The mattress wobbled as her cat Sophie jumped up on it, summoned by the sound of the radio to her morning cuddle. Betsy obliged, and the big cat came under the blanket, ecstatically purring, touching Betsy’s arm gently when Betsy threatened to fall back asleep.

  The song ended, time to get up.

  The radio started up so early because it was Wednesday, one of the three days each week that Betsy went to water aerobics. She went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, then pulled on her old swimsuit. Over it went jeans and a sweater, then boots and a heavy coat. She picked up her zippered bag containing soap, shampoo, deodorant, and underwear, and trotted down the stairs and out the back door to the small parking lot. There were about four inches of fresh snow on the ground; her snowplow man hadn’t come through yet.

  She went up Highway 7 to 100 North, off it to Golden Valley Drive, and pulled into the hollow containing the Courage Center and its big pool.

  The pool was Olympic size, heated to bath temperature, so the air above it was warm and very humid. Betsy could feel her winter-dry skin soaking it up as she went down the four steps into thigh-deep water. Ahhhhhhh, she thought, comforted. It was now six thirty in the morning, but the huge windows on the far wall showed nothing but the scattered lamps of the parking lot in the darkness.

  Despite the earliness of the hour, despite the darkness out there and the heaps of snow the darkness only hid, she felt herself coming fully awake. In the pool with her were two men and seven other women, a medium-size class.

  Emily was the group’s newest leader. She was young, and had the slender build of an Olympic gymnast. Her button nose and merry smile combined with her build to make her look about fourteen years old.

  But she knew what she was doing, and soon the group was kicking straight-legged forward, reaching for their right toes with their left hands then their left toes with their right hands.

  “When you’re ready,” called Emily after a couple of minutes, “cross-country ski!” When she saw everyone had changed motions, she said in a satisfied voice, “There you go.”

  The class was an hour long. As usual, things grew less organized during the last quarter of the class, when everyone was riding on Styrofoam “noodles” at the deep end of the pool. Some relaxed and paddled aimlessly around, others gathered in twos and threes to chat. In vain, Emily called for flutter kicks or snow angel movements; half of the people either ignored her or couldn’t hear her.

  The music changed from beat-heavy disco to New Age dreaminess, and Emily wanted everyone to hang their legs down and circle their feet at the ankles. Betsy, winding up a recipe exchange with Ingrid, happened to hear the call and obeyed.

  “So,” said Ingrid in her charming German accent, also twirling her feet, “how are things with Connor?” Ingrid was familiar with Betsy’s current love interest, Connor Sullivan.

  “Oh, I miss him. He and his daughter are in New York visiting her mother, Connor’s ex-wife.”

  “That might be dangerous.”

  “I know. But he calls me about every other night, and so far, so good.”

  “I will keep my fingers crossed that it continues like that. And how are other things in Excelsior?”

  “We’re all right. Things are settling down after that homeless woman was found frozen to death—that kind of thing is rare in Excelsior.”

  “Yes, it must have been a shock to find someone like that. Do they know who she is?”

  “Her name is Carolyn Carlson.”

  “And no one has asked you to solve the mystery of her death?” asked Ingrid lightly.

  “No, thank goodness. I’m awfully busy in the shop. Inventory is coming up so we’re running a big sale.”

  “I’ll try to get out there before your inventory—when is the deadline?”

  “Saturday.”

  “All right, people,” called Emily, “let’s go back to the shallow end to stretch out.”

  DRIVING back to Excelsior on frozen roads, with snow blowing across them in sinuous curves, Betsy indulged in a daydream of retiring to warm and sunny Italy.

  But once back in the cozy shop, with a repeat customer making admiring sounds at the cross-stitch patterns she was perusing, Betsy decided her occupation wasn’t so bad.

  Then Margaret came back in with the materials and the canvas she had bought just a few days ago. “I need to return all this,” she said sadly. “I haven’t touched it yet, so I can get my money back, right?”

