I read the note and looked at Perry with furrowed brows. Shaking the note for emphasis, I paced the floor.
"You mean she and Pete Broons made some sort of suicide pact? You mean he committed suicide?"
"*I* don't mean anything, Jen. I'm just showing you the note. Is that Mary's calligraphy? Sure looks like it to me."
I glanced at the note again. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this note was penned by Mary. I had seen it enough to know the sharp points of the "N's" and the straight line of the script. Yet, there was something different about this calligraphy, but I didn't know what. While I could not deny it to be Mary's, there was something not quite right. I studied the note in more silence then handed it back to Perry.
Only Perry wasn't paying attention because he was reading yet another letter.
He handed the letter to me silently. His face was ashen.

The note was written in a penmanship I did not recognize.
" I regret this action I feel I must take. My demise has been planned to be discovered during the Halloween party and as a grand joke. I am due to meet someone else in a better life.
Pete Broons"
"My God, Perry. Where did you find this?"
"It was in this pile of papers I found on his dresser. I grabbed them just as I heard all the screaming. I didn't want to turn them over to the cops until I read them."
"Perry! Do you know this is evidence? You could get into all kind of trouble."
Perry shrugged. "When the cops get here, I'll give them the papers. Heck, I'll just tell them the truth. Pete Broons and Mary each killed themselves as part of a strange suicide pact. Case closed, I guess." Perry shrugged his shoulders again.
I sat down next to Perry and helped look through the papers. I found nothing more beside the suicide notes from Mary and Pete. The rest of the papers were business stuff, cancelled checks, notes, lists, the bureaucracy of life. Toward the bottom of the pile, I pulled out a snapshot of Pete Broons.
He had to be much younger in the picture. According to Perry, the art teacher was almost sixty years old. The fellow in this picture was no more than 35. It was definitely identifiable as a younger Pete Broons. For the second time that evening, something caught my eye. As I regarded the calligraphy of Mary, I also gazed at the picture of her dead art teacher. And for the second time that evening, I set down the source, the puzzlement unsatisfied.