Untitled by Unknown Author Page A

smart and as successful as Sarah take her own life, I was seeing mysteries where there were none. It was absurd. It was an insult to Sarah's memory. It had to stop.
       Now.
       I pulled in another breath, clearing my head. My heartbeat settled, and my blood stopped rushing in my ears. I had been so lost in thought, I didn't even realize Eve wasn't with me until she came into the kitchen a minute later. She didn't have the black silk dress with her, and I guessed she'd put it in the living room so we could take it with us.
       She didn't say a word. She didn't have to—I knew she was thinking about what I'd said in the bedroom. But as I've mentioned before, Eve and I have been friends for a lot of years. I knew her well; she knew me just as well in return. In an uncharacteristic show of restraint, she knew pressing her case would get her nowhere.
       And nowhere was exactly where I wanted to go with the idea that Sarah hadn't been responsible for her own death.
       Eve followed my lead, and one by one, we went through the cupboards, searching for the dog's food. After what we'd seen in the bedroom, I wasn't surprised by what we found. Like her closet, Sarah's cupboards were arranged in painstaking detail.
       "Even I'm not this meticulous," I grumbled, checking out the food that had been removed from its packaging and placed in Tupperware containers. "I guess it just goes to prove that you really can never tell what's going on inside a person."
       I wasn't doing any more than thinking out loud, but Eve took it as a signal that the matter (and manner) of Sarah's death was now open for discussion.
       "You'd think anybody who kills themselves must be pretty desperate," she said. "I don't know about you, but I don't think desperation looks like this."
       I knew where she was going and attempted to head her off. Without a word, I looked in another cupboard and found the dog food. It, too, had been repackaged, but fortunately, Sarah had cut off the nutrition label and attached it to the container. Otherwise, I might have mistaken it for potpourri. Yeah, there was that much dried fruit in it.
       Eve came up behind me. She pointed toward the price tag that was still attached to the dog food label. "Dr. Novak was right. This food is pricey. Why do you suppose someone would buy a really expensive dog . . . a dog she really, really loved . . . and pay that kind of money for dog food, and then . . . I don't know . . . kill herself?"
       "Eve!" I sighed. Not like I was surrendering. More like I really didn't want to hear what she had to say.
       But Eve had shown enough restraint for one evening. She pounced. "Oh, come on, Annie! You're trying to deny it, but you can't. Not with this kind of evidence staring us in the face. Remember what Terry said. He said Doc is a rare and expensive dog, right?"
       I nodded. Reluctantly, but I nodded.
       "So why would Sarah go through all the trouble of buying a rare and expensive dog and then kill herself?"
       I couldn't answer. I didn't even try.
       My reluctance to buy into the theory only made Eve more determined than ever to prove it. "Look around, Annie. Tell me if any of this adds up. Sarah's organized. OK, so she's compulsively organized, but she's organized. Not like she's never going to come back into her kitchen again. More like she knows she'll be back and she wants everything where she knows she can find it easily. And she bought a new cocktail dress. And she loves her dog. She paid thousands for him. It doesn't make any sense."
       There was a stool next to the island in the center of the kitchen. I climbed up and plunked down. "You're right. But if all that's true, Eve, what we need to do is—"
       "Prove it."
       I was going to say, Call Tyler and tell him what we think , but Eve didn't give me a chance. Before I could open my mouth, she was already gone.
       I made one last valiant attempt to talk her down. "We're not