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see if I was going to defend Venus. I kept my face neutral.
    â€œAnyway, I caught her and Ricky out on the back stairs. She was all over him! I had to set her straight. I sent Ricky inside so she and I could have a little heart-to-heart.” Marla’s face fell. “I guess someone overheard us and took it wrong.”
    â€œTook what wrong, Marla?”
    If she squirmed any harder, her black spandex short shorts would snag a splinter from the stoop.
    â€œWell,” she said, sighing, “if you took what I said out of context…”
    â€œMarla, what did you say?”
    Her face darkened, and her eyes were hard, flat black disks. “I told her that if I saw her so much as look at Rick, I would kill her.”
    I took a silent deep breath. “Anything else?”
    â€œWell, I said I had a gun and I’d used it before, so she should be certain that I meant what I said.” Marla sighed at the memory.
    â€œDid you?”
    â€œDid I what?”
    â€œDid you mean what you said? Did you have a gun?”
    Marla sighed again. “Well, at the time I meant it. And yeah, I have guns.”
    The sun beat down on my head and it started to pound in time with my pulse. This was not what I wanted to hear.
    â€œGuns, plural?”
    Marla looked over at me, her eyes wide, no longer hard and threatening. “Doesn’t everyone?” she asked.
    â€œMarla, no. Not everyone has a gun, and certainly not everyone has more than one. How many guns do you own?”
    Marla shrugged. “I don’t know. Four? Five? I’m not a collector or anything. I just have ’em around. You know, I grew up in Alabama.” She said this as if I should understand that in Alabama they do things like this. Now, if she’d said Northeast Philly, I could understand, but Alabama?
    â€œMarla, you said something else.” Marla raised her eyebrows. The talk of Alabama had pulled her back into her little Southern-belle attitude. I hated that most about her. “You said you’d used your gun before.”
    â€œOh, that!” Marla tossed her head and laughed. She sounded as if at any moment she could teeter off the edge of rationality and become hysterical. “I shot my high school boyfriend.”
    â€œWhat!” This was a side to Marla that I hadn’t known, otherwise I might not’ve pushed her so hard.
    â€œWell, Sierra, it was an accident and he wasn’t hurt bad. We were duck hunting and I sort of mistook him for a teal.”
    â€œMarla, you didn’t!” As I said, Marla isn’t exactly the sharpest knife on the rack.
    â€œDid.” Marla calmly picked a piece of lint off her spandex sports bra. She sighed wistfully. “He made a full recovery, and of course they didn’t bring charges—around Eufaula that kind of stuff happens now and again. Of course, we were never the same.” Her eyes welled up. “I just loved him to pieces!”
    I’d hate to see what she did to men she didn’t love. Still, this was a pretty flimsy basis for a murder motive, but maybe not in Nailor’s eyes. After all, he didn’t know her like I did.
    â€œMarla, where were you when the shot was fired?”
    Marla screwed up her face, as if the effort to remember was taxing her very deepest inner being.
    â€œOh, I was walking out to my car, out over by the edge of the parking lot, right where I always park.”
    Yes, right by the stand of pine trees, right where the shooter had been if Bruno was any judge of shots, and he certainly knew his gunplay. Marla was in trouble, all right.
    â€œSo, you can clear this up, can’t you?” she said.
    I grabbed the railing and pulled myself up slowly, looking down on her. A queasy feeling that could’ve been painkillers but probably was doubt filled my gut.
    â€œSure thing, Marla,” I said. “We’ll have this licked in no time flat.”
    Marla sighed and smiled. “Thank you,