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there in Edna’s kitchen. But even though Sally had become finicky about coffee to the point that it was embarrassing, she didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with Maude.
    â€œGreat!” Sally said, smiling with what she hoped looked like gratitude. “Thanks.” She poured in half-and-half (that might help) from a little china pitcher.
    It was good. Damned good. Maude made good coffee. A sign from heaven.
    â€œMeg got to where she couldn’t live without Peet’s coffee. A friend in the Bay Area used to send her five pounds at a time,” Maude explained, blowing Sally’s mind. A tea kettle whistled on the stove. Maude moved to pour boiling water over a Celestial Seasonings tea bag. “I myself gave up caffeine ten years ago—you know it’s been linked to breast cancer.” She tsk ed slightly. A sign from hell. “But I’m not one to tell people what they should or shouldn’t do,” she finished implausibly, taking tinfoil off a pan of fresh blueberry muffins. She dumped the muffins into a towel-lined basket, passed it and a china plate to Sally, and gestured at a pot of Tiptree’s Summer Fruit preserves. If this was purgatory, make the most of it.
    â€œMeg’s lawyer, Ezra Sonnenschein, told me you live out in West Laramie,” Sally said, biting into a still-warm muffin.
    â€œActually, it’s a little west of West Laramie, out by Wood’s Landing, off the grid,” Maude told her proudly. “Solar panels, wind generator, and a greenhouse for heat exchange and, of course, for getting garden stuff going. Meg always got her seedlings from me,” she explained, consuming two muffins in four bites without dropping a crumb. “I write a Sunday gardening column for the Boomerang and do a little consulting for the Albany County Agricultural Extension Service. I’ll give you a tour of the back garden in a little while,” she said, digging into another muffin, polishing it off, and wiping her hands daintily on a linen napkin. “I assume you’ll be composting.”
    Sally was speechless. She broke her muffin in half and put some jam on it.
    Maude saw that she’d need to jump-start the conversation. “So when do your things arrive?”
    Relief: frittery life details. “They left LA last Monday, but since this is only a partial load they’re making a couple of stops on the way. The moving company said they’d be here Tuesday,” Sally told her, taking another swallow of wonderful coffee. “I don’t have much. Some basic kitchen stuff. My furniture was sh—uh, secondhand junk, so I got rid of it all. It’s mostly books. Aside from that, it’s my other guitar, records and tapes, sh—uh, stuff like that.” Sally really had to work on not cussing.
    â€œI’ll plan to be here to help you, if you want,” Maude offered. “I’ve cleared out some bookshelves.”
    â€œThat sounds fine,” Sally said, smiling, “and I’d be glad to have you help me move things around up here, so I don’t fu—er, mess the place up.”
    â€œYou won’t. You may have been liable to do that a few years ago,” Maude told her wryly, letting on that she knew more about Sally than she was saying, for the moment. “But you’re a big girl now, in spite of that nasty mouth on you.” She stood up. “I hope everything here is to your liking. Since the estate is paying me, I’ve tried to keep the house in the kind of shape Meg expected.” She gave Sally a long, inspecting look. “I don’t need the money, as you probably know.”
    Sally knew; Sonnenschein had told her that Margaret had left Maude a two-million-dollar trust fund and a sizeable annual sum. Maude was a hell of a lot richer than Sally was.
    â€œI knew Margaret Dunwoodie, and kept house for her for nearly thirty years, and I’m not about to quit now, even if she