While Steven was making the call and Charlie stood guard at the entrance to the corridor, I stayed in the kiln yard for a further look around. Aside from the broken 'bottle' shards in front of the kiln which I carefully avoided stepping on, everything looked normally messy. The trestle tables bore their orderly disordered load of unfired pottery. Neat piles of firebrick - five gallon plastic buckets of glaze, loosely covered - silicon carbide shelves leaning in stacks against the building - assorted lengths of post and props - all the normal clutter of the potter's trade.

Then, in the far corner behind one of the floodlights, I caught sight of graffiti-like markings on the back wall of Steven's shop. They hadn't been present at our earlier visit - at least I didn't think so. Hoping that this was going to turn out to be a student's prank after all and that we had just made complete fools of ourselves, I picked my way across a pile of broken cinderblocks for a closer look.

The scribbling, at about the level of my head, was brownish red and smeary. I didn't touch it. The brushstrokes were clumsy and might not have been meant for letters at all but I thought I could make out the words 'el malvado', 'castigo' and 'feugo'. If my halting Spanish was any guide, these would translate as 'wicked man', 'punishment' and 'fire'.

Voices reached me from the direction of the corridor. I retraced my steps, hoping I wasn't disturbing any important clues.

At the entrance, a distraught Lucy was imploring Charlie to allow her to pass. "What's going on?" she was demanding. "There's some kind of trouble, isn't there? Where's my grandfather?" Catching sight of me, she ducked neatly under Charlie's outstretched arm and ran to meet me. "Please, Mrs. Carson!" she implored. "What's happened? Tell me!"

"We don't know that anything has ..." I began but she brushed past me into the kiln yard. "Lucy, come back here!" I shouted. "You're . . trespassing!"

She made no reply. Charlie and I stared at each other, helpless. To follow her would just scuffle things up more ... Then, from the far end of the yard, we heard her voice - half gasp, half scream: "Dios mio! - Mrs. Carson! Come here. Please!"

Motioning Charlie to remain, I grimaced and obeyed. Lucy was staring at the graffiti on the wall, horrified. "Mrs. Carson," she whispered, "has that ... been there long?"

"I don't think so," I answered quietly. "We'll have to ask Steven to be sure. Lucy, . . you'd better tell me ..."

"No! Please! Is there something we can wash that off with? Where's some water?" Frantically, she tore off her batik scarf.

From behind us, a calm, male, authoritarian voice inquired: "Wash what off, young lady?"

Telling Lucy not to answer the policeman's question was pointless ... but I did anyway. The rest of the evening - which seemed endless - was spent telling my own story over and over to various people, police and otherwise. It was quite a bit later that night when, finally, I got a few of my own questions answered.

We began with a police-escorted exit from the kiln yard. In the courtyard, we joined Charlie and a second uniformed officer who impassively filled his notebook with our names, addresses and other personal information. Our escort, accompanied by an outraged and incredulous Steven McCoy, returned to the kiln yard to do his own poking through the peephole, then re-emerged and instructed his partner to call for the homicide squad.

A very short eternity later, an astonishing number of policemen arrived - some uniformed, some not. They were followed by a fire engine and an ambulance. Charlie left, escorted, to switch on the floodlights - bringing a faint semblance of daylight to the courtyard. Lucy and I were ushered into Steven's studio to await further questions - the waiting accomplished under the watchful eyes of another young uniformed officer. As we found chairs, Lucy sent me an appealing glance to which I could only reply with a helpless shrug.

Steven's office, adjoining the kiln yard, had been pressed into service as an interrogation room - Lucy receiving the dubious honor of the first invitation.

Charlie rejoined us a few minutes later, seating himself at Steven's foot-powered potter's wheel. He absently began testing its mechanism, a frown crossing his solemn face each time the wheel squeaked. I rose and drifted toward him, intending to ask if, by some chance, the graffiti had been on the wall earlier. Our chaperone sternly waved me back to my seat.

Meekly I sat down at a workbench and began doodling with my finger in the dry clay dust on the table, trying to remember just what had happened here tonight. And what, if anything, I ought not to tell. Lucy's voice was audible but indistinguishable through the partition behind me.

