Betsy scrolled down the screen. Margot had a date with Mayor Jamison for the Last Dance of Summer at the Lafayette Club on Friday. The date of the fund-raiser, also at Lafayette Club, was noted, and there continued a steady stream of things to be done, running right through the end of this year and into the next, including that spring art fair she’d gone to talk about at City Hall.

She pressed the exit button and the computer wanted to know if it should save the calendar, noting that no changes had been made. Betsy punched N for no, and on getting a blank screen asked to see a list of files.

The contents were mostly letters, including one to Mrs. Lundgren about the T‘ang-horse needlepoint, saying that it would be ready Tuesday of Thanksgiving week and reminding her that the one-thousand-dollar price was due on delivery.

But there was nothing else about the T‘ang project in the files.

Betsy shut down the computer and finished her sandwich before going back down to the shop, frowning with discontent.

Godwin was no help; he had no idea what might have happened to the sketches or any other notes Margot might have taken about the needlepoint project. Or what papers Margot was to sign at Penberthy’s office.

“You could call and ask,” he suggested.

Feeling a little foolish, she went behind the desk and phoned Mr. Penberthy. He was out, but his secretary remembered Margot coming in. “She was here to sign the incorporation papers.”

Well sure; Penberthy had told Betsy that! And of course that was what Margot had meant to tell her, that she was an officer of the new corporation.

Betsy said, “Margot had this big sketchbook, a kind of tablet with a red cover. She didn’t by chance leave it behind when she was there, did she?”

“Now, funny you should ask,” said the secretary. “Because she did leave it behind. I had to run out of the office to catch her and give it back to her. We had a nice laugh about it, like she was getting real absentminded lately. Which of course she wasn’t.”

“Do you know where she went from your office?” asked Betsy.

“No. Home, I guess. She sort of waved that big pad at me and said, ‘Thanks for this, I’ve got some work to do now,’ or something kind of like that.”

“She didn’t say she was going straight home?”