Now they drove Jeep Cherokees or Dodge Caravans, and the dangling earrings had been replaced with discreet gold buttons or cultured pearls. Their faces were still scrubbed clean morning and night, but Oil of Olay was carefully smoothed under the eyes and just a hint of makeup applied. The long, flowing hair of the seventies had been cut, tinted, and permed. Now they didn’t look very different from their mothers.

Their lives, however, were different from their mothers’. They all had jobs, some full-time, but most part-time like Lucy. They helped in their husbands’ businesses or answered the phone at Country Cousins, and some weren’t above waiting on tables during the summer. “How else can you make a hundred dollars in a few hours?” they’d ask each other as they sunned themselves on the beach. They were the mainstay of the Scouts and the PTA; they were the class mothers. The cookie exchange was an established part of their Christmas season.

Sue Finch had been the hostess for five or six years. It gave her an opportunity to show off her decorations, and it gave her friends a chance to socialize during the busy holiday season. Sue held the number of participants to an even dozen, and each woman brought six dozen of her best Christmas cookies. All the cookies were arranged on a long pine trestle table, and the high point of the evening was a leisurely procession around the table, each woman taking six of each cookie. All went home with the same number of cookies they had brought, but each had a dozen different varieties.

And what varieties! It was a point of honor to bring cookies rich in butter, chocolate, and nuts, cookies that required a bit of fussing. Of course, the cookies were to be taken home and saved for Christmas, so Sue always provided a dessert, too. This year it was an elaborate buche de Noel, a sponge cake filled with chocolate-flavored whipped cream and decorated with meringue mushrooms and drizzles of chocolate and caramelized sugar.

“I just don’t know how you do it, Sue,” commented Lucy. “Everything is so lovely.”

“Oh, well, I’m not working like you are.” Sue shrugged. “Lucy, you look exhausted. Are you doing too much?”

“I don’t think so. But I haven’t been getting much sleep. The police kept us so late the night Sam Miller died.”

“That’s right,” said Pam Stillings, whose husband, Ted, was editor of the Pennysaver. “You actually found Sam, didn’t you, Lucy?”

“I did and I wish I hadn’t. I may have discovered the body, but I didn’t even see him. Everyone asks me about it, but I really don’t know anything.”

“Were you scared?” asked Pam.

“No, not really. Just kind of sick and let down the way you feel when the adrenaline stops flowing. Of course, I thought it was suicide. I didn’t realize he’d been murdered.”