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it.”
    Since his truck was parked out front, Jason went back up the stairs and through the gallery. After checking that he knew the way, Sue entered the workshop, listening for the doorbells that would tell her he’d left. She heard a clatter of footsteps in the stairwell and Yaneque’s cheerful hello as she made a delivery to the insurance company. Sue called back, but continued with her routine.
    The tracking board on one wall of the shop indicated where each project stood in the timeline. Sue made a list of the frames that needed to be joined, and then pulled out the frame pieces for the week’s deliveries. Carefully, she unwrapped each set of legs from its foam package and scrutinized the cut mouldings for flaws. Once she was satisfied with the quality of the wood, she labeled each frame with the customer’s name and colored the cut ends so the raw wood would be hidden at the seam. There were only seven frames today. She should be able to get them done before lunch and spend the rest of the day doing the final assembly.
    FedEx delivered two more boxes of frames, and the beverage truck dropped off several dollies of sodas for the Silver Spoon and the Chowdah Bowl. Just before ten, Sue sighed and went out to remind the trucker to close the double-wide garage door. Jemmie habitually arrived at ten. If the door was open, he would have a fit. Sue and Elsie would have liked to open that big door to let in fresh air and sunshine, but Jemmie had a horror of “critters.” Although the landlord had installed a screen that kept out the bugs, Jemmie insisted mice and chipmunks and frogs—he really had a thing about frogs—would get in somehow and chew on the door into his storage area. No one could convince him frogs were more likely to seek out the moist places in the woods than the bare cement of the basement, nor that any rodents that got in would head straight for the food storage areas. No, he insisted, the door had to remain closed. Whenever he heard the door mechanism working, he rushed downstairs to supervise the delivery and close the door as soon as it was done. Then he would inspect his storeroom for signs of frog chewing. His employees welcomed these daily absences from the jewelry showroom, but they were a major annoyance to everyone else.
    The overhead door was still open when Sue went upstairs to unlock the gallery, but it was closed when she returned. Jemmie was in his storeroom, muttering about frogs. Sue ignored him and got on with her job.
    ****
    Ginny arrived a short time later and called down on the intercom to announce her presence. “Come up when you have a minute,” she suggested. “We need to talk about the Berger painting.”
    Sue didn’t exactly rush the joining of the frame she was working on, but it didn’t take her long to put it together. She grabbed her coffee mug and climbed the stairs again.
    “Good morning,” she said with a cheerful smile. “I was hoping you’d say that!”
    Ginny tidied up some papers on her desk and waved Sue into a chair. “I see you were looking at Jerry’s page on the website.”
    Sue, who had left the page up on the monitor, nodded. “I couldn’t remember if you had any biography on him, or if it was all just his prints.”
    “I just mention he died ten years ago. There was no reason to mention the circumstances.”
    “Especially if it was murder.”
    “It was suicide,” Ginny corrected her. “The police all said it was a murder/suicide. It’s best to leave it at that.”
    Sue knew her boss pretty well by now, having worked with her for nine years and more. “That’s what the police say. Looking at his work I wouldn’t have guessed it, and Elsie said yesterday it was murder. What do you really think, Ginny?”
    The older woman sighed. “I knew Jerry Berger for ten years. He was excited about life, happy in his work. Suicide is sometimes hard to predict, but I just don’t see it in Jerry’s case. But the police were so sure.”
    “Did they