"I'll wait here," Emmett said.

So calm and unruffled, she thought. Maybe stumbling across dead bodies was routine for him.

"I'm really very sorry about this." She didn't know what else to say.

Emmett regarded her with that unwavering expression of polite interest. "Did you kill him?"

The shock of the question left her momentarily speechless.

"No," she finally gasped. "No, I most certainly did not kill Chester."

"Then it's not your fault, is it? There's no need to apologize."

She got the distinct impression that he would not have been especially troubled if she had admitted to murdering poor Chester. She wondered uneasily what that said about him.

She turned away to walk back along the gloom-filled display gallery to her office. Her glance fell on Chester's foot propped on the edge of the green sarcophagus. The foot was encased in a boot made of some son of cheap imitation lizard skin.

Chester had always been a flashy dresser, Lydia reflected. To her surprise, she felt a pang of wholly unexpected sadness. True, he had been a sleazy, opportunistic hustler. But he was only one of many who eked out a living on the fringes of the booming antiquities trade here in Cadence. The eerie green quartz ruins of the long-vanished alien civilization that had once flourished here on Harmony provided a variety of profit niches for industrious entrepreneurs. Chester had not been the worst of the lot who worked in the shadow of the Dead City wall.

He had been a nuisance, but he had been colorful. She was going to miss him.

* * *

At five o'clock that afternoon, Melanie Toft stood in the doorway of Lydia's tiny office, her dark eyes alight with curiosity. "What did they say? Are you in the clear?"

"Not entirely." Exhausted by the hours of police questioning, Lydia sagged back into the depths of her chair. "Detective Martinez said they think Chester was murdered sometime between midnight and three A.M. I was home in bed at the time."