At a few minutes before five the next afternoon, Lucy pulled into the employees’ parking lot at Country Cousins. She sat for a few minutes, waiting for a song on the radio to finish, and smiled wryly to herself. For the next few hours all she had to do was answer the customers’ calls and press a few buttons on her computer keyboard.

“You need a pair of waterproof boots? We have just the thing. What size do you need? Where shall I ship it? What is your credit card number?” The next day the boots would be on their way. If the boots were out of stock, Lucy would know immediately, thanks to the computerized inventory system that Sam Miller had pioneered. The computer would suggest an alternative style and indicate when the next shipment of boots would arrive.

Out-of-stocks were unusual at Country Cousins because Sam Miller had also developed a computer program that tracked the ebb and flow of customer preferences in the past and projected future sales. Lucy had come to develop a real respect for the computer, which always greeted her personally when she logged on. The screen would blink a friendly “Good evening, Lucy!” after she logged on with her password, Patches.

“You look beat,” Beverly said sympathetically. “Christmas getting to you?”

“Sort of,” agreed Lucy, taking a call for a decorative maple sap bucket. Calls came in pretty steadily for about an hour, and the time flew by as she placed orders for a chopping block, a fishing rod, a camp stove, and lots of deerskin slippers. There was a lull around six, dinner hour, and the evening was slow.

“Except for a few last-minute orders for slippers, it seems as if everybody’s got their shopping done,” Beverly observed.

“I’ve sold quite a few slippers, too.” Lucy laughed. “You’ll never guess who I saw at the airport,” she said, pausing for emphasis. “Marcia Miller and little Sam and a big pile of suitcases. It looked as if she were planning to be away for a while.”

“I guess the police don’t think she’s a suspect, then.”

“Do they really say that?” came Ruthie’s voice from the computer station on Lucy’s other side. “Don’t leave town, ma’am,” she said, mimicking Jack Webb on Dragnet. “I don’t think they can. Unless they indict you, I think you can go wherever you want.”

“It kind of makes her look guilty, leaving like that so soon after the murder,” Beverly commented.

“How could a woman kill a man after she’d had his child?” asked Karen Hall, pausing on one of her frequent trips to the rest room. She rubbed her huge tummy absentmindedly. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.”