“Nine one one,” I said, gasping for breath. Melinda gave me a sharp look, but she punched in the number as I’d asked and then passed the phone to me. Did I mention that Melinda has a ton of good sense?

“The nature of your emergency?” said a distant voice.

“I’m at Eight-oh-eight Swanson Lane,” I said. “This is Aurora Teagarden. My sister-in-law has been killed.”

I never did remember the rest of that conversation. When I was sure they were coming, I pressed the button that ended the conversation, and I began to try to explain to Melinda.

But instead, I flashed on the deep wounds on Poppy’s hands, wounds incurred when she was defending her life, and I leaned over to avoid the car, my dress, and the phone while I threw up.

For the sixth or seventh time, I explained very carefully why Melinda and I had gone to Poppy’s house. Because the city police made the house off-limits instantly, Melinda and I drove right down to the police station, and from there I called my mother at Select Realty, her agency. It was a difficult conversation, over my cell phone in a public place, but one that had to be completed. Her husband, John, had had one heart attack already. Mother was terrified of another, and the news about his favorite daughter-in-law might trigger one. Mother was right to worry about that, and she thought of a few more things to worry her before we’d finished our conversation.

“Who’ll tell John David?” Mother asked. “Tell me it doesn’t have to be John.” John David was John’s second son, and the husband of the late Poppy.

“Where is he, Mother? Do you know?” The police had been asking me that quite persistently. If John David wasn’t at his company headquarters in Atlanta, I didn’t know where he’d be. He’d been a pharmaceuticals salesman for the first few years of his marriage, but recently he’d gotten a job at company headquarters in the Public Relations division. John David had always been good at turning an attractive face to the world.