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the seventies and they tore it down. It was a shack to start with, in terrible condition. The old Frazier place that you mentioned is a good building, so I guess they’ll keep it in repair and some day use it for something or other. Teri Frazier drowned in the lake years ago, and Lawrence sold the place a few months later. The rest of us are hanging on.”
    “Is the Vickers cabin part of that deal?”
    Felicia shook her head. “His place isn’t in the park area. Neither is the Halburtsons’. In fact, Jud said he wanted to buy Halburtson’s place if he ever decided to sell, which he might do. He’s getting too old to be out there on the lake all the time. Eighty! That’s too old to pretend otherwise.”
    She caught a glimpse of a fleeting smile that crossed the detective’s face, and she grinned. “Takes one old coot to recognize another one,” she said cheerfully. “I haven’t been out on the lake in ten years. I don’t need to be on the water, just close by. That’s plenty for me.”
    “Do you have a boat?”
    “No. Sold it after Herbert died.”
    The detective’s questions became more and more pointless, Felicia thought. But she answered each one, and yet later, alone again with her dogs, she felt dissatisfied, as if there had been something left out altogether. She nodded to herself. The two overriding motives for murder, as far as she was aware from a lifetime of reading mysteries, and newspaper accounts of crimes, were passion and money. And even if Jud had dumped Doris Manning abruptly, and even if Joe Manning had learned of their affair, that had been several years ago, too long a time for passion still to be a factor.
    She didn’t even consider Willa Ashford. Jud had fallen in love with her, and she with him. Of course, Felicia reflected, things could change, but if they had changed, it had to have been within days of his death. The last time Felicia had seen Jud, the Wednesday before he was killed, all he had talked about was Willa, and still with the sense of wonder that had turned him, a middle-aged man, into a boy, with all the world’s marvels spread out at his feet. Felicia had seen Willa’s devastation when her husband died years before, and she had seen her come back to life finally, and then fall in love once more, and she had rejoiced for both her and Jud. Willa was out of the question.
    But if he had been killed because of money, then Abby was the first person who came to the fore for motive, and that was ridiculous. She felt about Abby the way she had yearned to feel toward her own children for whom she could never summon the same kind of unquestioning love.
    None of her children had been willing, or able, to sit quietly and watch her shape dragons, or monsters, or elves out of clay. None of her own children had ever spontaneously hugged and kissed her, for nothing, just because. Or said she had magic hands. Felicia shook her head in annoyance: if she wasn’t careful she would become another foolish old woman who lived only in the past, one whose life existed in memories. She brought herself back to the here and now, the reality of a murderer.
    Even if Abby had the motive, which she didn’t since she cared little about money, she had been at the coast, far out of reach. Not even the police could seriously consider her a suspect. And Brice, according to Florence Halburtson, had been in Portland, so he was ruled out. Lynne, long divorced from Jud, didn’t stand to profit, and she certainly had felt nothing for him for many years, although there had been a time when sheer frustration and misery might have driven her to kill.
    Felicia washed the tea cups and pot, and then poured herself a drink of scotch and water. It was after five, she could have a drink now. Herbert never had wanted liquor around the house, never used it himself in any form, and had been disapproving of her occasional drink. She sat at the table in the gathering darkness and watched the last of the boats come ashore,