I leaned my head back against the sofa frame, playing mind games. "It could have been Beverly too, you know. Maybe Bev bumped her off in the ladies' room at the St. Louis airport."

"Or killed her in Santa Teresa and impersonated her from that point on. Maybe she was the one who packed the bags and took the plane."

"Try it the other way," I said. "Think about Pat. I mean, what if Pat Usher were a stranger to Elaine, just someone she met on the plane. Maybe they started talking and Pat realized –" I dropped that idea when I saw the expression on Julia's face. "It does sound pretty lame," I said.

"Oh, well – no harm done in speculating. Maybe Pat knew her in Santa Teresa and followed her from there."

I ran that around in my head. "Well, yeah. I guess it could be. Tillie says she heard from Elaine – at least, she assumed it was Elaine – by postcard until March, but I guess somebody could have faked that too."

I filled her in on my conversations with Aubrey and Beverly and right in the middle of it, my memory kicked in; one of those wonderful little mental jolts, like a quick electrical shock when a plug's gone bad. "Oh wait, I just remembered something. Elaine got a bill from some furrier here in Boca. What if we could track him down and find out if he's seen the coat? That might give us a lead."

"What furrier? We have quite a few."

"I'd have to check with Tillie. Can I make a call to California? If we can track down the coat, maybe we can get a line on her."

Julia wagged the cane toward the telephone. Within minutes, I'd gotten Tillie on the line and told her what I needed.

"Well, you know that bill got stolen along with the rest, but I just got another one. Hold on and I'll see what it says." She put the receiver down and went to fetch the mail.

She got back on the line. "She's being dunned. It's a second overdue notice from a place called Jacques – seventy-six dollars for storage and two hundred dollars for having the coat recut. Wonder why she'd do that? There's a little happy face drawn by hand: 'Thanks for your business' – followed by a sad face: 'Hope the delay in payment is just an oversight.' A few more bills have come in too. Let me see what those look like."

I could hear Tillie ripping open envelopes on her end of the line.

"Oops. Well, these are all overdue. It looks like she's run up a lot of charges. Let's see. Oh my. Visa, MasterCard. The last date on these is about ten days ago, but I guess that was just the end of the billing period. They're asking her not to use her cards until she's paid the balances down."