Stretches completed, she relaxed for a bit. She felt the mattress jiggle, then lean into big-cat-size footfalls as Sophie came up alongside her. The cat fell weightily against her hip with a combination sigh and purr. The cat enjoyed these slothful morning minutes as much as Betsy did. Betsy closed her eyes and let her fingers wander through the animal’s fur until she came to the special itchy place under Sophie’s chin, where she paused to scratch lazily. Sophie put a gentle paw around Betsy’s hand in case Betsy had any notion of moving it away. The purr became richer, deeper, deeper, deeper....

Betsy was brought back from a doze by a gentle but insistent tugging at her hand. She resumed scratching.

But when Betsy tired of scratching and tucked her hand back under the covers to try for another nap, Sophie turned the movement into a game of Mouse Under the Blanket, which finished that notion.

Then, thumping along on her cast, Sophie led the way into the kitchen, where she sat pointedly beside her empty food dish. But Betsy started the coffee first. It was her sole victory in the mornings nowadays and she was determined to hang on to it.

When it was a little before ten Betsy went downstairs to open up, eager for customers.

But by noon she had added another four inches to the knitted scarf (including errors unraveled and reknit properly) and nothing to the till. Only two people had come in. One wanted something the shop didn’t carry. “Try Needle Nest in Wayzata,” Godwin said, adding to Betsy, “They send people to us.” The other person was merely curious about Betsy’s sleuthing, and she firmly put him off. As she told Godwin, perhaps he was on Detective Malloy’s list of informants.

At last Betsy announced she was going to call the part-time help and tell them not to come in for the afternoon shift.

Godwin, taking down some outdated announcements on the mirror by the front door said, “Don’t do that. Take a half day yourself. Margot always took Wednesdays off.”

“I don’t have anywhere I need to go,” she objected, thinking perhaps she should give Godwin the half day and save his salary, too.

“Yes, you do.”

“Like where?”

“First, you should go back upstairs, have a little lunch, and find Margot’s sketchbook, the one with the red cover. I can do the needlepoint, if Margot did a graphed drawing of it. I’ll work it like counted cross-stitch, only in needlepoint. It’s a thousand dollars for the shop.”

“Less what I’d have to pay you to do it.”

“I’ll do it for nothing. For the sake of the shop. For Margot.”

“Oh, Goddy ...” Betsy felt guilty for even thinking of shorting Godwin’s paycheck.