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his fifty-six years. In the largest image, centered among the others, Platt relaxed on a park bench, one arm casually draped on the back rest. He wore a Hawaiian print shirt and seemed jovial and carefree. His photographer had caught him laughing.
    Piano notes floated softly in the still-filling hall and a woman ahead of Jeannie turned and handed her an ornamental pen. The guest book waited ahead on a podium, past the photographs. Before I could stop her, Jeannie stepped up to the book and signed our condolences. I regretted she’d left a record of our attendance but wasn’t about to scratch anything out of a family’s funeral book.
    We slid into the last pew, trying to blend into the background. I studied passing faces, most tired or distracted, and felt guilty for coming to the service of a man I’d never met.
    As the room filled, Jeannie and I recognized several people from Claire’s gym. She tapped me on the knee when the tanning matron arrived. I pointed out Kendra, who’d loaned me the clean clothes. Then we huddled together and whispered ferociously when Diana King showed up on the arm of a man we presumed to be her husband. Diana’s ash blond hair was swept into a classy French twist, stabbed through with a rhinestone chopstick. She walked within a yard of me and I caught the scent of her lush perfume.
    “Danielle Steele,” Jeannie whispered. “Hundred bucks for a bottle this big.” She indicated something the size of a salad mushroom.
    Diana’s companion ushered her into a pew near the front and soon the officiant began.
    Turned out, the speaker had never met the late doctor, so any personal accounts I’d hoped to glean were absent from his eulogy. We did learn some generic information, though, like that Platt had survived his wife of twenty-one years and that the couple had never had kids. After her death, he’d become an avid hiker and bird watcher who preferred to pass his spare time in quiet solitude.
    Friends and family were invited to the speaker’s podium to share memories, but only two stepped forward—an uncle and a co-worker—with long, awkward pauses preceding each.
    “I’ll be
pissed
if no one gets up to talk about me,” Jeannie whispered.
    “You’ll be dead,” I whispered back.
    “Especially you,” she said. “
You
better say something really good.”
    When the service ended, our back row seats helped us make a quick exit, and Jeannie headed outside for a cigarette. I stopped at the ladies’ room, where a tall, austere brunette I hadn’t noticed earlier touched up her lipstick at the mirror. It was Smoothie Nag from the club.
    Her dark eyes, corners taut as ever, met mine in the mirror and she rubbed her wine-colored lips together. When she glanced down to cap the lipstick, I ducked into a stall and locked the door. She washed her hands, pulled down a paper towel. I heard it crumple and listened for the door, but it never opened.
    When I came out of the stall, she was waiting. “You’re the one from this morning. How’d you know Wendell?”
    Hiking or bird watching would have been safe answers, but I decided to go with something more likely to resonate.
    “I was considering surgery.”
    She cocked her head and evaluated me. “Your nose?”
    Smoothie Nag, I hate you
.
    I forced myself to nod. “We’d consulted a few times. I felt comfortable with him.”
    She studied me so long my palms moistened.
    “Chris is quite good too,” she finally said. “Try him.”
    “Chris?”
    “Wendell’s partner, Chris King. Remarkable man.” She pulled open the door and passed through it with the same indifference I remembered from the gym.
    I was left alone with the faint scent of her expensive perfume and a sinking feeling that the name King was no coincidence.

Chapter Five
    After the graveside service, we puttered along the winding cemetery road at five miles per hour, looking for the exit. A familiar car approached, its driver’s side window down.
    Jeannie leaned forward. “Is