Odd, I thought, then wondered why. After a long moment, I made the connect-ion. This was just the opposite of Mrs. Arriola's trouble with her voices - she had said that she could make out some of the words but couldn't recognize the voices. My situation was just the opposite - by listening hard, I could easily distinguish both Lucy's voice and that of the officer questioning her but I couldn't begin to make out a single word of what was being said.

I liked Lucy. She was sweet-natured, her batik designs were excellent and she'd been honestly concerned about Oliver's troubles and ready to pitch in to help him. I had seen her face - first, when she'd argued with Charlie, then in the kiln yard - and, unless she was an even better actress than she was a designer, I was sure that she had nothing to do with her grandfather's murder.

I was assuming, of course, that the kiln contained the corpus of one Mister J. D. Jarvis - which was still an open question ... That there was a body in the kiln was no longer a question - only the identity was undetermined. While I was waiting, a shift of the evening's breeze had brought the fragrant odor of roast pork - long pig! I was glad that my supper had been vegetarian.

I made little circles in the clay dust, wiped my finger on my skirt, then made more circles. The graffiti, if I'd read it right, was in Spanish. Earlier, when I surprised Lucy and her stealthy companion at the fountain, one of them had whispered something that sounded like - I wasn't sure - but Spanish, I thought.

It could have been Lucy. In the kiln yard, she'd muttered "My God!" - in Spanish - which proved nothing.

Mrs. Arriola, who heard voices predicting murder, undeniably spoke Spanish. She'd also left my shop in a near-panic on the arrival of Jarvis ... and Lucy.

Damnit! I wished Jonathan were here to talk things over with! Everything had been happening so fast ...

And where was Jonathan? It couldn't have been his body, I'd left him in my shop. Still there, I hoped. Or had the police found him? No, they wouldn't suspect him of anything.

I stopped making circles and started making plus signs. For whatever it was worth, there seemed to be some connection between Mrs. Arriola and the Jarvises. And why was Lucy so worried about her grandfather ... even before she'd heard our suspicions about the contents of the kiln? Now that I thought of it, I didn't remember anyone mentioning that to her at all. Had Mrs. Arriola told Lucy about the voices? If so, why?

Suddenly I found myself hoping, very strongly, that Mrs. Arriola hadn't told anybody else about the voices. And I hoped that she had a very good alibi for the evening. I couldn't imagine what motive she might have for murdering Jarvis - assuming, of course, that it was Jarvis' body - but ... Mrs. Arriola as a murderess didn't make any sense. Not that anything else made any sense either.

But ... could Lucy have been thinking along those same lines when she saw the graffiti on the wall in the kiln yard . . ?

Massaging my tired eyebrows, I decided to quit rationalizing my instincts and just follow them instead. The trouble was, my instincts only said: 'Lucy's a nice girl, back her up if you can'. They hadn't gone so far as to suggest how.

But Lucy managed that part herself. The murmur of voices that had been filtering though the wall from Steven's office suddenly jumped in volume. Still muffled but now distinguishable, I heard Lucy's voice saying in a loud, angry tone: "But I said no such thing! I wanted water to wash my face! Ask Mrs. Carson - it was hot back there!"

Our chaperone heard her too. He immediately knocked on the connecting door, opened it and spoke briefly. As the door closed again, the level of sound penetrating the wall returned to the verge of audibility. No more hints would be forthcoming but that had been enough. Mentally, I chalked up another point for Lucy - for presence of mind and resourcefulness.

I was still drawing my circles in the dust when a bland-faced officer in plain clothes summoned me into the office. Lieutenant Murphrey was the name he supplied as a minimal courtesy. Apparently, he too was assuming that the body would prove to be Jarvis', for all of his questions revolved around the mortgage, the Tenants' Meeting and subsequent events.

Lieutenant Murphrey was remarkably well informed on the evening's frictions - I assumed that Charlie had told him everything. No, Charlie hadn't been questioned yet but ... could Lucy have told him? She hadn't been at the meeting - only heard about it from me.

Answering his questions, I stuck to what I knew - glossing over only the emotional aspects. When asked directly about the marks on the wall, I didn't volunteer my interpetation. "Looked like scribbling to me," I offered. "Somebody cleaning a paint brush? Steven uses that size for applying glaze - to pottery," I amplified.

