I hadn't lived in the area long enough to know. "Pete and Mona DeGlazier. And Clay's building new houses." I frowned at the sheer number of possibilities.

"Lots of people," Haylee said "How about Mike Krawbach?" Opal prodded.

Haylee shook her head. "His vineyard is . . . wasn't near the river."

I could have attested to that, but I said nothing.

Edna's dining room matched the living room, all pale yellow, except that the table was covered by a deep green tablecloth edged in green and gold. Linen napkins, rolled up and tied in satin ribbons, matched the tablecloth. The plates were lemon yellow, and so were the wine glasses. Two bottles of red wine were open and breathing.

Edna's kitchen was also pale yellow. She had even found drawer and door pulls made of yellow porcelain. Below the counter, they were shaped like bows. Above the counter, they were shaped like buttons, complete with porcelain thread.

I peeked out between pastel yellow curtains. Aunt Betty had joined the group in front of The Ironmonger. I told the others about the investment she and Rhonda had made, buying low from me and selling high to Mona and Pete.

Edna lifted the cover from her slow cooker. Boeuf bourguignon? She sniffed. With a satisfied smile, she concluded, "Aunt Betty even looks like a murderer."

Haylee tamed a grin. "And how does a murderer look?"

Edna lowered her eyebrows, wrinkled her nose, and showed her teeth. "Evil."

I giggled. No matter how hard she tried, birdlike little Edna could never look ferocious.

Still attempting to snarl, she added, "Aunt Betty got that look from her years of evil deeds." She drained homemade noodles. Where had she found time to make all this?

Haylee tossed shredded red cabbage with a dressing containing aromatic, freshly toasted sesame seeds. "And her motive for murder was?"

Opal dished up roasted eggplant, onions, and peppers. "We don't know her motive, but why has she been helping her husband collect evidence against Willow?" Without waiting for us to answer, she continued, "She can't let Uncle Allen guess that she committed the murder."

Edna picked up a bowl of stew. "Don't forget Rhonda and her fleck of aqua paint. And her threats against Willow in the ladies' room." She jingled into the dining room in orange felt slippers that she must have crafted herself. She'd sewn tiny bells all over them.

We followed, all bringing dishes of food. I laughed off Rhonda's and her friend's threats, even though they had frightened me at the time. I reminded everyone, "Rhonda also tried to sneak into my apartment."

Edna dimmed lights and lit candles. "I'm guessing that after Mike gave Rhonda one of those jewelry boxes, he spurned her. Who could blame him? Now she regrets killing him, since she lost her only shot at capturing a man. And Aunt Betty guesses the truth and is trying to protect her. Maybe Uncle Allen is trying to protect her, too. These people! Banding together against outsiders. Against us."

I could only hope that the state police weren't about to join that band.

We sat at Edna's dining table and toasted each other with the wine. Edna flapped her napkin into her lap. "I noticed the pretty white placemats in your apartment Wednesday morning, Willow, when Uncle Allen interrogated us. I hope you have some dark linens."

I loved new projects. "I'll make some." Or I'd embroider Dawn's. I mentally kicked myself. No. I would not destroy the simplicity of Dawn's hand-woven placemats. I'd make new ones, using the nice, heavy linen I carried in my shop or the scrumptious cottons Haylee offered in The Stash. "Why should I have dark linens?" My apartment was mostly white, with coral and sage accents, nothing dark. Branching out into other colors wouldn't exactly hurt me, though, especially if it meant creating and embroidering new soft furnishings.

Naomi poured burgundy into our glasses. "We all love red wine. And we spill."

Maybe I would make my new placemats and napkins from a synthetic that might release red wine stains more easily than cotton or linen, and I'd embroider them with dark red thread.

Watching my face, Naomi giggled. Was she already tipsy, or had my thoughts been transparent, and funny, besides?

Haylee rolled her eyes. "These three sometimes forget they're no longer eight years old."

Naomi raised her glass. "I'll drink to that."

"Forever young," Opal said, clinking her glass against Naomi's.

Sort of like Mike Krawbach, I thought, with an involuntary pang of sympathy for a man I hadn't liked, a man who would never have the chance to grow old. Who had wanted him to cease to exist?

Edna took a bite of her stew, then jumped up, raced to a pale yellow side table, grabbed her notebook, and rejoined us. "Uncle Allen wants to solve the case quickly, so he's fallen into the trap of believing his friends and relatives but not us."

Haylee suggested, "His brother, Pete DeGlazier, could be the Pete in Karen's story about the lazy fisherman."

I tasted Edna's delicious boeuf bourguignon. "Dawn said that Pete DeGlazier was a lazy farmer-"

Edna bobbed her head up and down. "Goes with being a lazy fisherman!"

