“What on earth's happening?" Shelley said. They could hear the wail of sirens, and the people still in the deli were standing around in worried knots.

Shaken, Jane explained. "There was a big metal rack in the middle of the storage room that apparently fell over on Robert Stonecipher. It's a madhouse in there."

“Was he hurt?"

“I think he's dead, but I didn't get close enough to find out. Sarah Baker was crying and saying he was dead. I don't know—"

“Storeroom?"

“Between the kitchen and the bathroom. I heard the crash."

“Poor Conrad and Sarah," Shelley said. "Stonecipher was an obnoxious bastard, but I wouldn't wish that on him. Still, if he had to get himself killed or injured, why did it have to be here? And today, to wreck their grand opening? As if he hadn't already given them enough trouble on purpose.”

An ambulance pulled up in front of the deli. Shelley and Jane stepped onto the lawn so they wouldn't be in the way of the emergency staff who leaped out and ran into the building carrying complicated equipment.

“Let's get out of here," Jane said. "We can't be any help and I hate to stand around being a gawker.”

They walked home, and Jane spent a depressing hour paying bills and tidying her small basement office. And trying very hard not to think about that sprawled figure lying half under the rack. What could have made it fall over? It looked as if it had been freestanding in the middle of the room, but surely something that large and heavy-looking doesn't spontaneously topple over simply because somebody walks by it. Suppose it had been Mike in the room when it went over! Her heart went cold. No, she couldn't bear to think about it.

Instead, she looked longingly at the pile ofpaper sitting next to her computer. For nearly a year now she'd been working on what she called her "story." She was afraid to call it a book for fear that such a weighty word would get in the way of her ever finishing it.