“Yes.”

  “How long did you work in your husband’s business?”

  “About five years, until I got pregnant with Teddy. It was a difficult pregnancy and I had to spend a lot of time in bed.”

  “I understand you’ve been beating yourself up for certain decisions you made about end-of-life care for your parents.”

  Margaret looked at Whistler, who nodded again. She looked back at Malloy and said humbly, “I think I made some mistakes.”

  Malloy smiled. “I’ve made a few in my life—who hasn’t? But what I want to know is, did your cousin, Carrie Carlson, know about these ‘mistakes’?”

  Margaret swallowed but said bravely, “She knew about my father’s cancer and my mother’s stroke, and that I made the decisions about caring for them. I don’t know if she thought I made any wrong decisions.”

  “Did she know about the problems your husband had at his company, with expired medications he sold to veterinarians?”

  Margaret bit her lower lip, which had begun trembling, then shook her head without looking at Whistler. “No.”

  “Was she blackmailing you?”

  Margaret looked surprised, then frightened. “Is that what you think?”

  Whistler said sharply, “Do you have any reason to believe she was, Sergeant?”

  “Only the fact that she’s been murdered.”

  “I didn’t murder her!” declared Margaret.

  “Any idea who else had a motive to murder her?” asked Malloy.

  “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question to ask Mrs. Smith,” said Whistler. “You’re asking her to do your job for you.”

  “Nobody had any reason to murder her,” said Margaret. “She was a difficult person, but quite unable to hold a grudge or do anything that would cause anyone to be so angry with her they’d resort to murder. I don’t think she was able to come up with so outrageous an idea as blackmail, given the state she’d gotten herself into with her drinking. And anyway, who would she threaten to tell? Her fellow homeless women? How could that possibly harm me?”

  “Mrs. Smith—” remonstrated Whistler.

  Malloy spoke over him. “Good point. The problem is, they have found traces of Telazol in the bottle of bourbon that was found with her body.”

  That was fast, thought Betsy.

  “Telazol? What’s that?”

  “It’s an animal anesthetic.”

  Every trace of color fled from Margaret’s face. “Oh, my God,” she murmured.

  Betsy stood and went to put her hands on Margaret’s shoulders. They were stiff as stone. “You’re all right, you’re all right,” she murmured.

  “Please sit down, Ms. Devonshire,” said Malloy, and Betsy obeyed. But her heart was thumping.

  “Do you know if Din-Din, Incorporated, carries Telazol?”

  Hope bloomed in her eyes. “I think we don’t. I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s not a rare drug,” said Malloy.

  “I know a great deal about my husband’s business, and I’m telling you I’ve never heard of it,” insisted Margaret.

  “All right. Was your husband angry at Carrie?”

  Margaret glanced at Whistler.

  “Maybe you should ask Mr. Smith that question,” said the attorney.

  “I will,” promised Malloy. “But I’d like Mrs. Smith’s opinion, too.”

  “We were both angry at Carrie,” Margaret said. “She was a very annoying person. But we didn’t hate her, and we never were so angry that any thought of murdering her crossed our minds.”

  Malloy, who had been taking notes throughout this interview, took his time writing something down. Then he closed his notebook. “I think that’s all for now. Thank you, Mrs. Smith, for agreeing to speak with me.”

  “You’re welcome, Sergeant.” She stood, and so did Whistler and Betsy.

  “Come on, I’ll give you a ride back to your car,” Betsy said.

  “All right, thank you.”

  Margaret shook Whistler’s hand and thanked him. “I assume it will cost your usual hourly rate for this?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’m,” said Whistler cheerfully. He checked his watch.

  “Now hold on a minute,” said Malloy. “I want to talk briefly with Ms. Devonshire.”

  “I’m going now,” said Whistler. “Want to ride with me?”

  “No, I’ll wait out in the lobby for Betsy,” said Margaret, not wanting to hire the most expensive cabdriver in the world.

  When they had gone, Betsy said, “Well?”