I finished, "And lost his first farm and his first wife due to his laziness. And maybe drinking. Now, he's married to Mona, who has opened a shop and also wears a full-length mink coat."

Opal turned her yellow goblet around, as if studying the way it gave her wine those brassy orange tones. "A mink coat? And she's president of the nature club?"

Edna stabbed a finger down onto one page. "Irv," she announced. "I don't trust Irv. He gave sandbags to Pete DeGlazier when he should have given them to Willow."

"And Pete is Uncle Allen's brother," I added. "Irv could have been trying to get on the good side of the law after all those years of lawlessness in Mike's gang."

"Irv has a short fuse," Haylee contributed. "Remember Mike's memorial service, when the sound system kept giving him problems, and people yelled at him to move back?"

Opal answered, "He got really annoyed, really fast."

"I learned more about another former gang member today-Herb," I told them. "Petal, our postmistress, seems afraid of him. She told me that Herb believes that, for a prank, Mike caused the tractor Herb was driving in Mike's vineyard to roll over. Mike deflated the tires on one side of his tractor and then ordered Herb to drive the tractor across a slope."

"Awful," said Opal.

"Despicable," Naomi added.

Haylee scowled. "Some prank. Not funny. But I can easily believe Mike would do something like that."

Edna hopped up. "That's it! Herb has to be the one who killed Mike. We discounted him because we didn't think he was strong enough, but the way he heaved those sandbags around . . ." She plopped into her seat and paged through her notebook. "Herb could have been killed when Mike's tractor toppled over on him. His anger probably simmered and simmered."

Naomi covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes for a second. "I'd hate to think of Herb as a murderer. I'd hate to think of anyone . . ." Her voice trailed off, and her eyes became shiny like she was about to cry. She whispered, "But someone is a murderer. Very likely someone we know."

Naomi was usually the one who patted arms. This time, I patted hers. "At the gala, Herb didn't seem to care where Karen was, though he took her to the dinner dance."

Haylee giggled. "Maybe the evening didn't go well for him."

Her mothers studied her face, probably wondering how her evening had gone with Smythe.

I quickly brought the subject back to suspects. Specifically Herb. "He was avoiding Dr. Wrinklesides, like maybe he was hiding a new injury from him. Or a lack of an old one. He asked me what Petal said about him at the post office-naturally I didn't tell him about her accusations-and he doesn't like Dawn, either. He claimed she kept calling the police on him and his friends."

"Not surprising," Haylee commented. "If they did all the things she said they did."

I held up a cautionary finger. "However, Dawn reported to Uncle Allen that Herb's truck was in his driveway all night when Mike died. So although Dawn and Herb don't like each other, Dawn gave Herb an alibi."

Opal asked sensibly, "What was Dawn doing up all night watching Herb's driveway?"

"Insomnia," I answered.

"Right," Edna chimed in. "Insomniacs say they never sleep. Never? Herb could have gone out that night long enough to attack Mike, and she slept through it. Some alibi."

I added, "And Herb claimed that Dawn's light kept going on and off that night, implying that she went out in the middle of the night to attack Mike."

Haylee burst out laughing. "Imagine both of them peering out at each other's houses all night! It sounds like neither one of them can be trusted to know what really happened. Didn't Herb sign up for tomorrow's hike?"

I twisted my napkin in my lap. "Yes. With Karen." I felt sorry for her. "We'll have to watch them. She may not know to be cautious around him."

Haylee put on a carefree smile. "Or she does, and that's why yesterday's date didn't go well for Herb. Lucky thing Smythe's main crop is lavender. No one can hide in tufts of lavender, even in the full bloom of summer. No murderer will suddenly jump out at us." She raised her arms in the air. "Boo!"

Naomi squinted with worry. "We're supposedly hiking in Smythe's woodlot. Trees and things like that." She shuddered.

Haylee waved that aside. "It's winter. No leaves on the trees. We'll easily keep track of each other."

"Shall we all go together in the morning?" Opal asked.

Haylee shook her head. "Don't anyone wait for me, in case I sleep late. I'll go in my own car and catch up."

Opal frowned at her. "And you'll drive carefully."

"Of course," Haylee said.

"I'd better go in my own car, too," I said. "So if the hike drags along, I can take off early and have time to walk the dogs before opening my shop. Otherwise, they'll have to suffer through a very long morning."

Opal, Naomi, and Edna reluctantly agreed that we would be safe in our own cars. They were going together in Edna's car. Opal raised her glass in a toast to a safe and worthwhile nature hike. By worthwhile, I didn't think she meant we'd be learning about nature. Human nature, maybe.