Somehow, I had the impression that he didn't believe me.

Most of Lieutenant Murphrey's questions were predictable. No, I hadn't known Jarvis before today. No, I knew nothing about the mortgage. No, I hadn't met Lucy prior to today. No, I didn't know that the Jarvis' were in town - how could I, I didn't know them. No, I hadn't known where they were staying - forgetting for the moment that I did - and many repetitions of those and other questions.

I also didn't mention the rumors about Jarvis' business practices or his rumored business associates - they were only rumors. Eventually, the lieutenant decided I wasn't worth further attentions and allowed me to leave - with the customary proviso not to do any traveling without offical permission. It was just like in the mystery novels - except that the body outside was real.

I went outside hoping that the cool air would help settle my teeming brain. For every question that Lieutenant Murphrey had asked, I had two - and I wasn't getting any answers.

Outside, the courtyard was a confusion of policemen, reporters - both TV and newspaper - and other strangers. Feeling rather dazed, I crossed to the dry fountain. The clean, cold night air held an autumnal scent - thank god, the early fragrance of roast meat had vanished. I settled and watched the activities.

There was plenty to watch, too.

Kilns take a long time to cool after firing. They're designed that way - any sudden change in temperature could cause cracks in the newly-fired pottery. Normally, of course, the temperature rise is equally slow. The giant, gas-fed burners heating the kiln are started slow, the gas feed increased several times over a period of 10 to 12 hours until the 'firing' temperature - about 2500 degrees - is reached. Then the flames are turned off and the kiln allowed to cool.

Thirty-six hours - a day and a half later - the kiln can be opened, for the first time, to remove the fired pots - very quickly, wearing asbestos insulated mittens. Then, if you're hungry, put some foil-wrapped potatoes in the now-empty kiln, go out for beer and, when you return, hot dogs and marshmallows can be roasted by dangling them on coathangers inside the still-hot kiln.

Removing a medium-to-rare charred body from the kiln before it became a well-done-to-crisp charred body wasn't a problem that the Brazos City Police had encountered before. That the dispatcher had summoned the Fire Department was understandable. Equally understandable was the fact that Charlie, while lighting the courtyard, had opened the gates to allow them access. The result was a maze of firehoses and miscellaneous equipment - most of it concentrated in front of Steven's shop. Uniforms - some in blue, others in yellow slickers - wandered back and forth across the area, lifting their feet to avoid the clutter.

"Damn turkeys!" Steven McCoy observed, suddenly appearing out of nowhere to hunker down and light a cigarette. "Stupid bastards wanted to spray water on the kiln to cool it down faster."

It didn't sound like a very good idea to me either. "They've have flooded the kiln yard," I agreed. "That would have washed away any footprints, clues, anything." As well as raising a mushroom shaped cloud of steam that could have been seen for miles, I thought, and might have set off a Civil Defense alert ... Just what we needed to finish the confusion.

"Footprints, hell!" growled Steven. "It might have cracked my firebricks." He punctuated the statement with a sharp drag on his cigarette. "Hell, maybe it wouldn't've ... but kilns aren't designed for that!"

Three yellow-slickered firemen began trundling a bulky, unidentifiable object toward the front door of the Pot Emporium. "Oh shit!" Steven rasped, dashing his half-smoked cigarette abruptly to the ground as he plunged back into the fray.

I didn't realize how exhausted I felt until I made the effort to rise and snuff out Steven's abandoned cigarette. Since I was up, I headed back to my shop, hoping that someone, somewhere, would know something ... maybe.

At my shop, I found Jonathan cozily in residence. My telephone had been commandeered by a gentleman of the press - Jonathan's nephew, David Bell.

David - young, handsome, straight black hair cut short - looks strangely conventional, at least by the standards of the Craft Compound. As I entered, he glanced up, saw who I was and became animated with one-armed gestures imploring me to come in, sit down and stick around - all without breaking his recital via telephone to, I presumed, his editor.

