Big old oaks shaded the sidewalks, but everybody had flowers, cottage roses under trellises where there was a peek of sun, bosomy peonies in the deep shade…he didn’t know all the flower names. A fat fox squirrel chased right in front of his car-the measure of a safe town, he’d always thought, was that the darned squirrels knew perfectly well they had right of way.

The rich didn’t hang in the neighborhood anymore, mostly because no one was all that rich-but the big old houses still looked loved, porches swept, gardens fussed over. Young couples who wanted a passel of children could afford the mortgages. The elders had already paid off theirs. Those in between had invariably turned their place into the ever-hopeful bed-and-breakfasts.

He parked, climbed out, took his tote. In the way of a small town, he knew Louella’s even if he’d never been inside. It was the last on the block, with a red tile roof and long, long steps leading to the porch…he didn’t initially see her. At least not exactly. What he saw from the rail on the veranda, were a pair of very bare, very dirty, very feminine feet.

Judging from the position of those feet, they were attached to someone who was lying flat on the wood plank veranda floor. A curious position for sure.

He ambled up the sidewalk, up the steps, to peek his head over the rail.

The glow of lights and distant voices murmured from beyond the B and B’s giant screen door, but the only one on the veranda was her.

For a moment, his heart stopped-he wasn’t sure she was alive. She was lying there with her feet up on the rail, eyes closed, arms just lying at her sides, palms up…as if she’d fallen in that kind of heap and couldn’t move. She was wearing shorts and a tee in some pastel color, all wrinkled and tangled.

His heart immediately resumed beating on noting she wasn’t wearing a bra. And that her plump, perfectly shaped breasts were rising and falling, indicating life-not to mention a delectably appealing rack.