Highly polished flats replaced the pumps she’d been wearing. I liked Melinda more and more as I spent time with her, and not the smallest reason was her practical nature.

“Where’s Robin?” she asked as we parked in front of my mother’s house.

“He’s in Austin,” I explained. “He got nominated for some award, so he’s going to the mystery writers’ convention where they give it out. He asked me if I wanted to go, but…” I shrugged. “The convention’s over, but he’s doing some signings on the way back. He should be home on Wednesday, in time to pick up his mother at the airport.”

“You didn’t want to go with him?” she asked shyly. My relationship with Robin Crusoe, fiction and true crime writer, was new enough that the family was delicate about making any assumptions.

“I kind of did,” I said. “But he was going to be with a lot of people he knows really well, and I haven’t been with him very long.”

She nodded. You had to have a pretty firm footing in a relationship to be dragged into a massive “meet the friends” situation. “Still, he asked,” she said.

It was my turn to nod. We both knew what that meant, too.

That was our last pleasant moment for the rest of the day. Our sister-in-law had died a terrible death, a violent death, and John David still hadn’t been located. Poppy’s parents had to be called, which awful job Avery agreed to undertake. All the Queensland men were tall and attractive. Avery was certainly the most handsome CPA in Lawrenceton, but his personality did not live up to his face, which could have been devilish if there’d been any spark in it. Avery was one of those men always described as “steady,” which is what you want in an accountant, of course. He was the older brother, and had been a year ahead of me in high school. Instead of playing football like John David, Avery had played tennis; instead of being elected class president, Avery had been editor of the school paper. He’d added to the local gene pool by marrying Melinda, who’d grown up in Groton, a few miles away.