'That's awfully kind of you,' she said to Duende now. 'Are you looking for content?'

'Why? Are you offering your services?' Sheree jumped in.

'Careful, partner,' Joy said. 'For all you know, AnnaLise wants to serialize Dickens Hart's memoirs.'

'First I'd have to write them,' AnnaLise said. 'But seriously, what I'm thinking about would be much more informal. I wouldn't write it, the town would.'

'The town?' Sheree repeated. 'And what do you have in mind? Home maintenance tips from Fred Eames? Wiring no-no's from Scotty the Electrician?' She leaned forward to peer at Joy past both Duende and AnnaLise. 'Now that AnnaLise poses it, I believe this idea could raise us some revenue, don't you?'

'No, no,' AnnaLise said, 'I'm talking about a simple blog where people could post about their lives or maybe their memories.'

'Like your suggested historical profile of the inn, Sheree,' Joy said. 'But I'm fairly certain you don't plan to pay for the privilege.'

'No more than you do for your 'Fitness Facts,' Sheree snapped.

AnnaLise looked at Duende and he shrugged. 'It's been a bit of a rocky start-up.'

'I can see why.' Back to Joy and Sheree, with an emphasis on the latter, since AnnaLise had already broached the idea with Joy. 'No, no fix-er-upper ideas. I'm thinking of a weekly blog by the locals here. People like you, Sheree, or maybe Ida Mae, Mama or Daisy. Anyone with a Sutherton story to tell.'

Duende had been studying her face. Now he spoke up. 'I think that's a great idea.'

'You do?' Sheree asked. 'Seems a little . . . well . . .'

'Podunk?' Joy supplied. 'Cheesy? Down home?'

AnnaLise elbowed her. She'd expected Joy to support the idea.

'Exactly,' Sheree was saying. 'And meaning no offense to Daisy and Mama, AnnaLise, they're not writers.'

'But that's the beauty of it,' Duende said. 'Genuine people who have lived here all their lives. You could title it "Voices of Main Street."'

'Voices.' Sheree seemed to be warming, though whether it was to the idea, or the man 'voicing' it, wasn't clear. 'You know, I think I like it. After all, a town is its people.'

'Or what's left of them,' Joy said, in full argument mode. 'Forgive me since I'm fairly new as a full-time resident, but last year you had a skier choke on gum and die on her way down the ski slope and two fishermen squished by a Land Cruiser in front of the bait vending machine. And just last week, a woman nearly bled out at the blood drive,' an apologetic glance toward AnnaLise, 'and two bodies snagged up or washed up from the lake, one bludgeoned and the other shot. Do we really want to let potential summer folk and skiers know the wackiness that is Sutherton's Main Street?'

Sheree looked at Duende. 'She has a point, you know. We're trying to attract tourists to Sutherton, not scare them off.'

'Oh, please. No one will blog about those things,' AnnaLise protested.

'Because our citizens are so reliable?' Joy said. 'Hell, AnnaLise, your mother actually committed one of "those things".'

'That whole incident was blown way out of proportion,' AnnaLise protested. 'Mrs Bradenham didn't lose more than a pint.' In addition to the one she'd already donated officially.

'You're missing Joy's point,' Sheree said. 'How would you have us stop them from posting whatever they wanted? I certainly don't have the time to monitor a blog and neither does Joy.'

'We're trying to keep the basic website as timeless as possible,' Duende explained, 'so updating will be limited to things like the calendar of events.'

'We certainly could put a blog on the home page,' Sheree said. 'And I do think it would be effective to have something interactive on a page that's otherwise relatively static, especially if we or James don't have to write it.'

Joy shook her head. 'But I say again: there's no way that we could let people post just anything they wanted. We'd need a gatekeeper and, as Sheree said, neither of us has that kind of time.'

AnnaLise could feel them looking at her. She sighed. 'Fine. I'll do it with Daisy's help. But remember.' She raised a finger. 'I'll be heading back to Wisconsin at the end of the month.'

'We're talking the Internet do it from China for all I care,' Joy said. 'Now let's drink on it.'

'That would be a whole lot easier,' AnnaLise said, 'if we had drinks.'

'I'll go to the bar,' Duende said, getting to his feet. 'Red wine, Sheree, and tequila for Joy. AnnaLise, are you sticking with beer?' He pointed at her empty pilsner glass.

'Please. Hefe-Weisen.'

'As good a taste in beers as you have in movies.' Bowing with a flourish, he left them for the bar.

'Good taste,' Sheree said crankily. 'I hate movies like Fatal Attraction. They give me nightmares.'

'It's just a movie,' AnnaLise said. 'Make-believe. If anything should give you nightmares, it's the litany of real-life happenings Joy just recited.'

Sheree shivered. 'And she didn't even include the very latest.'

'You mean the Rosewood woman's car going over the cliff?' Joy asked, earning a glare from AnnaLise.

'That poor man,' Sheree said, now tick-tocking her own head, but sadly. 'Losing the two of them in less than that many days.'

AnnaLise's head jerked around. 'Two of them?'

'Why, I'm sorry,' Sheree said. 'I thought you must know.'

Joy glanced at AnnaLise and then back to Sheree. 'Know what?'

'You neither? Why, however long have you two been in here?' Sheree asked. 'It's all over town. There was a shooting.'

'Where?' AnnaLise's lips could hardly form the word.

'On the mountain.' Duende had come back with the tequila and the wine.

AnnaLise felt herself relax. Maybe she'd misunderstood.

