“Do you have any idea who might have wanted her dead or why someone would have kicked in her door?”

Joelle shook her head. “She kept to herself these past five years. She worked, she shopped, and she stayed home alone. It wasn’t much of a life.”

“And someone took even that from her,” Angelica commented sadly.

“What made you decide to come here tonight?” Tricia asked.

“I . . . um . . . came to look for a nice outfit for her to be buried in.”

“Then you’ve heard that the medical examiner ruled on the cause of death?” Tricia asked.

“She was crushed,” Joelle said with a shrug.

She hadn’t heard. And why hadn’t Grant Baker contacted her to tell her the official cause?

“You said you came here tonight to look for something that would help you figure out who killed Betsy. And?” Joelle demanded.

“And?” Tricia repeated dully.

“What have you discovered?”

Tricia threw Angelica a guilty look.

“That the motive wasn’t robbery,” Angelica said.

Tricia’s head snapped around to glare at her sister and could have cheerfully kicked her. “Sadly, nothing,” she told Joelle.

Joelle scowled. “You’re supposed to be so smart when it comes to mysteries. You haven’t been able to come up with anything else?”

Tricia shrugged. “Not so far.”

Joelle scowled. “Then I assume your reputation as an amateur sleuth has been greatly exaggerated.”

“I’ve always thought so,” Angelica muttered.

Tricia gave her sister another annoyed glare, but Angelica seemed oblivious.

“Look, it’s getting late. You two had better go,” Joelle said firmly. “If you give me Betsy’s keys and leave right now, I won’t call the police and report you.”

“We were just about to leave when you got here,” Angelica said.

“Yes. It’s getting late,” Tricia agreed, and she made her way through the piles in the living room and squeezed past Joelle to head for the back door.

Angelica handed Joelle the set of keys as she passed. “Please let us know what you decide to do about the funeral. We’d like to come.”

Speak for yourself, Tricia was tempted to say. “Good night,” she called as she went out the back door.

“Good night,” Angelica echoed and tried to close the door behind her. It wouldn’t catch, and after a few tries she gave up.

Tricia breathed in the crisp clean air. The odor in Betsy’s house had been so penetrating she felt as if she could taste it. She waited until Angelica flanked her, and then the sisters started down the driveway. “Do you notice what’s missing?” Tricia asked.

Angelica looked all around her. “No, what?”

“Joelle’s car.”

“What are you saying—that she was sneaking around the same as us?”

“It did take her a moment or two to come up with the burial-clothes excuse.”

“So why do you think she really came here tonight?”

“I have no idea. But if she’d been disinherited, then just like us, she really had no right to be there. Was she going to sift through the trash to find hidden treasure before the house is sealed for probate?”

“If so, naughty Joelle.”

They turned the corner and walked along Nashua Street, heading back toward the strip mall and Angelica’s car. Angelica raised her arm to sniff her jacket sleeve. “I think I’m going to have to fumigate my clothes. Either that or burn them.”

“Mine, too.”

“Do you think the smell will transfer to my car seats?”

“Not if you leave a window open overnight—and pray it doesn’t snow.”

“Great idea.”

“What do you want to do about the CDs?” Tricia asked and ducked her head, wishing the wind weren’t so strong.

“You have more free time than I do. You can have them, look them over, and then let me know what you find—if you find anything at all, that is,” Angelica said, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the CDs, and then handing them to Tricia.

“It might be that Betsy only chronicled the junk she collected.”

“And if that’s the case, I think you should look at the disks and then destroy them. As it is, we’re violating her privacy,” Angelica said.

“But now she’s dead and beyond caring. And you can tell an awful lot about a person by the junk they collect on their hard drive.”

“Which makes me want to purge my computer the minute I get home. That and change all my passwords. It really was far too easy for us to get into Betsy’s computer.”

“And thank goodness it was,” Tricia said.

“But only if something good turns up. I have a feeling you’ll find rummaging through her files to be a complete waste of time.”

Tricia did, too. And if she didn’t, how on earth was she going to use the information without incriminating herself and Angelica?

It wasn’t something she wanted to contemplate.

Yet.

*   *   *

It was almost ten by the time Tricia had thrown her clothes into the washer and emerged lobster red from her shower, much too late to call Chief Baker. He was an “early to bed, early to rise” kind of guy, and she didn’t want to annoy him by waking him.

Instead, she sat down in front of her computer with Miss Marple on her lap and went through the first of the three CDs. Not only did Betsy collect physical junk, she collected a lot of pictures. One of the files contained her user IDs and passwords to all her online accounts. Her Pinterest account had over forty thousand pictures spread over 252 boards. They ranged from recipes to vintage Christmas cards to do-it-yourself projects, and she had copied many of them to her hard drive.

Tricia felt like a voyeur pawing through the dead woman’s virtual closetful of secrets, and like her home, nothing seemed to be of any real value.

The buzzer on the washer sounded and Miss Marple jumped down from her lap, allowing Tricia to get up and put the clothes in the dryer. She’d have to stay up and take the clothes out when the cycle finished, or she’d be spending the next night or so ironing everything, which was a chore she absolutely loathed.

With the dryer drum happily turning, Tricia wandered back to the computer, but this time Miss Marple did not join her. Tricia considered logging on to Betsy’s account at the Bank of Stoneham but figured the police might subpoena the computer records and possibly trace the inquiry to her home computer. She wanted to find Betsy’s killer, but not if she had to go to jail to do it.

Tricia scrolled through a number of files, but nothing seemed relevant to Betsy’s death, and as Angelica suggested, she felt like a voyeur violating Betsy’s privacy. Finally a glance at the time listed at the bottom-right corner of her computer monitor told her that the dry cycle would soon be finished. She’d started closing screens when she noticed a Word document with the title of DIET RECIPES. Since she worked so hard at maintaining her own weight, she found herself double-clicking on the icon. The software loaded and the document opened. Sure enough, a recipe for makeover chocolate muffins appeared. Instead of oil, the recipe called for prune paste or applesauce. Instead of cane sugar, the recipe called for an artificial sweetener. Tricia was all for lowering calories, but she preferred food to be made of real ingredients, not something from a test tube in some chemical company’s laboratory.

She scrolled down to the next page, and the next. More and more interesting makeover recipes appeared, including a low-cal version of Waldorf salad—something she’d always enjoyed. She hit the print button, specifying that page, and wondered if she could get Angelica or her short-order cook to make it for her. She was about to close the file, wishing Betsy had included a table of contents, when she stopped scrolling. Her heart began to pound when columns of names, cities, and numbers filled the screen. What did it mean? Did Betsy have bank accounts spread out all across the nation with money hidden in other names? How could she have accomplished it?