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firmly with Carver. He had blond hair and a smoothly chubby and intelligent face with shrewd blue eyes, like a grown-up cherub who’d somehow figured it all out. “Mrs. Evans phoned and told me you were coming by.”
    Carver said he wanted to talk with Billingsly about Jerome Evans, and the doctor said, “Sure,” and led him to a tiny waiting room equipped with a small sofa, three chairs, and a TV jutting from the wall on an elbowed metal bracket. There was also a Mr. Coffee on a table in a corner, its round glass pot almost full. The wallpaper looked like burlap. Carver noticed that Billingsly sneaked a glance at his wristwatch as they sat down, Carver in a brown vinyl Danish chair, the doctor on the beige sofa. It was cool and quiet in the room.
    “I don’t think we’ll be disturbed here,” Billingsly said.
    “I’d have gotten here sooner after Hattie Evans’s phone call,” Carver told him, “except for Maude Crane.”
    At first Billingsly didn’t seem to know what Carver was talking about. Then it registered in his canny blue eyes. “Ah! You know about that.”
    “I’m the one who discovered her body.”
    “Ah!” Billingsly looked over at Mr. Coffee and pointed. His hands were small, with stubby, manicured fingers. “Care for a cup, Mr. Carver?”
    Carver told him no thanks, then watched as Billingsly got up and poured himself some coffee, tore open a paper packet and added powdered cream that had probably never known a cow, and sat back down. “I’m afraid suicide’s all too common here in Solartown, as it is in all retirement communities of this size. The old get despondent.” He took a sip of coffee and made a face as if it didn’t taste good. “Sometimes I don’t blame them.”
    “How long had Maude Crane been dead?” Carver asked.
    Billingsly shook his head. “I wasn’t present when she was brought here, only heard about it. They say several days. Death by hanging, and with an electrical cord. Asphyxiation, accompanying severe subcutaneous and cartilage trauma. The family wants an autopsy, which will be performed tomorrow. Then more will be known, but I’d guess not much more. Suicides by hanging are rather obvious. Discoloration, ruptured eye capillaries. The indications were observable, even with the damage inflicted by the flies and the heat.”
    “Do you know as much about Jerome Evans’s death?”
    Billingsly smiled boyishly at his coffee. “Oh, yes. I was his personal physician, in the operating room when he expired.”
    “Hattie Evans said he died at home at the kitchen table.”
    “For all practical purposes, she’s right. But there were still faint vital signs when he was brought in. Nothing could have been done for him, Mr. Carver.”
    “Did you sign the death certificate?”
    “No. Dr. Wynn, our chief surgeon and hospital administrator, signed it, as he signs most death certificates. He was in the O.R. at the time of death, too.”
    “Hattie Evans has doubts about her husband dying of a heart attack.”
    “I’ve heard her express those doubts. And I can understand why she might feel that way, since he had no history of coronary problems. But I saw the evidence, and it was classic. A massive blockage resulting in fibrillation and rupture of the aorta. In other words, a heart attack brought on by a blood clot. The postmortem confirmed that beyond doubt.”
    “Is something like that common in a patient Jerome’s age?”
    “All too common, coronary history or not. Mr. Carver, we have only so much time on this earth, and some of us have more difficulty than others accepting when it runs out for us or those we love. Believe me, Jerome Evans’s death was caused by a massive coronary. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll probably see it again within the next few weeks. And, like poor Mrs. Evans, the widow will wonder how it could have happened. For a while she might resist believing it.”
    “Resist as strongly as Hattie Evans?”
    Billingsly smiled again. “Ah! Mrs.