Betsy got her face under control before Irene turned back. She said, “Did you see anyone else while you were out walking?”

Irene thought. “Not close up. And not anyone I recognized. Not many people were out that night. And I wasn’t looking around, I was just enjoying the misty night air. I came down Water to Second, and up Second to Excelsior and up Excelsior to McDonald’s.” She paused in the act of rolling up her wonderful cross-stitch picture. “You know, if I had gone one block more, down to Lake, and come up that way, I might have seen the open front door of this shop, and it might have been me who found your sister’s body. Isn’t that interesting!” She tucked the roll of cloth under her arm. “You will let me know if you want to display this, won’t you? I’ll get it framed if you do.”

“Thank you, yes, I’ll do that,” said Betsy, and watched her march out. That woman, she thought, has no instinct for self-preservation at all.

The next day, Jill, Shelly, Godwin, and Betsy sat at the worktable in Crewel World. Betsy was knitting—her fingers moved more swiftly now, but not so swiftly that people might suspect her needles were getting warm from the friction. Shelly, who was supposed to be at a teachers’ conference, was needlepointing an angel as a Christmas gift; and Godwin was doing some very elaborate needlepoint stitches on a sampler.

Jill was in uniform, on duty, and so didn’t have anything to work on. She was drinking coffee and tickling Sophie under the chin. Sophie, purring loudly, was draped in luxurious ease over a cushion on what Betsy had come to realize was her chair. Jill had come in to have a private conversation with Betsy, but the other two were determined to miss nothing and Betsy couldn’t think of a task that would take them to the back of the shop, out of ear-shot.

“I heard someone saw Joe Mickels near the store carrying the murder weapon,” said Shelly.

“Who told you that?” Betsy demanded.

“Heard it at the Waterfront Coffee Shop; that’s where you go to get the good gossip.”

“But it’s not true,” Jill said firmly. “In the first place, no one knows what the murder weapon is. In the second place it probably isn’t an oar.”

“A broken oar,” corrected Godwin, who had decided this fact was of great significance. “If you could have seen the way Joe behaved toward Margot, you wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Betsy’s suspicions—or the story Irene came in here with. She said he saw her coming and he ran and hid behind his car so she wouldn’t see who he was.”

“What have you got against Joe Mickels, Goddy?” asked Jill.