five to the outer porch door. The backyard, meant for boomers when they were babies, was larger and fenced.

They climbed the steps in the yard, up to the porch door, through the porch door; in these houses, the doorbell was inside the porch. On the way up, Leslie pulled a cotton gardening glove over his right hand, and pushed the doorbell with a glove finger, then slipped the hand into his jacket pocket.

COOMBS WAS EIGHTY, Jane thought, or even eighty-five. Her hair had a pearly white quality, nearly liquid, fine as cashmere, as she walked under the living room lights. She was thin, and had to tug the door open with both hands, and smiled at them: “How are you? Jane, Leslie. Long time no see.”

“Marilyn…”

“I have cookies in the kitchen. Oatmeal. I made them this afternoon.” Coombs squinted past Leslie at the sidewalk. “You didn’t see any gooks out there, did you?”

“No.” Leslie looked at Jane and shrugged, and they both looked out at the empty sidewalk.

“Gooks are moving in. They get their money from heroin,” Coombs said, pushing the door shut. “I’m thinking about getting an alarm. All the neighbors have them now.”

She turned toward the kitchen. As they passed the bottom of the stairs, Leslie reached out with the gloved hand, slipped it around the bottom of the finial, and lifted. It came free. It was the size of a slo-pitch softball, but much heavier. Jane, who’d turned her head, nodded, and Leslie let it drop back into place.

A PLATTER of oatmeal cookies waited on a table in the breakfast nook. They sat down, Coombs passed the dish, and Jane and Leslie both took one, and Leslie bolted his and mumbled, “Good.”

“So, Marilyn,” Jane said. “This newspaper clipping.”

“Yes, yes, it’s right here.” Coombs was wearing a housecoat. She fumbled in the pocket, extracted a wad of Kleenex, a bottle of Aleve, and finally, a clipping. She passed it to Jane, her hand shaking a bit. Leslie took another cookie.

A noted Chippewa Falls art collector and heir to the Thune brewing fortune was found shot to death in her home Wednesday morning by relatives…

“They never caught anybody. They didn’t have any leads,” Coombs said. She ticked off the points on her fingers: “She came from a rich family, just like Connie. She was involved in quilting, just like Connie. She collected antiques, just like Connie. She lived with a maid, like Connie, but Claire’s maid wasn’t there that night, thank goodness for her.”

“She was shot,” Jane said. “Connie was killed with a pipe or a baseball bat or something.”

“I know, I know, but maybe they had to be quieter,” Coombs said. “Or maybe they wanted to change it, so nobody would suspect.”

“We really worry about getting involved with the police,” Jane said. “If they talk to you, and then to us, because of the quilt connection, and they say, ‘Look, here’s some people who know all of the murdered people…then they’ll begin to suspect. Even though we’re innocent. And then they might take a closer look at the Armstrong quilts. We really don’t want that.”

Coombs’s eyes flicked away. “I’d feel so guilty if somebody else got hurt. Or if these people got away scot-free because of me,” she said.

“So would I,” Jane said. “But…”

And Coombs said, “But…”

They talked about it for a while, trying to work the old woman around, and while she was deferential, she was also stubborn. Finally, Jane looked at Leslie and touched her nose. Leslie nodded, rubbed the side of his nose, and said to Coombs, “I have to say, you’ve talked me around. We’ve got to be really, really careful, though. They’ve got some smart police officers working on this.”

He stopped and stuffed another oatmeal cookie in his mouth, mumbling around the crumbs. “We need to keep the quilts out of it. Maybe I could send an anonymous note mentioning the antique connection, and leave the quilts out of it.”

Coombs brightened. She liked that idea. Jane smiled and shook her head and said, “Leslie’s always liked you too much. I think we should stay away from the police, but if you’re both for it…”

COOMBS SHUFFLED OUT to the front door as they left, leading the way. In the rear, Leslie pulled on the cotton gloves, and at the door, Jane stepped past Coombs as Leslie pulled the finial out of the banister post. He said, “Hey, Marilyn?”

When she turned, he hit her on the forehead with the finial ball. Hit her hard. She