4.

MIKE GROANED. HE DIDN'T MOVE. I did. Breathlessly, I called my dogs. We flew up the hill to my apartment. I shut them in with me and dialed 911.

The dispatcher said she'd alert the doctor, ambulance, and police, and I should stay on the line with her while I unlocked my gates and attended to the victim.

Clamping the phone to my ear with the help of my shoulder, I shut the dogs in the apartment, went around to the front gate, and fumbled with the new padlock. My thick mittens didn't help, but I couldn't bear taking them off. My hands shook.

A car door slammed. A portly gentleman walked toward me more briskly than I would have expected for someone his size and age. He carried an old-fashioned doctor bag and wore an ankle-length black wool coat. A hand-knit white scarf was wrapped around his neck and lower face so many times I couldn't help thinking of the word "muffler." Someone had stitched furry earflaps to his fedora, and they were folded down over his ears. I'd read in books of men tipping their hats, but this was the first time I'd seen one do it. He breathed out an icy cloud. "I'm Dr. Wrinklesides." He reached over the gate for my phone. "You got 911 on the line?"

Relinquishing the phone to Dr. Wrinklesides, I babbled, "Mike Krawbach is out cold by the riverside trail." Cold? More like half frozen. "He moaned," I added lamely, finally undoing the padlock and opening the gate.

Dr. Wrinklesides patted my shoulder. "It will be okay," he shouted.

I led him to Mike.

Dr. Wrinklesides took one look at Mike and boomed into my phone, "Where's that danged fool with the ambulance?" He muttered, "You'd think the way this village is growing, they could park the thing less than ten miles away."

Uncle Allen's police cruiser mooed and bleated its way toward us. I climbed the hill and met him at the front gate. Lights went on in apartments above The Stash, Batty About Quilts, Buttons and Bows, and Tell a Yarn.

Its tires loud against the pavement in the otherwise still night, a dark pickup drove slowly up Lake Street from the direction of the beach, turned onto Cayuga, and went out of sight.

"Who was that?" I asked Uncle Allen.

"Kids. They use the beach as lovers' lane. Is that why you called?"

Impatiently, I shook my head and told him that Mike was lying at the foot of my yard.

"I'll drive down there." He stumped to his cruiser and drove noisily down Lake Street toward the beginning of the trail. I ran back down the hill to unlock the gate nearest Mike. Uncle Allen didn't seem to know how to turn his siren off, but why did he keep pounding on the horn? Its racket banged into my skull like a sledge hammer.

Waiting at the trailside gate for him, I shivered, not only from the cold. The blank windows of Blueberry Cottage seemed to stare at my back.

"Willow, Willow, where are you?" With wild yoohooing and shining of flashlights into bare, witchy treetops, Haylee and The Three Weird Mothers stormed down through my yard. Haylee wore a parka, snow pants, and boots, like she was dressed for skiing. Opal's hand-knit hat was stretched over huge curlers. Naomi's face was covered in green goo. Beribboned flounces of Edna's flannel nightie stuck out below her coat over jeans tucked into boots.

"What's wrong?" Opal asked.

Judging by their hastily thrown-together outfits, I could have asked the same thing. Instead, I explained as succinctly as I could.

"Drunk." Edna could be even more succinct.

Dr. Wrinklesides bellowed at Uncle Allen, who was right beside him, "Head injuries. It looks like he was beaten by that canoe paddle. It's one of those old wooden ones. Weighs a ton."

"That must be my paddle," I said. "But it wasn't anywhere near Mike when the dogs and I found him. Last I knew, it was in my lean-to." I pointed. The door to the lean-to still gaped.

"You must be mistaken," Uncle Allen growled. "Or you and your dogs moved it."

"We didn't do that," I said hotly.

"I feel queasy," Naomi faltered.

"You look it," Edna agreed. "What's that green stuff all over your face?"

Naomi covered her cheeks with her hands. "Oh! I forgot! What must I look like?"

Haylee covered her mouth, but her eyes gleamed with silent laughter.

"Oh, no, you don't," Opal scolded, shaking a finger. "You girls aren't going into one of your laugh-'til-you cry fits again. This is serious." She pointed at Mike.

As if on cue, he moaned again.

Uncle Allen bent over him until his ear was nearly in Mike's mouth.

Opal put her finger to her lips to shush us, but we had all tensed as if the cold had solidified our muscles. The night became suddenly darker. Had one of Elderberry Bay's streetlights blinked out?

Mike mumbled.

Slowly, Uncle Allen stood. He blinded me with his flashlight.

I shielded my eyes. "Would you check Blueberry Cottage? Whoever did this might be in there."

Uncle Allen only glared.

Flashlight in hand, Haylee started toward Blueberry Cottage.

Opal called her back. "No one should go in there."

Edna nodded her scarf-swathed head toward Uncle Allen. "Except him."

Dr. Wrinklesides hollered, "C'mon, young fella, you can do it!"

I expected to see him help Mike stand up. He pressed his stethoscope several places on Mike's chest, listened for long minutes, then slowly got to his feet. "He's gone," he said, not shouting for once.

Haylee turned away as if she didn't want anyone to see her expression.

Opal quietly repeated, "Gone?"

"Dead?" Edna asked.

"Deceased?" echoed Naomi, her eyes round in her ghoulish green mask.

I felt frozen, inside and out, and unable to speak. Mike, who only this afternoon had swaggered around carrying the pages he'd ripped out of my guest book, who only moments ago had groaned and mumbled, was dead? As in permanently . . . gone?

Uncle Allen stalked with exaggerated menace toward me and the other four women. He rested his fists on his hips, which placed his hands dangerously close to his guns. "Mike Krawbach is dead. Dead." He let that sink in for one brittle moment, then added, "And his last words were, *That woman did it. Get her.' "

5.

