“I’m Detective Forester,” he began.

Cautiously I raised my head a little, and held out my right hand. “I’m Blair Mallory.” I almost said, Pleased to meet you, which of course I wasn’t, at least not under these circumstances.

Like Officer Barstow, he took my hand and gave it one brief shake. I might not have liked his shoes, but he had a nice handshake, neither too tight nor too limp. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he shakes hands. “Ma’am, can you tell me what went on here tonight?”

He had manners, too. I eased into an upright position. The red-stained plastic gloves were nowhere in sight, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I launched into a replay of what I’d told Officers Barstow and Spangler; the other man returned with a bottle of sweet tea and even twisted the cap off for me before handing it over. I interrupted myself long enough to say thank you and take a long swallow of the cold tea, then resumed the tale.

When I was finished, Detective Forester introduced the other man-Detective MacInnes-and we did the social thing again. Detective MacInnes pulled one of the visitors’ chairs around so that he was sitting at an angle to me. He was a tad older than Detective Forester, a little heavier, with graying hair and a heavy beard shadow. But though he looked chunky, I got the impression he was solid rather than soft.

“When you unlocked the back door and stepped out, why didn’t the person you saw with Ms. Goodwin see you?” he asked.

“I turned off the hall light when I opened the door.”

“How can you see what you’re doing, if you turn off the light?”

“It’s kind of a simultaneous thing,” I said. “I guess sometimes the light is still on for a split second when I open the door, and sometimes it isn’t.