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  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Margie said over Suze’s shoulder. “And I was around in the seventies.”

  “It’s English.” Nell unwrapped another piece, a long-legged sugar bowl, the spindly legs crossed at the knees and the feet shod in huge yellow shoes. “My mom was English. We’d go over there to spend a couple of weeks every summer. These made me laugh, so my aunt and grandmother started sending pieces to me for birthdays and Christmases.”

  Suze unwrapped another little round cup, this one with longer legs, stretched out as if they were running.

  “That’s called Running Ware,” Nell said and then looked up startled when something thudded in the kitchen. “Where’s Marlene?” she said, and Marlene picked up her long, narrow head on the daybed and looked to see if food was involved. “Just checking, baby,” Nell said, and Marlene sighed and put her nose into the chenille again.

  Suze put the running cup on the floor beside her. It looked as though it was covering ground. “I love these. Do they all look like this?”

  “Different-colored shoes and socks,” Nell said. “I think I’m going to have to keep them in the kitchen, assuming I still have a kitchen when they’re finished in there.” She was unpacking a teapot with striped socks and black Mary Janes. “The hutch is full of Clarice and Susie.”

  “Do you have room in the kitchen?” Margie said.

  Nell frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe if I put up a shelf—”

  “Chloe has the most darling shelves in The Cup,” Margie said. “She edged them with the plastic stuff that looks like crochet.…”

  While Margie burbled on about the teashop, Suze unpacked the rest of the pieces, matching teacups to teapots and sugar bowls and creamers. At the bottom of the box, Suze found Nell’s family photo album and passed it over to her, and Margie took it and began to leaf through it as Suze lined up the running egg cups in a line and laughed. There were nine of them, some with striped socks and some with checked and some with dots, all running hell-bent for leather someplace else.

  “I have to have copies made of all those pictures,” Nell was saying to Margie. “Jase should have an album, too.”

  “Where do you get these cups?” Suze said, breaking into the conversation. “I want some.”

  “England,” Nell said. “Antique and secondhand stores mostly. Or eBay, the online auction site. They show up there pretty often.”

  “How much?”

  “Plain egg cups are about thirty or forty dollars,” Nell said. “The running ones come a bit higher. Maybe fifty.”

  “Fifty dollars for an egg cup?” Margie said.

  “I want these in my china cabinet,” Suze said, tracing the fat, smooth edge of the nearest cup. “It’s full of butt-ugly Spode.”

  “You can have them,” Nell said. “Early birthday present.”

  “No, they’re too much,” Suze said, and thought, If I got a job, I could pay for them myself. In the kitchen, something else thudded. Detective work. Nell had told her that the McKennas could use her as a decoy, but she’d known Jack would have a fit, so she’d said no. But now there were these cups.… “Can I buy these one at a time? Pay for them as I go?”

  “Sure,” Nell said, looking a little taken aback. “Or take them now and pay me later.”

  “No,” Suze said. “I want to earn them. One at a time.”

  “The Dysart Spode is beautiful,” Margie said, sounding a little grumpy. “I don’t see why—”

  “You want it?” Suze said. “It’s yours.”

  “I have my Desert Rose,” Margie said. “But that beautiful blue—”

  “Have you ever looked at those plates?” Suze picked up the cup with the mauve shoes, and her heart beat faster. It had thin blue lines around the top of the socks. It was going to look great running amok among the Spode. “They’re from a series called the British Sporting Set, and the pictures on them are awful. There’s one called ‘Death of the Bear.’”

  “You’re kidding,” Nell said. “I’ve been eating off it for years at holidays, but I never looked at it.”

  “There’s another one called ‘Girl at the Well,’” Suze said. “She looks like she’s going to throw herself in. I get very depressed looking at my china.”

  “The running cups are yours,” Nell said.

  Suze put the mauve cup down and felt immeasurably lighter. She was going to have to get a job now. She had a future that didn’t involve going to school and waiting for Jack to get home. She was doing something.

  “Thank you. I will.” She took a deep breath. “So Margie, how many days a week is this shop open? Budge is going to go nuts without you on the weekends.”

  “Just on Saturdays,” Margie said, her face clearing. “And only in the afternoons all week. It’s a darling job.…”

  Suze stared at the egg cups while Margie burbled on. They strode across the floor, confident and sure. On the move.

  “You know, Margie,” Nell said, and her voice sounded so odd that Suze looked up to watch her. “If you have a photo album, I could take it in when I take this one in to get the duplicates. You, too, Suze. That way if anything happened, you’d have a spare.”

  Suze stared at her, and Nell’s eyes slid away. She put that album in the bottom of the box on purpose, Suze thought.

  “Is it expensive?” Margie was saying. “I’m sort of broke. Budge says I should declare Stewart dead and collect his insurance since Stewart spent all my inheritance, but that doesn’t seem right. I’m not even sure he’s dead.”

  Suze shifted her surprise from Nell to Margie. “You need money?”

  “I don’t need it,” Margie said. “Yet. And he could be dead. Of course, he could not be, too.”

  “The photo place might give me a deal if I took two in,” Nell said, her voice overly bright. “You could pay me later, like Suze. It’s no trouble.”

  “Well, okay,” Margie said. “It is a good idea. I’ll bring it in to work tomorrow.”

  “Good,” Nell said, her voice so chirpy it broke.

  Suze tried to catch her eye again, and Nell said, “We should have coffee,” and stood up.

  Suze stood up to follow her, but then Gabe came out of the kitchen, and she pulled him aside. “Listen,” she said as he looked at her, startled. “Nell said once that you might need some help on your decoy work. Is the job still open?”

  “Sure,” he said, a little wary. “We’ve got one Thursday night.”

  “Where and when?” Suze said. “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  Nell kept an eye on Gabe and Suze from the kitchen doorway. If she knew Gabe, he was pumping her for something. “Hey,” she called out to him and heard Suze say, “Thank you,” before Gabe came over to her, and she drew him into the kitchen. “What are you to talking to Suze about?”

  “She was talking to me,” Gabe said. “She wants to do decoy work.”

  “What?” Riley said, from behind them.

  “Jack’s not going to be happy,” Nell said.

  Gabe shrugged. “That’s Suze’s problem.”

  “And mine,” Riley said. “I do most of the damn decoys. Why—”

  “Ignore him,” Gabe told Nell. “He’s frustrated because we have found exactly nothing. We had high hopes for the basement, but the door to it has been nailed shut since World War II.”

  “I asked about that,” Nell said. “Doris likes the basement to herself. She makes wreaths down there.”

  “Wreaths,” Gabe said, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Okay. You’re sure Lynnie didn’t leave anything that you threw out?”

  “If she left anything, Doris took it,” Nell said. “The place was empty when I moved in.

  “Doris,” Gabe said and looked at Riley.

  “Oh, thank you very much, no,” he said. “Make Nell do it. It’s her landlady.”

  “Ask Doris what she found,” Gabe said to Nell.

  “Sure,” Nell said. “And then when she evicts me for suggesting she stole from Lynnie