by a blow to the head that fractured her skull. Last Friday or Saturday, Constance Bucher and Sugar-Rayette Peebles died the same way. Grandma and Connie were friends. They were in the same quilt group; or, at least, they had been. A story in the Star Tribune said that Mrs. Bucher’s murder might have been a cover-up for a robbery. When Grandma died, I was supposed to inherit a valuable music box that her grandmother—my great-great-grandmother—brought over from the Old Country. From Switzerland.”

“It’s missing?” Lucas asked, sitting up, listening now.

“We couldn’t find it,” Coombs said. “It used to be in a built-in bookshelf with glass doors. The police wouldn’t let us look everywhere, and she could have moved it, but it’s been in that bookcase since she bought the house. Everything else seems to be there, but the music box is gone.”

“Do you have a description?” Lucas asked. “Was it insured?”

“Wait a minute, I’m not done,” Coombs said, holding up an index finger. Lucas noticed that all her fingers, including her thumbs, had rings, and some had two or three. “There was another woman, also rich, and old, in Chippewa Falls. That’s in Wisconsin.”

“I know,” Lucas said. “I’ve been there.”

Her eyes narrowed. “To drink beer, I bet.”

“No. It was for a police function,” Lucas lied. He’d gone on a brewery tour.

She was suspicious, but continued: “Sometimes Grandma and Connie Bucher would go over to this other lady’s house for quilt group. They weren’t in the same quilt groups, but the two groups intersected. Anyway, this other woman—her name was Donaldson—was shot to death in her kitchen. She was an antique collector. Grandma said the killers were never caught. This was four years ago.”

Lucas stared at her for a moment, then asked, “Is your grandma’s house open? Have the St. Paul police finished with it?”

“No. We’re not allowed in yet. They took us through to see if there was anything unusual, or disturbed, other than the blood spot on the carpet. But see, the deal always was, when Grandma died, her son and daughter would divide up everything equally, but since I was the only granddaughter, I got the music box. It was like, a woman-thing. I looked for it when the police took us through, and it was missing.”

LUCAS DID a drum tap with his pencil. “How’d you get down here?”

She blinked a couple of times, and then said, “I may look edgy to you, Mr. Davenport, but I do own a car.”

“All right.” Lucas picked up the phone, said to Carol, “Get me the number of the guy who’s investigating the death of a woman named Coombs, which is spelled…”

He looked at Coombs and she nodded and said, “C-O-O-M-B-S.”

“…In St. Paul. I’ll be on my cell.” He dropped the phone on the hook, took his new Italian leather shoulder rig out of a desk drawer, put it on, took his jacket off the file cabinet, slipped into it. “You can meet me at your grandma’s house or you can ride with me. If you ride with me, you can give me some more detail.”

“I’ll ride with you,” she said. “That’ll also save gasoline.”

As they headed out of the office, Carol called after them, “Hey, wait. I’ve got Jerry Wilson on his cell phone.”

Lucas went back and took the phone. “I’d like to take a look at the Coombs place, if you’re done with it. I’ve got her granddaughter over here, she thinks maybe something else is going on…uh-huh. Just a minute.” He looked at Coombs. “Have you got a key?”

She nodded.

Back to the phone: “She’s got a key. Yeah, yeah, I’ll call you.”

He hung up and said, “We’re in.”

COOMBS HAD PARKED on the street. She got a bag and a bottle of Summer Sunrise Herbal Tea from her salt-rotted Chevy Cavalier and carried it over to the Porsche. The Porsche, she said, as she buckled in, was a “nice little car,” and asked if he’d ever driven a Corolla, “which is sorta like this. My girlfriend has one.”

“That’s great,” Lucas said, as they eased into traffic.

She nodded. “It’s nice when people drive small cars. It’s ecologically sensitive.” Lucas accelerated hard enough to snap her neck, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she looked around, fiddling with her bottle of tea. “Where’re the cup holders?”

“They left them off,” Lucas said, not moving his jaw.

Halfway to Grandma’s house, she said, “I drove a stick shift in Nepal.”

“Nepal?”

“Yeah. A Kia. Have you ever driven a Kia?”

Being a detective, Lucas began to