  “What, you decided you didn’t like the project?” asked Betsy, surprised. Margaret had never returned so much as a skein of floss before.

  “Oh, no, I love it! I was about to start on it when—” Her breath caught on a sob. “Oh, Betsy, we need to save every penny!”

  Betsy asked, surprised, “Your husband’s company has gone under?”

  “Oh, no, not anything like that. We had to hire a lawyer. A criminal defense lawyer!”

  “Oh,” said Betsy, momentarily nonplussed. Why on earth would the Smiths need an attorney specializing in defending people accused of a crime? They were both in their late fifties and lived, so far as she knew, lives of quiet probity. Diminutive Margaret was about as friendly and harmless a creature as Betsy could imagine, and her husband, whom Betsy had met only once, had seemed every bit as much a gentleman as one might expect to find married to Margaret.

  Her face must have shown her bewilderment, because Margaret said, “Oh, Betsy, we’re in such terrible trouble!” Her big blue eyes filled with tears.

  “Here, Margaret, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m sure Godwin told you the woman found dead last week was my cousin Carrie?”

  Betsy nodded. “Yes, he did. What an awful thing to happen to someone you know, someone who’s a relative.”

  “Well, they finally got around to doing an autopsy, and there’s a detective who isn’t satisfied that she froze to death but seems to think she was actually murdered.”

  “No! Oh, Margaret, that’s terrible! Why on earth does he think that?”

  “I don’t completely understand—he’s not telling us much. I thought it was clear that she got drunk and passed out in the snow and froze to death. And she was a terrible drunk, an alcoholic, everyone who knew her will tell you she was. But I think he thinks someone put something in the bottle of liquor she had with her, something poisonous.”

  “How . . . peculiar,” said Betsy.

  “I’m sure it was a terrible accident, a combination of her drinking and the fact that she was out of sight behind the movie theater. What she was doing back there, I don’t know, no one knows. If she hadn’t been back there, someone might have seen her fall and called an ambulance. It may have been the cold that killed her, or it may have been the alcohol, but Sergeant Malloy is sure there was something in that bottle besides bourbon.”

  “Margaret, I’m horrified!” said Godwin, who had been shamelessly eavesdropping from behind a spinner rack. He came out and put an arm around her slender shoulders. “How awful and . . . scary!”

  “But terrible as that is,” Margaret continued, lifting her chin, trying to look brave, “the worse part is now he’s looking for her murderer—and he’s looking at me!”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous!” said Betsy. “How can they possibly think you’d kill anybody?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Margaret’s voice broke over the words. She put the bag of floss and the canvas stretcher down on the desk. “It’s like a nightmare, only I can’t seem to wake up from it.”

  “There, there!” said Godwin, patting her arm. “I can’t believe they’re serious about suspecting you.”

  “But he is, he asks the most impertinent questions and looks at me as if he’s going to arrest me!”

  Betsy frowned at her. “But surely Mike must have said something.”

  “But he hasn’t, and it’s too dreadful! He won’t tell me why he’s suspicious. He just says they have to consider all possibilities, and he’s considering me because I’m her cousin and because I live in Excelsior and she died here and . . . and, well, I was complaining about her to some friends after church last Sunday and it turned out one of them is Mike’s wife—that will teach me to keep family matters within the family!”

  “Complaining about her?” inquired Betsy.

  “Well, she came to our door to ask for the price of a bus ticket to Florida, and when I wouldn’t give it to her, she kicked in a basement window. She’d done that sort of thing before. We used to give her money when she’d come around begging, but she would never buy that ticket or the winter coat or whatever she said she needed—instead she would buy drugs or liquor. When we would offer to drive her to the bus depot or Target to buy the item direct, she’d get angry and say we didn’t trust her. And of course we didn’t trust her—she proved over and over that she was utterly untrustworthy!” Margaret sniffed. Exasperation was drying up her tears. She offered a shaky smile. “Maybe up in heaven, she is driving God and his angels crazy.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said Godwin.

