“No. What difference does it make if it was a waltz or a polka?”

“It’s like flowers,” she said.

After years of working with Lois on an almost daily basis, you’d have thought I’d be used to her non sequiturs. “Flowers?”

“Sure.” She sipped the lemon-flavored brew. “You know how flowers have meanings? Roses are love, daisies are innocence, freesia is trust.”

“Why is freesia trust?” I wasn’t sure what freesia looked like, exactly, but how could any particular kind of flower mean trust? For that matter, how could a daisy mean innocence? I could see how roses meant love—as in I’d love to be able to grow roses free of mold or spots or bugs—but who dreamt up all the other things? “Are there flowers that mean death and destruction?”

“Just like flowers,” Lois went on, “dances have emotions associated with them. A fox-trot indicates a platonic relationship. A tango is passionate love. A polka shows that your partner has a sense of fun.”

“You’re making that up,” I said.

Lois drew herself up tall. Which today was very tall, considering that she was wearing four-inch-high platform shoes. On a purely period basis they went well with her bell-bottom pants, wide leather belt, and gauzy white shirt complete with square neckline.

“Questioning my veracity on a Monday morning? How can you do this to me, your loyal employee, your compatriot in arms, your friend and coworker of many years, your—”

“You’re overdoing it,” I said.

Her spine unstiffened and she sank down three inches. “It was the compatriot part, wasn’t it?” she asked sadly.

“Over the top.”

Lois sighed and took a sip of tea. “So what happened after that?”

“Claudia left in a huff.” She’d tried to slam the selfclosing door, which hadn’t gone well. “After that, everything went fine.” The air had seemed to clear, the atmosphere had felt brighter, and the music had sounded more playful. Jenna had taken her partner back, and Marina and I doled out goody bags and ladled punch the rest of the night.

“That Claudia Wolff is nothing but a bully,” Lois said. “Has been ever since she was a toddler. Some tigers never change their stripes.”

I looked at her. “Which tigers do?”

“Oh, you know.” She waved her mug at me. “The ones who can. There’s this breed in a remote province of India that has been known to have their stripes change to white if they’ve had a close call with death.”

I was about to call her bluff when the bells on the front door jingled. “I’ll get it,” I said, and headed out front, a pleasant owner-of-the-store smile on my face. “Good morning, let me know if—” When I saw who’d come in the door, my words dried up and my feet stopped moving. The nightmares I’d suffered the last two nights weren’t nightmares any longer; they were reality.

“My, aren’t we nice when it’s in our own best interest?” Claudia asked. “Be polite and get people to buy things so we can make a buck, right?”

Behind her ranged a group of women, all of whom I knew. Tina Heller, Claudia’s best friend. Heather Kingsley, Isabel Olson, and Carol Casassa. At the back of the pack was Cindy Irving. She was well known for being Johnny-on-the-spot for whatever was happening in town, so I wasn’t sure if she was here in support of Claudia or if she was here in hopes of catching some fireworks.

“What can I do for you ladies?” Smile, smile, smile. Defuse the anger, be their friend, show them there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Or something like that.

“You know perfectly well what you can do,” Claudia snapped.

There were a number of things on my list today: finish the already late December newsletter, take the pile of flattened boxes out for recycling, inventory the picture books, call the gift wrap supplier and ask why we were delivered Valentine’s Day paper instead of Christmas paper, and see if I had money to pay a few bills. However, I had a feeling none of those was what Claudia was talking about. In all likelihood, she wanted one of two things: me to resign from the PTA or—

“It’s that Yvonne Ganassi,” Claudia said. “I can’t think what you were thinking when you hired her.”

I’d been thinking she was my hero. “Yvonne is—”

“A convicted murderer.” Tina Heller stood shoulder to shoulder with Claudia. The two of them created a solid, nylon-parka-covered wall. “A murderer in a children’s bookstore is about the dumbest hire anyone could make.”

My chin went up. “Yvonne didn’t kill anyone. She was exonerated.”

“Then why was she sent to prison?” Claudia demanded. “They don’t send innocent people to prison.” Her cohorts nodded; human bobble-heads, all in a row. “Innocent until proven guilty, and the guilty go away for life. Or they should.” She glared at me.

I could see that any argument I made would be laughed at, ignored, derided, or all three. These women had made up their minds and nothing I said would convince a single brain cell to lean another way. Still, I had to try.

