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gaze was firm. “Maybe the clue to my daughter’s death is in her quilts, especially the last one. I keep thinking that whoever stole Claire’s quilt may also have killed her.”
    I bent down to hug the older woman, something I wouldn’t have dreamed possible when I first walked into this imposing house. Bird bones hid under her soft cashmere sweater. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, mother to mother. “I promise.”

C HAPTER 8
    I drove back to my house in Encino to change clothes. Peeling off my panty hose was like opening a bag of compressed marshmallows. Instant release. I stepped into a pair of jeans and comfortable shoes, grabbed a blueberry muffin the size of my head and a cold Coke Zero from the refrigerator. You had to draw the calorie line somewhere.
    The yellow tape was gone from Claire’s circular driveway, so I parked my white Corolla near the front door. A horn honked briefly somewhere down the street, stabbing the Sunday afternoon quiet. I walked over to the side of the house where the neighbor had removed the key. My way was blocked by an iron gate secured by a heavy steel padlock. I tried to look around a large oleander bush, but the branches were in the way.
    I closed my eyes and snaked my arm through the bush and the iron bars of the gate, feeling blindly along the smooth, melon-colored stucco of the side wall. My fingers brushed against something hard that felt like a miniature aluminum awning. I knew what this was: the vent cover for the clothes dryer, just like mine at home.
    I hesitated to put my fingers inside a hole I couldn’t see. God forbid there should be a spider lurking there. I held my breath, squeezed my eyelids, and felt around the edges of the vent cover until I found the bottom. I pushed at the little piece of aluminum hanging down like a tiny swinging door and walked my fingertips inside the hole. The key rested on a bed of soft lint and felt cool to the touch. I grabbed it and quickly withdrew my hand.
    When I let out my breath and opened my eyes, there sat a fat brown garden spider on a web in the oleander leaves about three inches away from my face. All of its eyes looked straight at me.
    “Ewww,” I yelled, jumping away and brushing imaginary spiders out of my hair and clothes. “Ewww. Ewww.” I did the spider dance all the way to the front door .
    Still shuddering, I turned the key in the lock but hesitated before opening the door. Did Claire have an alarm? Siobhan hadn’t mentioned anything. I took a deep breath and slowly pushed the heavy blue door open. Silence. Okay, good.
    The air in the house smelled faintly like the men’s restroom in a bus station. I didn’t remember any noxious odors five days ago when we found Claire’s body.
    The inside of the house was pretty much as I remembered—yellow walls, hardwood floors, generously upholstered white sofa with an appliqué quilt hanging behind. Claire must have loved yellow, because the dining room was painted a mustard color. Beyond that was a kitchen with white cabinets and black granite countertops.
    I looked at the litter on the floor from the EMTs. I pushed at some of the paper wrappings and empty plastic bags with the toe of my blue Crocs. Were they allowed to just leave a mess like this?
    A faint whine suddenly came from the other room. I froze in place. Another whine, a little louder now. Oh my God, there’s someone else here. I looked around desperately for something to defend myself with and picked up a ceramic table lamp. Then I saw an orange tabby cat padding cautiously around the corner. He looked at me and whined again.
    I put the lamp back down on the table. “Gosh, you scared me.” I bent to pet the cat. “You must be Claire’s kitty, you poor thing. Did everyone forget about you? Are you starved?” I went to the kitchen. The smell grew much stronger. I looked around and found two empty cat bowls sitting on the laundry room floor along with an overflowing litter box. “Yuchh.” I looked over