  “That’s what I was gonna ask you: Well? What do you think?”

  “I think you ask good questions,” said Betsy. “But I’m not convinced she had anything to do with the death of her cousin. After all, Alec Porter is a veterinarian, he’s as likely as Marty to have Telazol in stock. And did you know that Dr. Porter had Jasper Bronson’s power of attorney?”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “Regina Kingsolver told me.”

  “Bronson’s attorney?”

  Betsy nodded.

  Malloy paged back in his notebook, frowning, found a place, and started writing. “Can a person with power of attorney go rummaging through the other person’s papers?”

  “I’m sure he can. Dr. Porter had the responsibility to manage Jasper’s affairs, and the only way he could do that, since Jasper was beyond consulting, was to go look at his records for himself. If Jasper had a copy of his will in his home, then Alec had access to it.”

  Malloy let out a low whistle. “So it is likely that he did know about the second will—and therefore, he must have realized that it was necessary for Janet to die first, before Jasper did.”

  “He said he didn’t?”

  “He said he was told the terms of the will by Regina Kingsolver.” Malloy smiled. “That’s probably true, just not the whole truth.”

  “Maybe he was scared or nervous of being interviewed by the police.”

  “No more so, as I recall, than any ordinary citizen is made nervous by a police interview.”

  “The problem is,” said Betsy, “how did he find her? And having found her, how did he persuade her to come to meet him so he could give her the poisoned bottle?”

  “Tell me that, and I’ll make an arrest.” He turned the pages in his notebook to find a fresh sheet of paper. “Tell me about your trip to Fargo. I hear you took someone with you.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “A homeless woman named Annie Summerhill. I used her to find information about Janet Turnquist. Janet stayed at the Fargo YWCA, which functions as a women’s emergency shelter.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Janet was truly insane, heard voices all the time, according to a young woman who sat up with her one night when she got the greebles.”

  “‘Greebles’?”

  “A scared disconnect from reality. Like, crying, ‘No, no, no!’ and ‘Shut up, shut up!’ till her roommate at the Y woke up and sat with her and listened sympathetically to her ranting. Janet could apparently manage to ignore the racket in her head when she wanted something badly enough, such as a place to stay.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She talked her way into a Hardanger class—that’s a kind of needlework—at Nordic Needle, a needlework shop in Fargo. Very likely the bookmark you found in Carrie’s possession is the fruit of that class. I wonder how Carrie came to own it.”

  “Maybe Janet gave it to her.”

  “Stitchers give away their work all the time,” said Betsy with a nod. “But the bookmark wasn’t finished, and anyway, Carrie wasn’t a friend. She went to an awful lot of trouble to learn how to make it. The teacher of that class, Roz Watnemo, had to loan Janet a pair of magnifying glasses in order for Janet to succeed. Janet later scraped together the money to buy a pair for herself.”

  Mike was taking notes, writing swiftly. “Okay, needlework was important enough to her to suppress the voices. Anything else?”

  “Someone—possibly a relative—bought her a bus ticket from Fargo to Minneapolis.”

  “Is that a generic Minneapolis, meaning the Cities, or even Saint Paul?”

  “The witness said Minneapolis.”

  “Hmmmmm,” said Mike.

  “Yes, it made me go ‘hmmmm,’ too. But what does it mean?”

  “Somebody either wanted her out of the town he’s operating in, or wanted her to come within his reach.”

  “Alec Porter or Mark Turnquist. Okay, which one?”

  “Maybe neither. Neither of them is from Excelsior—or Minneapolis, for that matter. On the other hand, Margaret Smith is from Excelsior, which is where Carrie’s body was found. And it appears that Mrs. Smith was the last person to see Carrie alive.”

  “I know, I know. But I think Marty’s motive is thin, and I am as sure as I can be that Margaret is innocent. Were there a pair of reading glasses in Janet’s belongings, by the way?”

  Mike checked his notebook. “Yes. Not in the box with her other embroidery stuff, but loose in one bag. It was the one tipped over, with stuff spilling out.”