“Would you like to see a copy of her acquittal?” I asked. “The governor of California handed it to her personally.”

In the back, Cindy’s face lit up, but the rest of the group didn’t look impressed. “Who cares what some politician did?” Claudia’s scorn was so deep that she splattered a little spit on the p of “politician.” “Everyone knows they issue those things at the drop of a hat for whoever contributes most to their campaigns. Pardons are a get-out-of-jail-free card; they don’t mean you weren’t guilty in the first place.”

Any minute now she’d implode from having too many conflicting opinions. I just hoped it wouldn’t be in my store. “But—” I stopped. If she didn’t understand that an acquittal and a pardon were two different things, then it wasn’t likely this would turn into a teachable moment.

“She was convicted of murder.” Claudia’s strident tones rang through the store. “There’s been a murder in Rynwood. I have no idea why the police haven’t arrested her, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”

My head started to ache. “Yvonne didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “Ever. You’re making a big mistake.”

Claudia’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re the one making mistakes. First, thinking you can run the PTA. Second, hiring a killer. The streets of our town won’t be safe—our children won’t be safe—until that woman is behind bars.” Claudia raised her mittened hand and, from what I could make out from the movements inside the wool, pointed her index finger at me. “And you can bet I’ll do all I can to get her there. Ladies?”

She turned and the group filed out. As the last one left, a gust of wind grabbed hold of the door and flung it wide open. I hurried to grab the handle and tried to pull it closed, tugging hard against the wind.

The group was huddled together outside the store, and my movements caught Claudia’s attention. Her gaze locked on mine and she pointed at me again. She mouthed some words, but since I was horrible at lip reading, I had no idea what she said. It could have been, “Have a nice day,” but it probably wasn’t.

I smiled at her pleasantly and shut the door.

“Hokey Pete,” Lois said. “Looks like Claudia has taken a turn for the worse. Say, maybe she killed Sam. Wouldn’t be the first time the real killer has tried to insert herself into an investigation.”

I wanted to ask on which episode of CSI that had happened, but I stopped myself in time. “Gus said all the people at the PTA meeting that night were cleared.”

“Well, shoot.” Lois slouched and crossed her arms. “Just when you think you have things all figured out, the facts have to rush in and confuse things.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

“Wonder what Claudia was talking about?” Lois mused. “How is she going to get Yvonne into prison?”

“She’s not. She’s just—” My mother’s admonition against gossip bounded into my brain. Thanks so very much, Mom. I sighed and restarted the sentence. “She’s just worried about her children.”

Lois snorted. “All I saw was Claudia being seriously mad at you.”

Which is what worried me. Claudia had been born and raised in Rynwood. If she started marshaling her troops against the store, we could be in real trouble. “Lois,” I asked slowly, “who do you think killed Sam?”

She sighed. “Oh, honey. I wish I knew. He was just so darn nice.”

“Didn’t he ever get into a fight, even as a kid?”

“Not so far as I remember. Though there was one thing . . .” She pinched her nose, then shook her head. “Nope. Can’t remember. Had to do with sports, though. So, high school?”

Or junior high, or elementary school. Or college, since he’d played baseball at Wisconsin. All it would take to figure it out was some time. Good thing there was a new day every morning. Twenty-four fresh hours to fill with kids, work, housework, starting up the PTA senior story session, and hey, let’s solve a murder, too.

Beth Kennedy, Renaissance woman. Either that, or Beth Kennedy, overcommitted woman destined for a breakdown.

One of those.

I pulled out a notepad. With Lois’s help and a phone call to Flossie, I’d soon have a new list, this one titled “Sam’s Former Teammates.” If I talked to enough of them, maybe, just maybe, I’d find a Clue.

It could have been a flat tire, for all I knew about cars. All that mattered to me about any internal combustion engine was that it worked when I turned it on. But, as I traipsed down the few steps from kitchen to garage floor, even I could see that the car Todd was working on was something special.

It was what they called a muscle car—a nickname that had never made any sense to me—and probably looked better than it had when it was new. Dark red paint gleamed under the garage’s fluorescent lights, and inside the red, small bright flecks caught the light and sparkled golden. The chrome rims shone, the tires were so black they seemed to swallow light, and the window glass was cleaner than any glass in a garage had a right to be.

