Free Murder in the Marketplace by Lora Roberts

happened.” He shot me a look from behind his wire-rims. “Miss Jensen said you were the first person on the scene.”
    “I was after her into the apartment." I gave him a brief description of how Clarice and I converged on the door. “I didn’t touch anything,” I concluded. “I felt her wrist and didn’t find a pulse. There was an open, empty-looking prescription bottle by her hand.”
    “Prescription bottle?” His gaze sharpened. “I’ll have to speak to Miss Jensen again.”
    “Did you find a note? I assumed there was always a note.”
    “Not always.” He didn’t answer further, and I didn’t press him. Drake is good at getting information without giving it.
    “You haven’t heard the weirdest part,” I said reluctantly. I’m paranoid about the police, I admit, which makes me very ambivalent about having a cop live practically on my doorstep. Nevertheless, I’d learned that the best way to deal with the police is to tell them everything, and let them sort out the important from the dreck. “The strangest thing is I met them both this morning. Jenifer and Clarice. I temped at SoftWrite, and they both work there. Worked,” I corrected, thinking of Jenifer.
    Drake stared at me. The sound of the shower stopped, and the sweet scent of shampoo drifted into the room. “Well. Let me get this straight. You did temp work this morning at a company, and some of those workers then showed up on your census register? And this evening, one of them is dead?”
    “It’s a populous area,” I said defensively. “I was doing mailing labels, and I noticed a lot of SoftWrite’s people live in Palo Alto. I might even have more of them on my register. People tend to ask their friends and coworkers about apartments when they need one, and that creates a cluster effect.” I made that up on the spur of the moment, but it sounded authentic, and Drake nodded.
    “Take you and me, for instance,” he said, giving me a look that blended irony and speculation nicely.
    “Right.” I poured hot water into the cups on the stove. He thanked me absently when I served him, and dunked the tea bag up and down, frowning into the cup.
    “So do you suspect me?” The words burst out from the nameless emotions that roiled inside of me. I saw Jenifer’s pale face, and Clarice’s tear-streaked one. I remembered Ed Garfield at Bridget’s party, and the rumors that he was romantically involved with Jenifer. He’d be devastated, if so. And the other woman, Suzanne, whom I hadn’t met yet—how would she take her rival’s death?
    “Suspect you of what? Posing as a census agent to make the poor girl take an overdose? Don’t be ridiculous. Coincidences do happen, and that’s all you are, the victim of coincidence.” He lifted the tea bag out of his cup and plunked it into a saucer. “At least your being on the scene gives me a reliable account of what happened. Miss Jensen was incoherent.” He looked up, curious. “Was she like that this morning? What were your impressions of them?”
    I thought back, and described the scene at the table—Clarice’s motherly behavior, including the two aspirin she’d given Jenifer; Jenifer’s tense, stressed-out air. I repeated what Mindy had said about Jenifer’s being given a lot of responsibility for someone so young. Drake made a few notes on the jumble of papers he shoves into any convenient pocket. They were more for show than anything else—he remembers like an elephant.
    The sound of Amy’s humming came faintly from the bedroom, and he swiveled in his chair to look at the Hide-a-bed occupying major space in the living room.
    “So your niece is staying for a while.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “That’s nice for you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t it?” My turn for diplomatic silence. Barker gave up untying my shoes and went to sniff at the Hide-a-bed. It was just too high for him to crawl up into. He began to trot around the living room, sniffing and whining.
    “Clarice is going