OPAL PUT HER ARM AROUND HAYLEE. Haylee buried her face in her mother's shoulder but lifted her head almost immediately. By the glow of our flashlights, her eyes appeared fearful. Edna and Naomi closed around the other two, leaving me to face Uncle Allen by myself until Opal reached out and pulled me to her. We shrank toward each other and away from the policeman.

In the darkness beside Mike's prone body, Dr. Wrinklesides shouted, "Uncle Allen!"

Uncle Allen's shoulders drooped, and instead of resembling a dangerous predator, he became a tired man who had just lost a friend.

I had disliked Mike and what he wanted to do to my cottage, but I wouldn't wish a beating on anyone, much less a beating in the dark of what was possibly the coldest night of the year.

Edna sniffed. "I smell gasoline."

I'd become accustomed to the odor and had forgotten it. I shined my light past the cottage. "Mike's ATV is out on the trail."

Haylee focused her flashlight on a dull orange shape up the hill from Blueberry Cottage. "What's that?"

I tiptoed to it. An uncapped gas can lay on its side. It reeked of gasoline. I called out in a voice squeezed by outrage, "Mike came here to torch Blueberry Cottage."

Haylee and her mothers turned their backs on the men and whipped their lights upward to illuminate their faces. Naomi looked horrified. Haylee shook her head. Edna frowned. Opal's forehead furrowed.

They were right. I had cleverly broadcast a great motive for me to have attacked Mike.

Uncle Allen bore down on me. "Or he found you about to destroy your cottage for the insurance money, and was going to inform on you. And you stopped him."

My whole body went rigid. "I did no such thing. He's the one who wanted to get rid of my cottage. I didn't know about the gas can until right now. He must have brought it." I returned to Haylee and the other women.

"What did you say his last words were?" Opal asked Uncle Allen.

"That woman did this. Get her."

"What woman?" I asked. Hadn't he reported before that Mike said, "did it," not "did this"? A little part of my mind said unreliable witness. What was I doing, preparing my own defense? I'd physically fled Manhattan and the stresses related to working in a company after Haylee and I successfully testified against our boss. He had funneled funds from his clients-and ours-to his own accounts. Mentally fleeing was more difficult. Was I always going to automatically defend myself, justify my actions and my words? Plan my testimony? This time, I thought with a jolt of panic, I could be the one being tried. For murder.

Edna asked, "Mike accused some woman of doing something? Who, and what was it?"

Uncle Allen pointed at me. "Her. Mike said she beat him up. I can believe it. Yesterday, a bunch of witnesses reported to me that she threatened to kill him."

"I didn't mean it that way!" My vocal chords frayed like worn thread.

Uncle Allen ignored me. "This is her property, and she already admitted that the murder weapon is her canoe paddle."

By now, Dr. Wrinklesides stood beside the other old man. "Uncle Allen." It would have been a gentle reminder if Dr. Wrinklesides hadn't shouted.

Uncle Allen glowered at him. "You don't have to yell. I'm right here."

Dr. Wrinklesides reached a hand toward Uncle Allen. "Don't jump to conclusions."

Naomi crowded into me. I put an arm around her and hoped she wouldn't rub her green facial masque against the white snowman I'd embroidered on my parka.

The corners of Uncle Allen's mouth turned down, like he was playing bad cop. It looked more like sad cop. "All of you women are now murder suspects. I have to question you all."

"Now?" I asked. "What about that pickup truck we saw when you arrived? Shouldn't you go after them?"

"They could be anywhere by now."

My point, exactly.

"And besides," he went on, "half the village drives trucks like that. I'll get to them. First, I need to question you women. Separately." He singled me out with a sour look. "You first. The rest of you, go wait in different corners of her yard, and do not speak to each other until I'm done with all of you."

"It's too cold to stand out here," Haylee objected. "We're not dressed for it."

I wasn't sure anyone could dress for this cold. Pressed against me, Naomi and Opal were trembling so much I couldn't be certain whether or not I was shivering, too.

An ambulance chugged along the riverside trail and stopped behind Uncle Allen's cruiser. Paramedics leaped out.

"Go tell them what to do, Doc," Uncle Allen ordered.

"Don't stay out in the cold any longer than you have to, Uncle Allen," Dr. Wrinklesides retorted. Standing vigil, the doctor began to sing, a dirge from an opera, I guessed. He had a good voice, warm and deep.

He was bundled up, but Uncle Allen risked frostbite by wearing neither a hat nor a scarf.

I suggested, "Why don't we all go inside, if we promise not to talk to each other?"

Uncle Allen must have been as cold as he looked. He agreed.

Sally and Tally were overjoyed at receiving company so early in the morning. I turned on the lights in my great room.

Naomi looked at my shoulder and gasped. "I'm sorry about your jacket, Willow. I hope my facial masque doesn't stain."

Opal, staring at my right sleeve, kicked her in the ankle. Naomi covered her mouth and turned around. "Your kitchen is lovely, Willow." Her voice shook. It had to be obvious she was changing the subject.

The shoulder of my pale gray parka was smudged in green matching Naomi's face.

The sleeve, however, had a reddish brown streak down it.

"Take off your coat, Willow," Opal ordered. "We should rinse that makeup out right away. In cold water." Shooting meaningful looks at her friends, she emphasized the last two words. They would know that cold water had the best chance of preventing blood from staining.

Unfortunately, Uncle Allen understood, too. "That blood proves she's the killer. Give me your coat for evidence. Do you have a plastic bag-"

Edna corrected him. "It should be paper, for-"

Opal kicked her in the ankle, too. If this kept up, The Three Weird Mothers were going to be The Three Limping Mothers.