Edna paged through her notebook. "I want you to know that our suspicions about Herb fill the most pages in my notebook. We'll have to be especially careful around him."

"Around all of them," I amended.

29.

AFTER I WENT HOME AND LET THE DOGS out, I phoned Trooper Smallwood. She wasn't available, so against my better judgment, I asked for Trooper Gartener.

"What's up?" he asked. What a talker.

"Someone here in Elderberry Bay had a real grudge against Mike Krawbach."

Gartener responded with his usual silence.

I summed up the allegations Petal had made about Mike harming Herb.

Another long silence. Then, "Did you witness this yourself-the tractor rolling, tires deflated, everything you just told me?"

"No, but-" I barreled on without thinking. "Did you witness me threatening to kill Mike?"

I immediately wanted to take my words back.

"I believe that Detective DeGlazier did. Am I right?"

"No, he only heard about it. As I told you before, it wasn't a real threat."

"As I told you before, we're checking everything. If we arrested on hearsay and incomplete evidence, the wrong person could be behind bars."

Like me. I guessed I was supposed to thank him. I said good-bye and told myself not to call the state police again unless I had concrete evidence. Like a confession. Written, signed, and witnessed.

When the alarm went off the next morning, I wanted to go back to sleep, but my friends and I had promised to look after each other during the nature hike, and I wouldn't dream of endangering the others by not showing up. I dressed in warm layers. I would have liked to take my camera, but the police had not recovered it.

My dogs, with their enthusiasm for chasing anything that moved, probably wouldn't be welcome on a nature hike. I let them have a quick run around the yard, then put them in the apartment. Stars twinkled in the pre-dawn sky.

The beginning of the route to Smythe's farm followed the same roads I'd taken the day before. Dawn's house was dark. A light burned in Herb's, and his truck wasn't in his driveway. Stars dimmed and disappeared as the sky paled. A mile farther on, I turned inland and drove to the sign announcing Hap-Bee Hap-Bee Lavender Farm. Hand-painted bees, apparently drunk with happiness or lavender pollen, swirled around the letters.

Cold magnified the crunch of my tires on Smythe's long and winding gravel driveway. When I rounded the last curve, my headlights picked out a slew of black pickups. It was almost enough to make me flee, but Smythe's honey-colored pickup and Haylee's and Edna's sedans were there. I turned my car around so I'd have no problem leaving in time to take the dogs out before work, and parked on frozen ground beside the driveway.

I pulled my collar up and jogged toward Smythe's brightly lit, screened porch.

Through the screens, I recognized Haylee, Opal, Naomi, Edna, Herb, Karen, Irv, Pete DeGlazier, Jacoba and Luther from the General Store, and Smythe wearing his bright yellow parka and bee-stinger cap. I didn't know several people clustered around a woman whose back was toward me. She wore a black puffy parka with a fur-lined hood hiding her face. Rhonda?

I climbed the wooden steps to Smythe's porch. They creaked with cold. Herb opened the screen door for me. Its hinges screeched.

"So glad you could make it, Willow," Opal called, waving.

The woman in the black parka faced us. Mona DeGlazier. Of course she'd wear fur. "We can't wait for any more laggards." Shaking her head, she shot me an irritated look, like I was a foot-dragging kindergartner. "We have to start out."

She herded us all off the porch and away from the driveway, then paused to allow Smythe to catch up. She looked annoyed at having to ask him for directions, and even more annoyed when, beaming, he handed each of us a map showing his farm and trails running through it. He must have drawn the original-cute bees like the ones on his sign decorated the upper edges. He'd drawn bouquets of lavender and pumpkins on the sides, and bunches of grapes and shocks of wheat on the bottom margins. Always on the lookout for designs to interpret in embroidery, I carefully folded my copy into a pocket.

A car door slammed, and I thought Mona might have apoplexy at the sight of more laggards. Aunt Betty in her snowmobile suit and Rhonda in a parka similar to Mona's ambled toward the group.

Mona led us across the corner of a field where last summer's cornstalks waved their tattered flags. The broken cornstalks reminded me of the wall hanging I'd mailed yesterday. If my client didn't love it, I'd be happy to take it back. But I knew she'd like it. Who wouldn't?

I tripped over a frozen, lumpy furrow. Smythe grabbed my elbow and kept me on my feet. I thanked him. "I thought you grew lavender."

He grinned down at me. "I do, lots of it, but in some of my fields, like this one, I alternate between corn and soy. And sometimes pumpkins."

"The really big ones?"

His eyes twinkled. "I'll plant a patch of those this spring. You can have the biggest one you can carry."

"Like I can carry a three-hundred-pound pumpkin."