“What do Uppity Women do?” Detective Trumble asked, though she sounded as though she didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Well, we talk about local politics and then we decide how we’re going to handle local issues. We have representatives at every city council meeting and school board meeting, and they give reports to the club. We decide whom we’re going to back in the primaries, and how we’re going to do it. And then we have a book we’ve all read that we discuss, and then we eat lunch.”

This didn’t seem extraordinary to me, but Trumble gave a kind of sigh and looked down at her desk. “So, you have a political agenda, and a literary agenda, and a social…”

I nodded.

“You all read, what? Like from the Oprah Book Club? Like The Lovely Bones?”

“Um, no.”

“Well, what was this month’s book?”

“ The Sublime and the Ridiculous: Economic Currents in the Southeast. By a professor at the University of Georgia? She was supposed to come down to speak to us about it, but she got the flu.” I had read every word, but it hadn’t been easy.

The look Trumble gave me would have frozen a pond. “Could you just tell me what you’ve been doing, say last evening and this morning?” Detective Trumble asked, her voice hard despite the thinnest overlay of courtesy.

“Last night won’t do you any good,” I said, surprised she’d even tack that on. “She wasn’t killed till this morning.”

“How do you know that?” Trumble leaned forward, her eyes sharp and intent.

“About twenty different ways. First off, I talked to her this morning. Then, her clothes. She was wearing the right clothes.”

“ ‘The right clothes’?”

“For the meeting. Poppy usually dressed a little extreme for Lawrenceton, and Melinda and I warned her that she had to look like Missy Matron for this crowd, at least till they got to know her. So I wanted to check on what she was planning on wearing. And she told me. And it was the outfit I found her in.”