Jonathan was ensconced behind a card table - borrowed from my stock, Swedish import, rigid vinyl with flowered pattern. The load it bore did not come from my stock - a variety of sandwiches, a bucket of fried chicken, cartons of doughnuts, french-fried potatoes ...

"How absolutely lovely!" I said, pulling a rocker into position and reaching for a chocolate-covered cake donut. "No need to ask, Jonathan, you know you're welcome to picnic in my office any time. Nephews, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, second ortho-nieces twice removed by marriage ..."

That earned me a look of frosty reproach. "Plastic gewgaws," Jonathan explained, "are washable. Books are not. Especially, valuable books. You may thank David for providing the repast." I nodded gratitude toward the phone. "And now," Jonathan continued, "if you will take pity on a poor uninformed cripple ..?"

Phone still firmly implanted in ear, David was miming 'Wait 'till I can listen'! - without a pause in his recital.

"I'll tell you both - in a minute," I pitched into the food, feeling tired and ravenous, rather as if I had just returned home after a very long trip to very strange places.

By the time I was willing to forego further consumables in favor of a second cup of coffee, David was seated in the second rocker, notebook open and waiting. "Maybe it would save time if you tell me what you've already got," I suggested.

David nodded and flipped back several pages in the notebook. "Victim," he read, "Jerome Delaney Jarvis - age 62 - tentative identification by grand-daughter Lucia Valentia Jarvis - age ..."

'Ouch!' - "Poor Lucy," I interrupted. "Where is she now?"

David reassured me. "All they showed her was a monogrammed signet ring. The rest ... wasn't worth looking at. It will definitely be a closed casket funeral. Positive ID will depend on dental and medical records - those from New York."

"Have you talked to her?" I asked. "How was she taking it?"

"Only got to see Ms Jarvis for a couple of minutes," David explained. "Quiet and stunned, I guess. She wanted to go back to the apartment and lie down. There's a policewoman spending the night with her."

So much for a private conference with her. Not tonight, anyway.

"Cause of death," David read, "Nothing official pending coroner's report. Unofficially, indications found on the broken ... bottle or whatever it was - what they found in front of the kiln - suggest the victim was struck on the head, shoved into the kiln and the burners turned on."

"Fingerprints?"

"Not on the, er, bottle," he glanced at his notes. "Unglazed stoneware, bisque-fired. Porous surface wouldn't take prints - no latents anyway. They did find a couple of good ones elsewhere though. It seems that the controls for those burners are pretty stiff. There's a big steel crescent wrench kept near the kiln for operating them. Matter of fact, it was chained to the gas-line feeding the burners. Apparently the potter, ah ... Steven McCoy, had gotten tired of other tenants borrowing it."

"That's right," I affirmed. "Steven does tend to get kind of ... territorial about things like that. He had Charlie put that chain on it a couple of months ago."

David made a brief notation. "Heavy steel wrench, smooth surface, clean. They got at least two good prints from it."

"Probably Steven's," I said. The burners certainly hadn't been still lit when Charlie and I had arrived. When the burners are on, you can see the flames from anywhere in the kiln yard - and hear them from anywhere in the Compound. He must have turned it off before he came to complain to Charlie."

David shook his head. "McCoy's the big black guy, right?" I nodded. "Okay, according to him, the burners were off when he arrived. He noticed the residual heat and went ..."

"I know where he went," I said. "What about the package Steven found?"

"Package? What package?" I could almost see David's ears perk up as he flipped to a fresh sheet.

I had no intention of getting sidetracked at that point. "Never mind - I'll tell you later. Anyway, about fingerprints . . ?"

"They're the only ones I know about. They're still checking, of course. They'll be checking them against yours ... everybody's, I mean. The FBI keeps a big file in Washington. They'll be sent there for a search and match - something may turn up."

"What about the writing on the wall?" I asked, then winced as David promptly made a note of the phrase. "Er, those marks on the wall, I mean. The police seemed to think they might have been writing."

David grinned. "They've refused to release anything on that. Won't even let us back there to look. One of the video boys tried to get a mini-cam across the fence. Chief had the camera and tape held as evidence. But ..." he added tantalizingly.

"Well?" Jonathan demanded.

"Strictly off the record, you understand?" David asked. "Seriously. Crime lab photographer's a friend of mine but he hasn't said a word and I didn't tell you. Okay?"

