"Is that what your psychic intuition is telling you?"

"Maybe."

I ran up the stairs to Marc's apartment and opened the door. The apartment was small and messy. There was only one room with a large unmade bed, dirty white walls and a microwave on a small countertop. Paper was everywhere. There were travel magazines, car brochures and half a dozen credit card bills with PAST DUE stamped on them spread across the bed.

I stood in the room looking at the mess. I pressed the message button on Marc's machine and listened to a woman thanking Marc for the lovely night they'd spent together. The night she was referring to was the night before he'd been killed-the night he told me he had spent alone. Susanne had said it perfectly-I had dodged a bullet.

"What should I be looking for?" I asked myself. "Where would someone hide fifteen thousand dollars?"

There was a small painted bookcase in the corner of the room that seemed as good a place to start as any. There were at least a dozen books on architecture, a couple of dog-eared paperbacks and a stack of paper. I took each book out one by one and flipped through them. There was nothing. I went through each slip of paper. It was an odd collection of receipts, women's phone numbers and assorted jewelry-mostly single earrings. There was a note on pink paper: "Please come tonight. I'm desperate," but no indication who had written it or when.

"Find anything?"

I jumped. Jesse was standing in the doorway.

"How did you find me here?" I was a little annoyed, even though I had no right to be.

"When I followed you back to town I parked down the street and waited for you to go into the shop. When you didn't, I followed you."

"I didn't see you," I said.

"You weren't supposed to."

I could feel my face turning red, so I decided to change the subject. "Is this anything?" I showed the paper to Jesse.

He examined it. "It's something, but it's not enough of something to matter."

"You don't think it's a clue?"

He smiled. "We like to call it evidence. But I don't think this qualifies." He sighed. "I'll put it in an evidence bag, just in case."

I started to move toward the door, knowing I was going to be thrown out anyway. "I'm sorry, Jesse. I just thought I would look to see what was here."

Jesse came toward me, so I stepped back. I moved toward the wall near the door and he stood only an inch from me. "We're in Archers Rest now, Nell," he whispered, his warm breath hitting my cheek. "Do you know what that means?"

"You can arrest me."

"Don't make me do that. Please, just go home."

I paused for a moment, enjoying the way his aftershave smelled. Jesse had a strong presence, and standing this close to me, I felt protected and excited at the same time. It seemed to me that Jesse's breathing had sped up slightly, but I couldn't be sure. I was about to lean in and press my head against his chest when I realized just how stupid I was being. Jesse was on the verge of hauling me off to jail, not asking me on a date. I took one more step back, and as I did my foot caught on something. I bent over and picked up a key. I held it up.

"It's probably his apartment key," he said.

"He would have had that with him," I said. Jesse opened the door and tried the key in the lock. It didn't fit.

"Would it be the key to the shop?" he asked.

"Wouldn't he have had that with him too?" I said, but I took the key and compared it to my shop key. It wasn't a match.

"It's seems like that one," Jesse said as he pointed to another key on my chain. I compared the two keys. It was a perfect match.

"What does that open?"

"My grandmother's house."

"So Eleanor gave him a key to the house."

"I don't think so." I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the house. "Hi. It's me. Did you give Marc a key to your house?" It took nearly five minutes to find out that all of my grandmother's keys were accounted for, and to explain that nothing was wrong. But I was a little creeped out by the fact that Marc had a key to someplace he didn't belong. When I hung up I looked to Jesse, who seemed as confused as I was.

"So how did Marc get the key?" Jesse asked.

"Why did Marc get the key? That's what I want to know." Jesse dropped the key in an evidence bag. "I'll find out. And for the last time, I'll drop you home and you'll stay out of this investigation."

I nodded. "No. Back at the shop."

"Good. And from now on when you have an idea, or a clue or a hunch, or anything involved with this case, you can call me at the sheriff's office. I'm always happy to listen to a concerned citizen."

"Message received," I said. "I'll just be at the shop checking on Tom's progress."

"He's a good guy, and a hard worker. Eleanor is better off having him do the shop than depending on Marc."

"I don't understand something. Why would my grandmother have hired Marc if he wasn't up for the task? She's not a fool."

Jesse shrugged. "Marc was good to her. He helped keep that old house of hers from falling in." Jesse turned off the lights in Marc's apartment, and I felt the darkness around me. "And he needed someone to believe in him. Your grandmother is a sucker for that kind of thing."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"It is, most of the time. But sometimes it gets you into trouble."

"Is that another way Eleanor and I are alike?" I asked. I looked up at him and we locked eyes. I was looking for something personal in his eyes, but all I got was the solid, emotionless stare of a cop. Jesse walked out of the apartment.

I stood for a second in the dark and then followed Jesse out.

CHAPTER 42

Jesse dropped me off in front of Someday Quilts just as Tom and his helper were coming back from lunch.

It was clear that a lot of work had been done in just a few hours, but the place looked a mess.

"We framed the entryway between the two spaces," Tom pointed out with a shy pride that I found endearing. "We have to do some patchwork, of course, and clean up, but we should be ready to paint Wednesday."

"That fast?"

"We're in a race, aren't we?" He smiled. "I'm determined to be done with the remodel before your grandmother is finished with the quilt."

The quilt. I'd completely forgotten to cut out the little flowers Nancy had given me, and I knew that I could not go home without them.

"I'm going to be downstairs if you need me," I said as I grabbed the bits of fabric from my purse.

Downstairs Nancy had done a good job of cleaning out the office. All the boxes that had cluttered it were gone and it was a perfect empty space for my assigned task. I sat on the floor and set out my tools in a row: the template, the fabric, a pencil and scissors. Nancy had told me to draw the flowers on the wrong side of the fabric and cut them out on the line. Easy. So I laid the fabric down on the floor and drew around the plastic template of a flower. Then I cut exactly along the pencil marks. It was simple, and by the sixth flower it was really boring as well.

I lay on the floor with the pile of fabric under my head and listened to the work upstairs. I could hear a power saw cutting wood for something, then lots of clanging and moving about. Jesse had been right to recommend his former brother-in-law for the job. He was serious and committed and really knew what he was doing.

It made me wonder what noises Marc would have been making had he been up there doing the work. It was obvious to me now that he was all enthusiasm and ambition but he probably didn't have the skills to do a good job. I thought about what Jesse had said, that Eleanor had given him the chance because she liked the idea of someone rising to the meet the challenge, as she had done. She must have wanted Marc to feel pride in having accomplished a difficult task. Maybe then he would have moved beyond his reputation as town womanizer.