The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

kettles, embroidery samplers, spinning wheels, lace doilies, and porcelain placards with prayers from the Dutch. Not a sports page or remote control in sight.
    Not a thing out of place or a speck of dust anywhere. Joseph Leander must have walked very light to live in this house without leaving tracks. A man less sensitive than Theo might have called him whipped.
    "That guy's whipped," one of the EMTs said. His name was Vance McNally. He was fifty-one, short and muscular, and wore his hair slicked back with oil, just as he had in high school. Occasionally, in his capacity as an EMT, he saved lives, which was his rationalization for being a dolt the rest of the time.
    "He just found his wife hanging in the dining room, Vance," Theo pronounced over the heads of the EMTs. He was six-foot-six, and even in his flannel shirt and sneakers he could loom large when he needed to assert some authority.
    "She looks like Raggedy Ann," said Mike, the other EMT, who was in his early twenties and excited to be on his first suicide call.
    "I heard she was Amish," Vance said.
    "She's not Amish," Theo said.
    "I didn't say she was Amish, I just said I heard that. I figured she wasn't Amish when I saw the blender in the kitchen. Amish don't believe in blenders, do they?"
    "Mennonite," Mike said with as much authority as his junior status would afford.
    "What's a Mennonite?" Vance asked.
    "Amish with blenders."
    "She wasn't Amish," Theo said.
    "She looks Amish," Vance said.
    "Well, her husband's not Amish," Mike said.
    "How can you tell?" Vance said. "He has a beard."
    "Zipper on his jacket," Mike said. "Amish don't have zippers."
    Vance shook his head."Mixed marriages. They never work."
    "She wasn't Amish!" Theo shouted.
    "Think what you want, Theo, there's a butter churn in the living room. I think that says it all."
    Mike rubbed at a mark on the wall beneath Bess's feet where her black buckled shoes had scraped as she convulsed.
    "Don't touch anything," Theo said.
    "Why? She can't yell at us, she's dead. We wiped our feet on the way in," Vance said.
    Mike stepped away from the wall. "Maybe she couldn't stand anything touching her floors. Hanging was the only way."
    Not to be outdone by the detective work of his protege, Vance said, "You know, the sphincters usually open up on a hanging victim – leave an awful mess. I'm wondering if she actually hanged herself."
    "Shouldn't we call the police?" Mike said.
    "I am the police," Theo said. He was Pine Cove's only constable, duly elected eight years ago and reelected every other year thereafter.
    "No, I mean the real police," Mike said.
    "I'll radio the sheriff," Theo said. "I don't think there's anything you can do here, guys. Would you mind calling Pastor Williams from the Presbyterianchurch to come over? I need to talk to Joseph and I need someone to stay with the girls."
    "They were Presbyterians?" Vance seemed shocked. He had really put his heart into the Amish theory.
    "Please call," Theo said. He left the EMTs and went out through the kitchen to his Volvo, where he switched the radio over to the frequency used by the San Junipero Sheriff's Department, then sat there staring at the mike. He was going to catch hell from Sheriff Burton for this.
    "NorthCoastis yours, Theo. All yours," the sheriff had said. "My deputies will pick up suspects, answer robbery calls, and let the Highway Patrol investigate traffic accidents on Highway 1, that's it.
    Otherwise, you keep them out of Pine Cove and your little secret stays secret." Theo was forty-one years old and he still felt as if he was hiding from the junior high vice principal laying low. Things like this weren't supposed to happen in Pine Cove. Nothing happened in Pine Cove.
    He took a quick hit from his Sneaky Pete smokeless pot pipe before keying the mike and calling in the deputies.
    Joseph Leander sat on the edge of the bed. He'd changed out of his pajamas into a blue business suit, but his thinning hair was still sticking out in sleep horns on the side. He was thirty-five, sandy-haired, thin but working on a paunch that strained the buttons of his vest. Theo sat across from him on a chair, holding a notepad. They could hear the sheriff's deputies moving around downstairs.
    "I can't believe she'd do this," Joseph said.
    Theo reached over and squeezed the grieving husband's bicep. "I'm really sorry, Joe. She didn't say anything that would indicate she was thinking about doing something like this?"
    Joseph shook his head without looking