I continued into the kitchen -- my gun drawn -- where I suddenly saw the source of the banging. The day's first mystery was solved.

My friend and partner was lurking at the back door like some high-octane version of a neighborhood hugger-mugger.

John Sampson was the noisemaker; he was the trouble in my life; the day's first disturbance, anyway. All six foot nine, two hundred forty pounds of him. Two-John as he's sometimes called.

Man Mountain.

“There's been a murder,” he said as I unlocked, unchained, and opened up for him. “This one is a honey, Alex.”

“OH, JESUS, JOHN. You know what time it is? You have any concept of time? Please get the hell away from my house. Go home to your own house. Bang on your own door in the middle of the night.”

I groaned and slowly shook my head back and forth, working nasty sleep-kinks out of my neck and shoulders. I wasn't quite awake yet. Maybe this was all a bad dream that I was having.

Maybe Sampson wasn't on the back porch. Maybe I was still in bed with my pillow-lover. And maybe not.

“It can wait,” I said. “Whatever the hell it is.”

“Oh, but it can't,” he answered, shaking his head. “Believe me, Sugar, it can't.”

I heard a creaking noise behind me in the house. I swung around quickly, still a little spooked and jumpy My little girl was standing there in the kitchen. Jannie was in her electric-blue-butterfly pajamas, in her bare feet, with a frightened look on her face. The latest addition to our family, a beautiful Abyssinian cat named Rosie, trailedJannie by a step or two. Rosie had heard the noise downstairs, too.

“What's the matter?”Jannie asked in a sleepy whisper, rubbing her eyes. “Why are you up so early? It's something bad, isn't it, Daddy?”

“Go back to sleep, sweetheart,” I told Jannie in the softest voice I could manage. “It's nothing,” I had to lie to my little girl.