We assured him that he never had.

"Anyhow," David resumed, "my friend just happened to be on the spot when one of the detectives got the idea that the markings looked like blood - the light's not real good, y'know. Well, the detective called the lab boys to take scrapings for analysis and got this Steven McCoy in to ask him how old the markings were. The idea being that, if they'd been there for months, they probably had nothing to do with the murder ..."

Which was old ground as far as I was concerned. "Well, had it?"

David's grin broadened. "This McCoy guy said they hadn't been there before tonight. He said so very loudly, very emphatically and repeatedly. As a matter of fact, I think he wanted to lodge a complaint of vandalism ... Anyway, he asked what the investigator was doing and they told him. Before anyone could stop him, he'd marched up, scraped off a thumbfull of the stuff and tasted it."

I blinked. Not even Steven ... "And?"

"He told them it was something called 'Peach Mat', one of the glazes he uses. He pulled one of those big plastic buckets out, told them to help themselves, called them all a bunch of damn turkeys and suggested what they could do with it."

Maybe, I thought hopefully, somebody had just been cleaning a paintbrush . . "Is that confirmed?"

David shrugged. "They'll run it through forensic, just to make sure, but my friend says they took a good look at the bucket and they're pretty well satisfied. Well, Daisy," he checked his notes, "that's about all I've got ... Oh, Jarvis was last seen alive by his granddaughter Lucy - last we know, except the killer, that is. Anyhow, that was when he left their apartment, about 7:00. She said that he got phone call, talked briefly - she didn't know what about - then stalked out, telling her to stay there. They were scheduled to catch a 9:30 plane to L. A. When he wasn't back by 8:00, she got worried and went looking for him."

"What about Oliver?" I asked. I'd almost forgotten him.

David consulted his notes again. "Oliver Fulton ... Yeah, Uncle Jonathan told me about this mortgage business. This is kind of vague, all I've got on him is that they took him to the station for a breathalyzer test."

"What?" I blinked. "As in drunk and disorderly?"

"That's the only kind of breath test I ever heard of," David returned, a trifle impatiently. "Now, Daisy, don't you think it's about my turn ..."

Well, if anybody could O. D. on Banana Cows, I supposed it would be Oliver. "Okay, David," I said and gave him the same brief account of my movements that I'd given the detectives, carefully not mentioning that I, too, had seen the famous marks on the wall. To insure that my account gave full measure, I added a long and gory description of just exactly how it felt to poke a half-burned body with a crowbar through the peephole of a ceramic kiln - which pleased David considerably. I found myself surprised at my own gift for lurid detail.

"That's great, Daisy," he said approvingly when I had finished. "I'm afraid, though, that the editor isn't going to let me quote you - people get queasy about details like that." Privately, I hoped his editor agreed - as a matter of fact, I was counting on it. A little overdose of description from me should be enough to choke David's editor and keep it all out.

Steven, I guessed, would still be mother-henning his kiln ... "Where's Charlie?" I asked. "And is, er, was anybody else around?"

David checked his notebook again. "Charlie Ruggles? The handyman? He was still in with the police a little bit ago. I heard they found someone else just outside when the patrol car arrived. Back parking lot, I think, but I haven't gotten any details yet." He glanced at the clock. "Come to think of it," he said, rising, "they may have turned some more people loose while I've been sitting here. I'd better go check around again. - Thanks, Daisy, and, if you remember any more details ..."

"You'll be the first," I promised, shooing him out the door - then I closed it behind him and pulled the shades.

As I turned back, Jonathan was producing a bottle of Bristol Cream Sherry from under the coffee stand - a bottle which normally resides in a mahogany cupboard in his shop - reserved for special customers. Ceremoniously, he poured generous servings into two clean styrofoam cups, observing with satisfaction, "Now that the younger generation is out of the way ..." He raised his cup in salute. "Here's to crime."

I ignored the invocation but drank the sherry gratefully - its warmth helped dispel the remaining chill produced more by the night's events than the cool autumn temperatures.

"And now, Daisy," he resumed, as I set the cup down, "I will thank you to tell me the real story. What in the hell is going on!"