“Oh, brother!” Hannah breathed, wondering how her mother could have swallowed such a line. But then she reminded herself that Burke was a superlative actor and if he’d told her the same story, she probably would have fallen for it, too. It was entirely possible that Burke’s mother had owned a Sears sewing machine. Hundreds of thousands of women had. And it was also possible that Burke remembered that you could lift the lid and drop something inside to hide it from view. There was plenty of room around the sewing head to conceal an object the size of a revolver.

“So what did you find?” Delores asked.

“Nothing yet.” Hannah couldn’t pull out the drawers. The crate was built too snugly around the machine. But she didn’t worry about that because the deputies probably checked those. “I’m going to cut the strap and lift up the lid. If I’m right, that’s where Burke hid the prop gun after he put the real revolver in its place.”

“Wait,” Delores advised, opening a drawer and pulling out a pair of gloves. “Put these on. You don’t want to destroy any fingerprints.”

“Good thinking, Mother,” Hannah said, “but fingerprints don’t prove anything in this case. Everyone on the set saw Burke practice taking the prop gun out of the drawer right before the first take. He got his fingerprints on it then. And since he was using the real gun when he convinced Dean that he was having trouble doing the scene, his fingerprints are on that, too.”

“So he was only pretending he’d lost his motivation for the scene?” Delores asked.

“That’s my theory. And if I find the prop gun stuck in this sewing machine, I can prove it.”

Hannah held her breath as she cut the strap and lifted the lid. She felt around in the largest space between the bottom of the sewing machine head and the sewing platform and she began to smile.

“You found it?” Delores asked, interpreting her daughter’s smile to mean success.

“Oh, yes. Now all I have to do is

” Hannah stopped speaking and worked to extricate the gun. “Yes. Here it is!”

“So Burke just said he loved my sewing machine because he needed it to get rid of the evidence?”

“I’m afraid so, but at least it didn’t work. Let’s get back to the party and tell Mike what happened. He can arrest Burke.”

Delores looked worried. “I just hope Mike can catch him in time.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Burke danced with me earlier, he asked me to supervise the loading of the crate because he was leaving tonight. He said he had to drive back out to the inn, pack up his things, and catch a midnight flight out of Minneapolis.”

“A flight to where?”