“Hey, honey, could you hand me the timing light?”

I glanced at the array of tools spread across a nearby workbench. Looked at the stacks and stacks of red metal drawer sets that held a multitude of mysterious tools. Cast my eye at the floor, where a number of unidentified objects lay scattered about. “Um, what does it look like?”

Todd’s head popped up. “Hey, Beth. I thought you were Mindy. What are you doing here?”

I knew Mindy from PTA, and I knew Todd because Caitlin and Jenna played on the same girls’ hockey team. Caitlin played defense and was working hard on developing a wicked slap shot. Of all Sam’s former teammates to talk to, Todd was the easy first choice.

“Aren’t most show cars put away by now?” I asked, using the only thing I knew about the subject.

“Yah.” Todd levered himself up and out, then leaned backward in a long stretch. “Out of the blue this guy calls about buying this girl and the electricals aren’t right.”

“But . . .” I looked from the vehicle to him and back again, remembering all the stories I’d heard. “Didn’t you spend three years restoring this car? Didn’t you enter it into the Rynwood Car Show and win first place?”

“Yup.” He smiled at it fondly. “Judges said I could win car shows in this class all over the state.”

“And you’re going to sell it?”

“It’s the restoring that’s fun,” he said. “Going to shows is fine for some people, but I’d rather be in the garage tinkering.”

It made sense, in a warped and twisted sort of way. Kind of like raising children. You get them to where they might be rational human beings, and zoom! Off they go, to college or the military or the work world or into marriage or—

“So what can I do for you?” Todd wiped his hands on a rag.

Right. I wasn’t here to look at cars, I was here to ferret out clues that could lead me to a killer, clear Yvonne’s name, and keep me and my children out of that second-floor apartment.

“You know I’m secretary of the Tarver PTA? Well, we’re starting a scholarship fund. Mia and Blake are the first two recipients, but if the fund gets big enough, it’ll be endowed, and we can continue to give out scholarships forever.” Unless every dollar contributed was matched by a thousand from the Ezekiel G. Fund, it was unlikely that it would ever grow large enough to be self-perpetuating, but Todd didn’t have to know the whole story.

“I heard about that,” Todd said. “Caitlin got a sore throat Saturday afternoon, so we didn’t go to the dance.” He fumbled in his back pocket. “Here. Let me see what I can do. Sam’s kids . . . man, that whole thing is rough.”

He handed over a fifty-dollar bill. After the dance, I’d marveled at the stacks of fifties and hundreds in the cash box. I’d had no idea that men carried that much cash in their wallets. And I still had no idea why they did.

“I wish they’d find the killer,” I said. “That would help a little.”

“They’d better catch him soon.” His face was set in hard lines. “Sam and I went way back.”

“You played baseball together, right?”

“Since we were this high.” Todd held out his hand at belt level. “T-ball, Little League, heck, everything on up through high school. I started working for my dad the Monday after graduation, so no college ball for me.”

“Was Sam nice even as a kid?” I asked.

“He should have been one of those kids that kids love to hate, but everyone liked him. How could you not like a guy who’d take the blame for any trouble we cooked up?” He smiled. “Sam would tell the coach to let the second- and third-stringers play. That it wasn’t fair they had to sit on the bench all the time. And his sister, Megan? She came to practices and he always walked home with her, every time.”

“No one called him a sissy?”

“No sissy can knock a fastball into next week.” He got a distant look on his face and I knew he wasn’t seeing me any longer. “Or throw a rope from third to first.”

Rope? What did a rope have to do with baseball? I made a mental note to Google it later. “What about on the other teams? Sam was such a good baseball player, weren’t some of the other kids jealous?”

“Oh, sure, but . . .” He stopped and looked at me. “You’re trying to figure out who killed him, aren’t you?”

It suddenly occurred to me that my feet needed a close inspection, so I bent my head and studied them with great intensity. He was angry. How could he not be, considering I was rooting around in his past, trying to shake out a reason for murder that might have originated decades ago, which didn’t make a lot of sense, really, but I had to try. “Well . . .”

“You think somebody from baseball hated him enough to kill him?” Incredulity sent his voice high.

I sighed. “Not really. I mean, how could sports be reason enough for murder?”

A flicker of something crossed his face. “People can get pretty uptight. Remember what happened at that second hockey game?”

