appreciation of the fine Liberationist point.

    â€œI told him yes, sir, I am, and then he told me she’d died and before I could ask how or why or even say oh-my-God-no, he asked me to meet him down at Felicity’s bank.”
    â€œSafety deposit box?”
    She nodded. “Well, I was