He was behind me in an instant. He half-bent to help me up but was frozen by what he saw over my head.

“Are you sure that’s Mamie Wright?” he asked.

The working part of my brain told me Arthur Smith was quite right to ask. Perhaps coming on this unsuspicious, I would have wondered too. Her eye-oh my God, her eye.

“She’s missing from the big room, but her car is outside. And that’s her shoe.” I managed to say this with my fingers pressed to my mouth.

When Mamie had first worn them, I’d thought those shoes the most poisonous footwear I’d ever seen. I hate turquoise anyway. I let myself enjoy thinking about hating turquoise. It was a lot more pleasing than thinking about what was right in front of me.

The policeman stepped over me very carefully and squatted with even more care by the body. He put his fingers against her neck. I felt bile rise up in my throat-no pulse, of course. How ridiculous! Mamie was so dead.

“Can you stand up?” he asked after a moment. He dusted his fingers together as he rose.

“If you help.”

Without further ado, Arthur Smith hauled me to my feet and out the doorway in one motion. He was very strong. He kept one arm around me while he shut the door. He leaned me against that door. Deep blue eyes looked at me consideringly. “You’re very light,” he said. “You’ll be all right for a few seconds. I’m going to use the phone right here on the wall.”

“Okay.” My voice sounded weird; light, tinny. I’d always wondered if I could keep my head if I found a body, and here I was, keeping my head, I told myself insanely as I watched him go down the hall to the pay phone. I was glad he didn’t have to leave my sight. I might not be so level if I were standing in that hall alone, with a body behind me.

While Arthur muttered into the phone I kept my eyes on the door to the large room across the hall where John Queensland must be itching to open the meeting.