I winced away from the memory of women whacking each other with their purses. “Your daughter hit my baby girl!”

“Your baby girl is twenty pounds heavier than my daughter!” Whack. Whack.

“Sam hasn’t played ball in years,” I said. “Lots of people carry grudges, but this seems a little extreme.”

“Hmm.” Todd rubbed his chin, leaving behind a small streak of black grease. “There was this one time. The pitcher beaned one of our guys and our guy charged the mound. Everybody was yelling, and before you knew it, the benches were empty and it was a real slugfest. I’m sure Sam got in a few good ones, he had a long reach.”

“When was this?” My ears perked up.

He grinned. “I think we were maybe eight.”

The small spurt of adrenaline faded away. If a bunch of eight-year-olds going at it hammer and tongs was what Lois hadn’t quite remembered, this particular path of investigation was coming to a quick end. “No other fights?” I heard my own hopefulness and backtracked. “Not that I want there to be, but you never know what someone will get angry about.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Todd said, gesturing at the car with a jerk of his thumb. “Who would have thought my wife would get so mad about me spending five thousand dollars on a paint job?”

If there was ever a question that didn’t need answering, that was it.

“Other fights, though.” He shook his head. “I can’t remember one.”

“No grudges?”

“How could anyone have had a grudge against Sam? It’d be like hating Santa Claus.”

There was a tiny rip in my heart. Todd had pegged it: In another thirty years, Sam would have made the perfect Santa. By then he’d have had a nice belly, his hair would have turned white, he could have grown a lovely beard, and his laugh . . . oh, his laugh.

Todd cocked his head. “You can hear it, can’t you? He had that ‘ho, ho, ho’ thing down.”

“He sure did.”

We stood there, hearing the last echoes of Sam’s laughter ripple through us, then fade away.

“If you find out who killed him,” Todd said hoarsely, “you let me know first. Got that? Tell me first.”

Not in a million years. But I nodded, then said good-bye. At the top of the stairs I glanced back. He was still standing in the middle of the garage, one hand gripping the dirty rag, the other hand holding tight to absolutely nothing.

Mothering instincts satisfied—or at least muffled to a distant throbbing noise that resembled the unceasing noise of the ocean—I walked briskly down the sidewalk and headed to the next name on the list.

“There’s no reason,” he said, blowing out a sigh. “No reason at all for anyone to have killed Sam.”

I sat perched on the edge of a companion chair and tried to keep from sliding off the front. “You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” I asked. Gerrit’s troubled look was miles away from his typical expression that life was good, and if we all worked as hard as he did, that we, too, could own a BMW convertible for summer, a Cadillac SUV for winter, and a Harley-Davidson just for fun.

“Sam and I grew up together,” he said, as if that explained it all, and I supposed it did. People didn’t use that phrase lightly—at least people in Wisconsin didn’t—and it often translated as “we were closer than most brothers.”

“No ideas?” I asked.

He tapped a pen against his leather blotter. “I’ve spent hours I can’t afford working on this. After I couldn’t think of a provable reason, I looked for something that couldn’t be proved. Nothing.” He stopped midtap. “You talked to Todd Wietzel?”

“No ideas there, either.”

Gerrit grunted and went back to tapping. “For a few days, I wanted to think Larry Carter had done it. Larry never got any decent playing time, thanks to Sam. He’s a guy who can hold a grudge, Larry.”

My ears twitched. Was this, could this possibly be, a Clue?

“But then I went to talk to him,” Gerrit said. “Turns out Larry saw the news about Sam’s murder on a hospital TV. He’d broken his ankle playing hockey the night before. Got three expensive screws in his ankle.”

I made a mental note to talk Jenna out of playing hockey ever again. “Well, I’m sure the police will find the killer,” I said.

Gerrit made a noncommittal noise, and I noticed that his hands were clenched into fists so tight that the tendons drew pale across his knuckles. “Not too soon, I hope,” he said quietly. “There’s a debt to be paid.”

My breath caught and I had to force my lungs back into action. Violence begets violence; it always had. And violence against an innocent begets violence at a geometric rate. There was no use warning Gerrit to leave it alone, no use telling him revenge does no one any good, no use asking him to consider what a course of revenge would do to his career.

He knew all that. Knew it and didn’t care.

I rose. “Take care of yourself, Gerrit.”

But we both knew he wouldn’t.