  “Did you notice the little scissors? They had the tip of one of the blades broken off.”

  “What does that mean—and how do you know that?”

  “Emily Hame. You showed her the things from Janet’s plastic bags, and she has an excellent memory for detail. And I don’t know if it means anything, except that when you’re carrying all your worldly possessions around in plastic bags, things happen.”

  “Hmmmm. Anything else?”

  Betsy pictured a street map of Excelsior, and in her mind she traced a walking pattern from the Fiedlers’ house to the Dock. “The two bodies were found what, a little less than three blocks from each other? I wonder if they were poisoned in the same place, and one of them walked away.”

  “When I talked with another veterinarian, she said Telazol is very fast acting, and one of its first effects is to paralyze the extremities.”

  Betsy threw up her hands. “Then I don’t know what happened!” she exclaimed, exasperated.

  Back in her car, with Margaret beside her, Betsy said, “There is another possible suspect who had access to Telazol. He’s a veterinarian.”

  “Veterinarian? I don’t think there’s a veterinarian in our family.”

  “This person had a motive to kill Janet, not Carrie.”

  Margaret blinked three times, then relief brought color flooding into her face. “Well, there, then! You see? There, then!”

  There was a silence that lasted a few moments.

  “Who is he?” asked Margaret. “Does Sergeant Malloy know about him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t think Mike would want me to tell you that.”

  Twenty-three

  IT was getting near to closing, and Betsy was beyond tired, too tired to be hungry. And okay, happy—there had been a steady stream of customers all afternoon. It was a good thing there was an extra pair of hands in the shop as Betsy, in her fog of exhaustion, became increasingly clumsy and forgetful.

  Another reason she was happy was that Connor had called a few minutes ago to ask if she wanted to go out to dinner. “I know you’re probably very tired, machree, but I don’t feel like eating alone.”

  “Yes, so long as it’s right after I close. And if you’ll take me home early. I’m really tired.”

  “See you in half an hour, then,” he’d replied.

  So when the door went “bing-bong” as someone came in, it wasn’t as much of an effort for her to turn with a smile to greet the customer.

  But her smile didn’t fool Connor. “Oh, my dear!” he exclaimed, coming to take her into his lovely strong arms. “I can’t believe you agreed to go out to dinner when you are obviously in no shape to go anywhere but up to your apartment—and then only with me pushing from behind!”

  “Oh, Connor, I love you,” she murmured.

  Connor sat at the library table until the closing-up business was finished. Then he took Betsy by the arm and led her up the stairs to his apartment. He fixed a nice omelet and fed her like a very young child.

  Then he took her to her apartment and put her to bed. He even remembered to feed the cat before returning to his own lonesome bed.

  Betsy slept for twelve hours. She woke feeling only a little sluggish, and two cups of black English tea washed away the last of the vapors and brightened her outlook. She phoned Connor to thank him tenderly for taking care of her last night, then toasted an English muffin for breakfast and went downstairs a little before ten to open the shop.

  GODWIN was pleased to see how quickly Betsy had bounced back from her exhaustion of the day before. But he had already called part-timer Mindy to help them out.

  “No, don’t send her home,” said Betsy. “I have an idea I need to explore.” She waited until midmorning, when things slowed in the shop. She announced she had an errand to run and would be back in less than an hour.

  She went out into the dazzlingly bright but very cold day, up Lake Street, across Water Street, and into the alley that ran between a small parking lot and the back of the movie theater.

  She found nothing but bare concrete scattered with a gritty mix of salt and sand. Evidently the theater owner was out to discourage anyone else from dying back there and lying unseen. Betsy cast about, but couldn’t determine for sure where Carrie’s body had lain.

  She made a grimace of annoyance and set off, up to Second Street, then past Trinity Episcopal Church, around the corner, and two more blocks to the Fiedlers’ residence halfway along Maple Street. Theirs was an attractive Tudor-style, brick-and-timber house with a steep swoop of roof over the entrance and mullioned windows marking the living room. The house was set near the back of the lot, and the broad yard’s snow cover was unbroken except for the curving sidewalk leading to the front door.

