“What you got there?” I asked.

“A cold pasta salad. It’s all I had in the house to make.”

My mother, Aida Brattle Teagarden Queensland, is a slim, husky-voiced Lauren Bacall look-alike. She is also a very successful realtor, and a few short years ago she married John Queensland, a retired businessman. Since then, she’s become a stepgrandmother a couple of times. Once the shock wore off, she’s enjoyed it.

I peered through the plastic wrap. “Looks good.”

“Thanks. I see you brought your Waldorf salad. Well, are you going to ring the doorbell?”

I did so, and the door swung open after the correct interval. The Burns’s neighbor to the right, Marva Clerrick, had on her formal smile. It changed into a less strained one when she recognized us.

“Am I glad to see you!” she exclaimed in a violent whisper. “The strangest people are here talking to Bess! I have no idea what’s going on!”

Marva, an athletic extrovert and the wife of my sometime boss, Sam Clerrick, was one of the most popular teachers at Lawrenceton High School and a good friend of the recently retired Bess Burns. Marva had been aptly named by parents who must have had some premonition that Marva would be able to cook, teach English during the week and Sunday School at Western Hill Baptist Church, bring up two very good girls, and cope with the moody Sam. In the summer, her off-season, Marva taught swimming at the local pool and led rug-hooking classes at Peachtree Leisure Apartments.

For Marva to be confounded by a situation, it must be strange indeed. Of course, we were agog.

“What’s going on?” I asked in a stage whisper.

“There are two men here I’ve never seen before in this town,” Marva hissed back. “And to fall out of a plane! How could that happen by accident? What was Jack doing up in a plane?”

“I hate to bring this up, but I think Jack was already dead when he came out of the plane,” I said hesitantly. No one had asked me not to tell, and if Mother found out from another source she’d never forgive me.