Killer Calories

won’t help Ford if you make yourself sick, sitting up with him.”
    Savannah looked around the house, which was a cluttered, eclectic mix of knickknacks and memorabilia, collected over a lifetime. African tribal masks, china plates, racks of tiny silver spoons, and cases of porcelain dolls lined the walls.
    Every era of furniture manufacturing was represented, some Italian tum-of-the-century, early-American, French Provincial , was scattered among some gray, pearlescent and chrome stuff that looked like the Eisenhower administration period.
    Phoebe led her through room after room of colorful clutter, until they entered a large, homey kitchen that smelled of freshly baked bread and newly brewed coffee.
    “Sit over there,” Phoebe said, directing Savannah toward a long, formal table with ladder-back chairs. “I’ll get you a cup of coffee. How do you drink it?”
    “Black,” Savannah said as Phoebe poured.
    “It has chicory in it.”
    “I like chicory... reminds me of New Orleans .”
    “You like New Orleans ?”
    “I like all the beautiful gardens and flowers.”
    “Me too.” Phoebe shoved the cup under her nose and took a seat across the table, her own cup in her hand. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you would or not.” Savannah thought how tired she looked, not at all like the vibrant lady who spent so much time puttering among her roses.
    “Your message said it was important,” Savannah replied. “Besides, I have some things to tell you, too.”
    Phoebe’s blue eyes glittered briefly in her wan face. “Oh, really? What do you have to say to me?”
    “You first.”
    “Okay.” She took a long drink of the coffee. “I want you to know, I don’t believe my brother really killed anybody. I don’t know what possessed him to do what he did today. But all I can figure is that the stroke messed up his brain, and he isn’t thinking right.”
    “It looked like a confession to me. He seemed in complete control of his faculties.”
    “Oh, pooh. Ford is male; he’s never in full control of his facilities.”
    Savannah gave her a searching look. “You were there today, and you saw what he did. How can you be so sure he didn’t kill her?”
    “Because I know my brother. He doesn’t have the courage to do something like that. For all of his confident, sophisticated bearing, he’s actually quite weak.”
    “Is that what it takes to commit murder?” Savannah asked. “Courage? I would have thought it took a lack of morality and a disregard for the sanctity of life.”
    “I think that depends on the circumstances.”
    “Are you saying some people deserve to be killed?” Phoebe’s right cheek twitched, just a tad. Then she shrugged. “Maybe.”
    “Maybe... under some circumstances... murder might be justified. Say, if an adulteress, a woman of ill repute, tried to take advantage of a good man. If she used her feminine wiles to lure him, to make him fall in love with her. And if the man was too foolish to understand that he was being used. After all, he’s a man, and we all know how weak and foolish they are.”
    Savannah waited, and Phoebe said nothing, but her hands began to shake, and her blue eyes filled with tears.
    “Men are so stupid about these things,” Savannah continued. “They need their women to take care of them. And we older sisters, we’re so good at it. After all, we’ve done it all their lives.”
    Phoebe’s lower lip trembled and a tear rolled down her left cheek as she stared down into her coffee. “I used to change his diapers,” she said. “I read him bedtime stories and put iodine on all his cuts and scrapes.”
    “I’m sure you did.”
    “And there was that time when he was in college, he got a girl pregnant. She was a piece of trash, that one... said she loved him, couldn’t live without him. But I paid her off. With her purse full of money, she decided that maybe she could live without him after all.”
    “Did Ford ever know about that?”
    Phoebe sniffed. “He didn’t need to know. I took care of it, and that’s all that mattered.”
    “I’m sure Ford loves you very much,” Savannah said. “I’m sure he’s very grateful to you. He would probably even confess to a murder he didn’t commit to save you.”
    Phoebe didn’t reply.
    “But then,” Savannah continued, “he seems to have strong principles. It must have been terribly hard, suspecting his own sister, but not being sure. I suppose, if he hired a private