  “Thank you, Godwin,” said Margaret, missing the joke. “And you’re right, Betsy, it’s completely ridiculous, and I can’t believe Sergeant Malloy is serious about his suspicions, but we’ve been advised to retain an attorney—and you would not believe how expensive a criminal defense attorney is! So back comes my new pet project, at least until they find out what really happened to Carrie.”

  Betsy looked down at the big bag of wool and floss, and at the stretcher still in its cardboard sleeve. Normally Crewel World gave only store credit for returned items.

  Godwin said, “Betsy, these things are exactly as she took them from the shop. It looks as if she didn’t even open the bag.”

  Betsy nodded. “Under the circumstances, of course I’ll remove the charge from your credit card. I’m so sorry to hear about your troubles.”

  But Margaret wasn’t finished. She raised a hand to indicate that and said, “Now that I’ve destroyed any measure of goodwill by returning these things, I have a favor to ask. I’ve heard many stories about you helping people wrongly accused of a crime. Could you possibly help us by investigating Carrie’s death?”

  “Why . . . I don’t know.” Betsy could not have said why she was surprised at the request. “We’re running a special inventory-reduction sale and then the inventory itself . . .” But Margaret only looked more pleadingly at Betsy. She equivocated, “I’d have to think about it.”

  “Please, Betsy, we’re so frightened, and we don’t know what to do, who else to ask!”

  “Oh, Margaret, you must know I would like to help. But these investigations of mine sometimes root out old quarrels or old secrets you might not want exposed.”

  This disconcerted Margaret, but not for long. She swallowed and said, “That can’t matter, not now, not as much as finding out what really happened. I’ll answer any questions, and I’ll tell anyone you want to talk to that they must be honest with you. We have to know the truth!”

  Margaret’s large blue eyes were swimming with tears. She pressed her fingers against her lips to stop their trembling, then said bravely, “Somehow, we’ll manage you knowing all our darkest secrets. Please, Betsy, help us. Please!”

  Overwhelmed with compassion, Betsy said, “All right, I’ll do what I can.”

  Godwin had stepped back behind Margaret to look as beseeching as she was. Now he leaped gently up and down, clapping his hands silently, smiling in pleasure.

  Margaret, sensing movement, turned and caught him in the act.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said, “I just love watching Betsy sleuth. She’s very good, and I’m sure she’ll get this all straightened out for you. In fact, I’m sure everything will turn out splendidly!”

  Margaret turned back and looked at Betsy, this time with the tears loosened and streaking down her cheeks. “God bless you,” she said.

  Three

  THE next morning dawned overcast, and by the time Betsy went down to open the shop at quarter to ten, it was snowing. Again. It had been an early winter, and although it was only January, she was already not in the least inclined to think snow romantic or even pretty.

  The shop was the middle one of three in the old brick building, with apartments on the second floor. It was located in the small town of Excelsior, Minnesota, on the southwestern shore of the large and beautiful Lake Minnetonka.

  For once Betsy was glad her shop was always looking toward the future season, never operating in real time. So the lights came on to shine on knitting yarns in the pale pastels of spring, painted canvases of bunnies and daffodils, counted cross-stitch patterns of blooming trees and babbling brooks and women in crinoline dresses strolling in gardens full of flowers. For just a few moments she stood basking in the scenes, ignoring the white flakes drifting down outside the big front window.

  Then she started the coffee brewing, put the start-up money in the cash drawer, turned on the radio—tuned to a light jazz station—and made sure all was in readiness for any shopper who might drop in.

  When they didn’t come flooding in all at once, she sat down with her employee list and began making phone calls. She called current employees and past ones. She’d already talked to most of them, lining them up for inventory, now only three days off. Some had other jobs, making them hard to connect with—they didn’t want a second employer to call them at their main place of work. Others were simply hard to find, perhaps because they knew it was inventory time.