'The tire on the Porsche?' Joy said. 'Sure, we knew about that. Ouch!' This last as AnnaLise kicked her.

'The tire was shot out?' Duende asked, not making a move to go back for the rest of the bar order. 'By whom?'

AnnaLise and Joy shrugged in unison.

'Interesting,' Sheree said. 'It does make one wonder if the two incidents might be connected.'

'So there was a second?' AnnaLise asked. 'Shooting, I mean?'

'Worse, a double shooting,' Duende said. 'Presumably attempted murder/suicide.'

Oh God, oh God, oh God. AnnaLise's brain repeated it over and over again until the words blurred into the dull roar of water rushing over water over rocks, the feeling of going under and never 'AnnaLise, are you all right?' Duende's voice.

The journalist tried to get hold of herself. Ben. Suzanne. Had Suzanne suspected her father of killing her mother and exacted her revenge, then taken her own life? 'You . . . Did you say "attempted murder/suicide"?'

'Technically,' Sheree said, 'I believe it would be murder/attempted-suicide.'

'He's dead?' AnnaLise said in a strangled whisper.

'No, no.' Duende was shaking his head. 'He's the one still alive, more's the pity. Shot the girl in the head and then turned the gun on himself, but either lost his nerve or wasn't much of a shot.'

Lost his nerve, AnnaLise thought. Ben was a good shot. Or so he claimed. But then Ben believed he was a success at everything. And now he'd succeeded at killing his daughter.

But why?

'. . . in critical condition,' Duende was saying.

'Has anyone asked him?' AnnaLise said.

'Asked him what?'

'Why he did it? Why he killed his daughter?' God help her, she'd almost added, And his wife.

Trying to get control of her breathing, AnnaLise closed her eyes again. When she opened them, everyone was looking at her.

'Whatever are you talking about?' Sheree asked.

'Ben Rosewood. Have the police asked him why he killed Suzanne?'

James Duende put his hand gently on her shoulder. 'I'm sorry, AnnaLise. I'd forgotten that you know these people.'

'You do?' This from Sheree.

AnnaLise remembered that while James had been in Mama's when she'd first seen Ben and his family, Sheree had no way of knowing even as much as Duende did.

'From work.' Joy was trying to help. 'Rosewood is or probably was, given what's happened the County District Attorney and AnnaLise being a police reporter and all . . .' She let it trail off.

Sheree shook her head. 'I'm not sure where you two got the idea that it was Ben Rosewood who killed his daughter, but you have it all wrong.'

AnnaLise sat bolt upright. 'Ben didn't shoot Suzanne?'

'Of course not. Whyever would he?'

'I don't know, but . . .' She shook her head. 'Then who did?'

'Who? Why, Joshua Eames, of course.'

Twenty-one.

Joy Tamarack pushed the tequila shot over to AnnaLise. 'Drink.'

AnnaLise Griggs had nearly chugged the remainder of her first beer and all of the second, so she obeyed her friend, but just took a sip. 'Ugh.'

'Don't make faces. James sprung for the good stuff.' Joy pulled back the glass and downed the rest of its contents, then paused to wipe her mouth before continuing. 'Sure are glad they left, though. Hard to talk when they're around.'

Right now, the only thing AnnaLise wanted to do less than talk was think.

'First the wife, now the daughter,' Joy prattled on. 'Maybe you're right about your friend the DA.'

AnnaLise gave another shudder. 'Don't say that. Don't even think it.'

'Why not?' Joy asked. 'You are.'

'Actually, I'm trying very hard not to, and you're not helping.' She waved to get the waitress' attention, but at least this time the woman was busy at another table. 'Can you get our check?'

Joy ignored her. 'You honestly don't buy this new murder/suicide scenario, do you?'

AnnaLise shrugged. 'Apparently the police do.'

'You don't know that. James and Sheree were just telling us what they'd heard on the TV news tonight.' Joy held up one finger and used it to do an air-signature on her other palm. Now the waitress actually rushed over to drop the slip of paper on the table before marching away again. 'Are you going to tell Chuck?'

'I assume he already knows,' AnnaLise said, slipping cash out of her wallet for the bill.

'You know damn well I'm not talking about the shootings.'

'I do.' AnnaLise stood up and picked up her jacket from the back of the chair. 'What would you have me say?'

'Exactly what you told me,' Joy said as she hopped off her chair. 'That you suspect your boyfriend killed his wife for her money and is trying to pin it on you.'

'Like we said earlier, Chuck is smart. He'll put it together on his own. Right now I'm too tired to think, much less build a case for him.'

'So you get me all wound up and now you're just going to wash your hands? What happened to the woman who was going to fry?'

'She found out about lethal injection.' AnnaLise wound her way between the tables to the door and stopped. 'I'm sorry to have dumped on you. I know I'm shutting down, but . . . I'm confused. I don't know what to think.'

'That's why you have me,' Joy said, pushing the door open. 'I'll tell you what to think.'

'OK,' AnnaLise said stepping out onto the sidewalk. 'What do I think about Josh supposedly killing Suzanne?'

'The word "supposedly" is a dead giveaway.'

'Don't use dead, at least not tonight, OK?' And maybe never. 'But . . . I have to admit. I have trouble seeing Josh killing Suzanne. Yes, he has a bit of a checkered past and yes, I understand that people saw them fighting. In fact, the last time I saw them together they didn't look happy.' She was remembering the two in Suzanne's Camry, leaving the police department as she'd arrived.