Blue. Abigail Padgett

even on toll booth operators and debutantes, cause me to attempt truly concise levels of explanation. I don’t know why.

      The woman named Tewalt gasped. “In your car! Oh dear, it’s so hot out there. You know, leaving an animal in a closed car can be—”

      “It’s actually a truck with a camper shell,” I explained, heading for the door with the Tewalt woman in fluttering pursuit. “And it isn’t closed. The back is open, it’s parked in shade, Brontë has water and a battery-powered fan covered in mesh screening so she can’t stick her nose in it, and did I hear you say you brought these cookies for Muffin Crandall? I just saw her.”

      “Well, for heaven’s sake!” Mrs. Tewalt said. “Are you with the police?”

      “I’m a social psychologist. Mrs. Crandall’s brother, Dan, has asked for my help.”

      As we reached the door the blonde guard called, “Please, Mrs. Tewalt, don’t bother coming again except during official visiting hours, and please no more food.”

      “Of course, dear.” The reply was not sincere.

      “I’m Helen Tewalt, an old friend of Muffin’s,” she told me in the parking lot, averting her eyes to the ground for her second remark. “This has been terribly upsetting for her friends, you know. We’re all afraid it could happen to us.”

      “You’re all afraid you’ll kill somebody and then store the body in a freezer?” I blurted.

      “The, well . . . mental situation is what I meant,” she said softly. “Muffin just fell apart after Deck died. That was her husband, you know. She never got over it, started doing such odd things. Now we’re afraid it’s Alzheimer’s or something like that. If only we’d seen the signs long ago.”

      Her sigh joined the warm breeze blowing eucalyptus leaves across the paved parking lot. I could see Brontë’s sleek head eagerly tracking my progress toward the camper. No doubt she’d already picked up the scent of the remaining chocolate chip cookie in my hand.

      “What odd things did Muffin do?” I asked casually.

      “Well, just lots of things, for heaven’s sake. Keeping that food locker in the desert like Deck did when he was alive. We told her it was silly, but she wanted to keep everything just the way it was. She didn’t even clean out his closet for months, just kept his clothes there instead of donating them to charity. That’s the thing, you know, just donate to charity and try to get on with your life. That’s what we do. But Muffin wouldn’t let go. We should have seen there was a mental problem.”

      I should have seen that Helen Tewalt had just told me absolutely nothing, but I wasn’t used to real people with their charming duplicity. Numbers, graphs, hard data—these I can deal with. Real people are so sweet and complicated that I’m almost always mesmerized by them. I forget to stand back and check to see if what they’re telling me meshes with the big picture. Later I would realize that Helen Tewalt actually meshed way too well.

      “Here’s my card,” I told her. “Would you mind if I called you at some point? There are so many things about this case that I can’t quite grasp.”

      “Of course, dear.” She smiled. “I’m in the book. In Rancho Almas. H. Tewalt. Any of Muffin’s friends will be happy to talk to the psychologist who’s trying to analyze this awful thing. Just call anytime.”

      “I’m not a clinical psychologist and I don’t analyze . . .” I began. But Helen Tewalt had veered off toward a cream-colored Buick, popping open the door lock with the remote control on her key chain. She merely waved as she slipped inside and started the engine.

      “Why do I feel as if I’ve just walked through the set for a Martha Stewart special?” I asked Brontë when I got to the camper and gave the command that she could run free. The cookie held more interest for her than my question. But I knew somebody else I could ask, even though I’d have to wait until seven that night when Auntie Buck’s Country and Western Bistro cleared its hardwood floor for line-dancing lessons. I’d be there. I had a lot of questions.

      Chapter Four

      But first I had to make a living. It was, after all, Thursday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are devoted to accumulating wealth, although as I told Muffin Crandall, I don’t know why I’m accumulating it. Nor is it wealth, exactly. More like what is meant when people say “comfortable.” As in “Well, I wouldn’t say the Kramers are rich, but they’re comfortable.” This comment is invariably accompanied by a meaningful look which suggests that the Kramers could buy and sell your grandmother if they wanted to. My wealth might be defined as a category of comfort several levels below that one. Many, many levels below, actually.

      My truck is paid for and has four new tires. I own Wren’s Gulch Inn outright, and can afford the hauled-in water necessary to live there. Brontë and I both have the best medical insurance coverage available in California, and except on Tuesdays and Thursdays neither of us really needs clothes. Still, when a year ago a Pakistani strip mall owner at a party bet me a semester’s salary that I couldn’t rescue his investment from bankruptcy, I jumped at the chance. The job would be fun, I thought. But the real draw was the lure of income derived from an application of my skill as a social psychologist. Income not requiring panty hose, faculty politics, or a cheery attitude.

      The little mall was in a dicey, ethnically mixed area of San Diego. The owner assumed that nothing could be done about the sequential armed robberies, drug dealing, and shoplifting that were driving out his commercial tenants. Had he not downed too many margaritas by the time I had downed too many margaritas, he would not have responded as enthusiastically to my assertion that men do not, in fact cannot, understand shopping and its context.

      I did tell him that with the exception of guns, automobile parts, and beer, between eighty and ninety percent of over-the-counter sales are to women. Women are the purchasers of goods and services. If you want a successful shopping mall, make sure women like to go there. That part is not complicated.

      Where men lose it completely is in understanding the aesthetic, social, even spiritual dimensions of shopping. They think—you need an item, you buy it, you leave. A man who needs a plumber’s wrench will buy the wrench from the back of a van, a dusty hardware store, or online. He doesn’t care as long as he gets the wrench. He will make this transaction alone and will not discuss it with other men. Should another man later criticize the wrench, suggest that there are better wrenches, the first man will become defensive. There is no social context for the wrench, so an assault against it is an assault on the man. It is an assault on his competence, his status. In the presence of other variables such as alcohol consumption, this kind of thing can result in headlines the next day which read, “Local Man Murdered in Dispute Over Wrench.”

      What I didn’t try to explain to the strip mall owner is that women are entirely different. Women nest, which is just a cute way of saying that women construct social reality. The sight, scent, sound, touch, and taste of life is the construction of women, and the work is never done. Variety is necessary to keep things interesting, has been since our hunter-gatherer days. Getting tired of leached acorns? Try these nettles boiled in salt water. Maddened by your bland little cubicle at work? I know this place where they have silk plants really cheap. Shopping is for women the sacrament of reality construction. And it is not done alone.

      It is done in the company of other women so that all aspects of the construction may be performed at once. Fabric for bathroom curtains is selected as you discuss what to do about your brother-in-law’s alcoholism. When somebody later suggests that the curtains don’t quite pick up the blue in the floor tile, you know the curtains are just fine because that idiot Ben finally got himself into a treatment program like you suggested and hasn’t had a drink in four months. When Ben falls off the wagon a year from now you’ll change the curtains. And go on. It’s an intricate tapestry, endlessly woven, ripped apart, altered, rewoven. Most men are completely oblivious to it. Certainly the Pakistani strip mall owner was.

      But he gave me carte blanche to do anything I wanted, and I knew what to do. First I analyzed