  Betsy didn’t want just current and old employees to turn out for this tedious but necessary task; she wanted those who could come to bring a reliable relative or friend along. The more hands, the swifter the process. Betsy had allotted all day Sunday to it, and hoped it could be done in the single day of the week that the shop was closed. She would hold a pizza party to mark the completion of the inventory—no, wait, the only pizza joint in Excelsior had recently closed its doors, it would have to be a deli sandwich party. She made a note to talk to Sol’s Deli next door about subs, pickles, and potato chips. And to remind herself to pick up some twelve-packs of soft drinks.

  Meanwhile: “Hello, Shelly? Are you still available on Sunday to help with inventory? You are? Great! I don’t suppose Harve—No, I didn’t think so . . . But who? Mindy who? How do you spell that? K-O-W-A-L-S-K-I, just like it sounds. How old is she? Seventeen, you say. But a good, hard worker? Okay, I’ll add her to my list. Bring her with you, why don’t you? I’ll pay her base wages and hope she’s worth it. Eight o’clock Sunday morning, yes. Thanks, Shelly, see you and Mindy then.”

  A few more calls and she had an even dozen, not counting herself and Godwin. Fourteen pairs of hands, that should do very well.

  No customers had come in to interrupt her phone calls, which was a disappointment.

  She thought about phoning the local liquor store, Haskell’s, about whether they were missing a quart bottle of bourbon. She had actually picked up the phone when she had a second thought, which changed her mind. Taking a bottle of liquor from an active alcoholic even just long enough to pour poison into it could be difficult. Easier to buy it yourself, poison it, and arrange for the drinker to get hold of it. He, or she, could have given it to Carolyn Carlson, but it would be more clever to put it out somewhere so Carrie could steal it.

  Clever but cruel.

  The door sounded its two notes. “Sorry I’m late.” It was Godwin, arriving breathless, brushing snow off his shoulders, stamping it off his boots, shaking it off his white leather briefcase, a present from an old boyfriend. “Honestly, if it doesn’t stop soon, it won’t be all melted until the end of May!”

  Ever since Godwin and Rafael had moved into the great gray clapboard condominium right on the lakeshore across the street, Godwin was more likely to arrive a few minutes late for work than when he had been living halfway across town.

  He hurried to the back to take his coat off and get his good shoes out of the briefcase. They were old shoes, but made by Gucci and as lovingly cared for as they were long-wearing. Godwin had a keen eye and a deep appreciation of the finer things. That was one reason he liked working in a needlework shop: The surroundings pleased the eye.

  Betsy watched him pause as he came out of the little back room to look around at the cross-stitch models that lined the walls in the back portion of the shop—a willowy blond in a beige sweater, a little smile on his handsome face.

  But that smile faded as his gaze went forward to the front window, where snow was falling thickly. “When I think of my favorite golf course under all those drifts,” he sighed, “I could just cry.” Godwin was new to the game, but his enthusiasm for it seemed boundless.

  The door sounded its two notes again, and this time it was a longtime customer, here for the sale. The workday had begun.

  They stayed busy until about an hour after lunch, when a lull set in. Betsy took a reporter’s spiral notebook out of a drawer of the desk that served as a checkout counter, chose a pen from the china mug full of them, and sat down at the library table, opening the notebook to a blank page.

  She printed CAROLYN MARIE CARLSON at the top of it, then began a list of things she needed to find out. Number one, of course, was, “Did someone kill Carolyn?” She picked up the phone. No time like the present for answering that question at least.

  She dialed Mike Malloy’s cell number and after a couple of rings he answered, “Malloy.”

  “Mike, it’s Betsy. Margaret Smith came to see me—”

  He growled, “Let me guess why.”

  “You know why. She’s terribly upset and frightened because you think she poisoned her cousin Carrie.”

  “Or maybe that husband of hers, Marty.”