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Tammy sounds so, oh, you know, cheerleader-ish, and Ockunzzi — I mean, Eric is a sweet and wonderful guy, and I love him very much. But the name Ockunzzi…” She gave me a help-me-out glance.
    “Ockunzzi sounds fine to me. Very sturdy.”
    “Okay, I know not wanting to use Ockunzzi probably sounds snobbish or pretentious or something, but an agent I talked to a few weeks ago said it didn’t project an attractive image. It’s really hard to spell too, and she said it could really hold me back.” She squinted into space as if trying to picture Ockunzzi on a marquee somewhere. I gave it a squint too. Okay, Ockunzzi wasn’t exactly charismatic, but it was a good, honest name.
    “Maybe you need a new agent,” I suggested.
    Tam/Tasha ummed.
    “Does Eric mind?” I added.
    “No, but he keeps forgetting. So I have to remind him. I’m trying to use Tasha all the time now so we’ll both get used to it.”
    “Missouri doesn’t exactly seem like a hotbed of opportunity for an acting career.”
    “We’ve thought about using the money we’ve saved to move out to California, but I’m taking acting and singing lessons here, and I do get an acting opportunity now and then. If I have to do something else for the money, I just pretend it’s an acting job. Like last week I had a three-day job walking dogs for this dog-walker woman who was sick. So I did it as if I were in a movie, where I was playing the part of a private investigator using the dog-walking as an undercover disguise.”
    “An interesting approach.”
    “Right now I’m about to start this new acting job. Except it’s very hush-hush and I can’t talk about it.” She touched a finger to her lips. “But it’ll be terrific experience.”
    I was mildly intrigued by a hush-hush acting job, but before I could ask anything, a thud from somewhere in the house interrupted. Tasha turned and peered uneasily through the open door behind us. “What was that?”
    “There’s nothing up there but the dead body. And Eric looks as if he can take care of himself anyway.”
    “Oh, he can! He won the Muscle Man of Missouri title last year.” Tasha paused and gave me a sideways glance. “You really do think there’s a dead body in that bathtub?”
    “I’m sure of it. I saw it.”
    “I’ll just run upstairs and make sure everything’s okay, then. Sometimes Eric—”
    She didn’t say what sometimes happened when Eric encountered dead bodies in bathtubs, but she hastily stood up and rushed inside. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed. Hopefully, fingerprints and footprints in the bathroom wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t, after all, a crime scene. The woman just happened to die there. I carefully avoided any contradictions to that thought. Like, can a dead woman pull blankets up over her own head?
    Tasha was already at the bathroom door when I reached the top of the stairs. She screamed. Like a psycho sitting on a pin. It didn’t sound like acting.
     

 
    Chapter Four
     
    I ran down the hallway. Tasha was kneeling beside something on the floor of the bathroom. I looked over her shoulder.
    Eric. Crumpled like a dishrag. A muscular dishrag, of course.
    “What happened?” I gasped. I don’t believe in zombie uprisings, but something had apparently zapped Eric .
    The blankets that had covered the body in the tub lay in a tangled heap on the floor. Eric must have yanked them off. I started to look in the bathtub but instead turned my head away. I didn’t need to see any more of the body. Tasha peered over the rim of the tub. She turned greenish and made a muffled urpy sound. She hurriedly put one hand over her mouth and the other on Eric’s forehead.
    “I think he … lost consciousness,” she said.
    I interpreted that. “He fainted ?”
    “Eric has a very sensitive nature.” She sounded defensive. “I guess we didn’t really believe there was a dead body in the tub. But there is. It’s … uh … deteriorated. There’s a big hole in it. And the