Margot’s bedroom was beautiful, with designer elements Betsy had not expected. The bed had slim iron pillars and a translucent lace canopy. There was a comforter, all ruffles of ivory lace, a shade lighter than the walls. A thin scent of Margot’s perfume lingered on the still air.

The rug on the floor was thick and lush, iron gray with a gold and green fringe. The window had layers of ivory lace curtains pinched and pulled into a complicated pattern. The small, low dresser was wood, stained gray, the low chair in front of it had an iron frame and a plush seat. The mirror over the dresser was round. A pair of badly snagged panty hose draped half out of the otherwise empty wastebasket. The desk in the comer had a modern-looking computer on it, with an ergonomically correct office chair and a two-drawer wooden file cabinet beside it, the bottom drawer not quite shut.

Betsy searched the desk drawers first. She found three checkbooks. One belonged to Crewel World and showed a balance of $2,523.50. The other was a personal checkbook and showed a balance of $372.80. The third was a Piper Jaffray money market account with a balance of close to four thousand dollars. And there was also a savings-account passbook showing a total balance of $3,253.74.

Betsy rubbed her nose, her sign of befuddlement. This was more money than she had expected to find. Why would Margot keep all her money where she could get at it? Didn’t she believe in IRAs or certificates of deposit, for heaven’s sake? Or was there even more hidden away somewhere? Probably not much—Margot wasn’t really wealthy, or she wouldn’t be living in a rented apartment.

Not that it mattered in the present emergency. Betsy could not sign Margot’s name to anything. What she needed was cash.

The next drawer held sixty dollars in paper and silver, neatly lined up. Is that all it took to prime a cash register?

She could find no more cash, so apparently that was all that was needed. The dresser held perfumes in one drawer, cosmetics in another, and hair curlers, bobby pins, and an electric curling iron in the middle.

Betsy found Margot’s plain black purse in the closet and opened it. Inside the wallet were forty-six dollars and ninety-six cents.

That was more than Betsy’s wallet, but hardly enough to pay for a funeral.

Now wait, now wait, surely these Huber people were used to this. Unexpected deaths happened all the time; not everyone had access to the cash to pay for a funeral. Doubtless the people at Huber’s would know what to do.

Which is exactly the attitude funeral directors enjoy encountering, thought Betsy in a sudden flash: customers coming in all confused and scared. That’s how some of those really expensive funerals happen. You go in and hold out all your assets and hope they won’t hurt you too badly. But they do, they do.

So it was with her chin firmly set and both hands on the closed top of her purse that Betsy walked up past the post office in the cool morning sunshine, rounded the corner, and crossed Second Street to Huber’s, a whited sepulchre with bloodred geraniums in a planter by the entrance.