The driver, a large man who looked like he could handle a sledgehammer as well as a crowbar, stepped back a pace. “No way I want to have anything to do with a murder!”

“Then help me uncrate that sewing machine and you can go.”

“But how about the guy on the other end? He’s not gonna be happy when that sewing machine he bought doesn’t get delivered.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’ll mind,” Hannah said. “If I’m right about what’s inside that crate, he won’t be there to receive it anyway.”

“Ready?” Hannah said, lifting the lid the driver had loosened with his crowbar before he’d left and propping it up against the nearest wall. “Did you see them crate it, Mother?”

“They did it the day Burke bought it.”

“When was that?”

“Thursday afternoon. He came in with two carpenters from the crew to crate it for him.”

“It looks like it’s wrapped in furniture pads and then taped,” Hannah said using the scissors her mother handed her to cut the tape.

“It’s also secured on the inside. I watched Burke do it. He wrapped a strap around the top so it wouldn’t open or twist on the hinges, and he taped the drawers so they couldn’t bang open and closed during transit.”

“And he did it himself,” Hannah noted, unwrapping the pad and letting it fall to the bottom of the crate.

“Yes. I did think that was a little unusual, but then he told me why.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He said he knew he had to have that sewing machine the moment he set eyes on it. His mother died when he was only ten, you know, and she had one just like it. Every year, before school started, they used to go shopping for material so she could sew new shirts for him. He still has several of them. They’re keepsakes. And now he has a replica of the sewing machine, too.”

“Right,” Hannah said, not believing the story of the dead mother and the shirts for an instant. “So that’s why he offered you so much money for it?”

“That’s what he said. I pointed out that old Sears machines weren’t worth even half of what he offered, but he said he didn’t care, that he wanted that particular model. He said he was buying it in honor of his mother and he’d think of her every time he saw it. And he was also buying it because it was on the set and he wanted a memento of his very first movie.”