  And the small area at the front of the yard, which was more than knee-deep in much-trampled snow. Betsy stood awhile, absorbing details. It had snowed three or four times since Janet’s body had been recovered from the scene, so the choppy surface was smoothed into soft lumps.

  Toward the back of the disturbed area was a cliff-like structure where the snow had been sliced, probably marking the farthest limit where the body lay. As she looked, Betsy saw that there were horizontal pale gray stripes at irregular heights in the snow. She frowned at the stripes, wondering where they had come from.

  And where had she seen that effect before?

  She looked around, at the houses on either side of the Fiedler residence. One of them had a big stone fireplace chimney on its side.

  Of course.

  She went up the walk of the house next door and rang the doorbell. A very elderly man in blue summer-weight trousers and a long-sleeved gray dress shirt answered, an equally elderly woman standing behind him. “Yes?” he inquired, in a strong if age-roughened voice.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Betsy. “May I talk to you about your fireplace?”

  A few minutes later, Betsy was seated on a comfortable red plaid chair in a very neat and clean living room, drinking a cup of cocoa, while Mr. and Mrs. Holt sat side by side on a green plaid couch, also drinking cocoa. The room was stifling.

  She noticed a lot of smoke stains on the upper front of the fireplace and said, “You must build a lot of fires in there.”

  “Every night since the first snowfall,” said Mr. Holt proudly.

  “From seven until nine,” said his wife. “Sometimes longer.”

  “What a pleasant thing to do,” said Betsy.

  “Well, we’re getting past going out dancing,” said Mr. Holt.

  Mrs. Holt said, “Especially in winter. We each gave up driving in bad weather when we turned eighty. That meant Robbie quit three years ago and I stopped on my birthday in April last year.”

  “Do you miss it?” asked Betsy.

  “You know, I thought I would, but once I quit, I realized I’d been scared behind the wheel for at least six months prior. Our daughter gives us a ride to church and takes us grocery shopping and out to a movie once a month.”

  “Or to the dinner theater in Chanhassen back in December,” amended Robbie. “She’s a real sweetie, isn’t she, Darla?”

  “Yes, she is. That was the one night we didn’t build a fire.”

  “Are you sure there wasn’t another?”

  They were sure.

  “Why did you want to talk to us about our fireplace?” asked Robbie.

  “I remember from when I was a little child staying with a great-aunt and -uncle out in the country over Christmas. I saw beside their sidewalk that the snow had two stripes in the middle. I asked Uncle Henry why the snow had stripes, and he said the fireplace sent soot and smoke up the chimney and it fell down on the snow. Then new snow covered the soot and it looked like a layer cake when he shoveled it. Today I saw the stripes in the Fiedlers’ yard and I saw your fireplace chimney, and it kind of made me nostalgic. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” said Darla. “I think that’s sort of sweet, you seeing the striped snow and remembering your great-aunt and -uncle.”

  “Thank you. Now I must go. Thank you for the cocoa, it was delicious.”

  Back outdoors, on the sidewalk, Betsy used her cell phone to call Mike Malloy.

  He drove up a few minutes later, and when he got out of his car, she noticed he had a camera in one gloved hand.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you meant by striped snow,” he said as he approached.

  She explained about the senior couple and their habit of lighting a fire every night, then pointed to the effect exposed by whoever had cleared an area around where Janet’s body had been found.

  “If you clear the snow in front of that part, just down to the level where Janet lay,” she said, “and look up the number of snowfalls since her death, it should give you solid information about how long her body was there before it was found.”

  Malloy thought about it, then nodded slowly. “I think you’ve got something there,” he said. He stooped on the sidewalk and took three pictures of the layered snowbank. “But we’ll have to be very careful about it. There was already snow on the ground under her body. I think we’d better get a forensics team out here to do this right.” He straightened. “You can be damn clever sometimes, you know that?”