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inside me begin to dissolve just a little.
    And then I remembered Otto. Poor Otto. Even with all his problems, he had a life worth living. What a shame he'd put an early end to it by pickling his liver!
    But when the phone rang a few minutes later, we learned that although my cousin's drinking was self-destructive, it had nothing to do with the way he died.
    Otto Alexander had been murdered.

Chapter Three
    S uffocated," my grandmother Vesta said. "The coroner said Otto was suffocated, probably with the plastic bag they found in the bathroom trash."
    Since it was Sunday, Gatlin and I had left her two daughters with their dad and hurried to our grandmother's after hearing the coroner's appalling announcement. Now we huddled in Vesta's high-rise living room and tried to make sense out of this turn of events.
    "It would have prints on it, wouldn't it?" I asked.
    "Ordinarily, but if this is what they used, apparently whoever did it wore gloves." Vesta lowered her voice as she spoke, and glanced at Mildred Parsons, who sat at one end of the sofa, feet primly together, a vinyl-bound scrapbook on her lap.
    "You don't have to whisper around me, Vesta," Mildred said in a louder-than-usual voice. "I suspected Otto's death was no accident. He had stopped drinking, you know. He promised. Drank mostly orange juice—always kept some around." She drew herself upas well as anyone can who is only a little over five feet tall. "I can assure you that Otto hasn't had any alcohol in almost three months."
    I didn't look at Gatlin, but I knew if she wasn't rolling her eyes, she was thinking about it.
    "I know some people didn't like Otto," Mildred went on, "didn't understand him. But that was no reason to—" Her lip trembled, and impatiently, she shook off my grandmother's hand. "Otto had a brilliant mind, and I don't think any of you appreciated that. He could've done anything—might have. He didn't deserve to die!"
    "Of course not." Gatlin moved closer to sit beside Mildred. "I can't imagine why anyone would do such a horrible thing. Somebody must have broken into the academy intending to burglarize it and found Otto there alone."
    "I don't know what they planned to steal," Vesta said. "There's nothing of any value."
    Mildred shook her head. "No, I think somebody meant to kill him, and they did it when they knew I'd be away from home. Everyone knows that's Movies 'n' Munchies night."
    "But who?" I asked. "And why?"
    Mildred shoved her bifocals aside and blotted her eyes with a yellowed lace handkerchief. "I don't know," she said, slamming her small fist onto the album she held in her lap. "But I mean to find out if it's the last thing I do."
    "Mildred!" My grandmother set her coffee cup on her new glass-topped cocktail table, and dark liquid sloshed into the saucer. "We're all shocked and saddened about what happened to Otto, but I think we'd best let the police handle things like that."
    "Oh, butt out, Vesta," Mildred Parsons said. And tucking her scrapbook under her arm, she marched into the adjoining bedroom and shut the door.
    Vesta looked like she'd swallowed something cold that hurt going down, and I thought she'd keel over right then and there, but my grandmother surprised me. "Mildred's not herself," she explained, shaking her head. "After all, Otto is all she had."
    In a way, I guess she was right. And the four of us were all that remained to mourn Otto Alexander. My cousin's mother had died while he was still a young man, and his father, Edward, a few years later.
    Gatlin's own mom, who had taken a job in California after her husband's death, was saving her vacation days to come for Christmas.

    "I'm afraid Mildred's gone round the bend," Gatlin whispered to me after the funeral the next day. In spite of Otto's lack of close friends, the Methodist Church had been packed, and the Lucy Alexander Circle (named for my great-grandmother, and the one to which Vesta belonged) had outdone themselves preparing our dinner. Again we gathered at