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Paternayan yarn on sale but not the pink?” asked a customer, and she dismissed Joe Brown to plunge back into the fray.
    With all that was going on, Phil Galvin and Doris Valentine went unnoticed for a minute after they entered the shop. Godwin saw the scared look on their faces and wove his way through a mass of shoppers. “What’s up, what’s the matter?” he asked.
    “It’s Dorie’s apartment!” Phil said in his loud old-man’s voice—he was a little deaf.
    Heads turned toward him and he said, “We’re fine, we’re fine!” Shoppers turned back to their search for the perfect bargain.
    Doris spoke more quietly, though her voice was trembling. “We just went up to my apartment,” she told Godwin, “and someone’s been in there. The place is a wreck. I want to phone the police.”
    Doris lived in an apartment on the second floor of the building, and Betsy was her landlord. “Haven’t you got a cell phone?” Godwin asked, a little surprised.
    “They don’t have a volume control that goes high enough for me,” said Phil in a hoarse whisper.
    Doris said, “And I can’t figure them out. And we couldn’t call from up there; the advice I’ve always heard is not to stay in a place where a burglar’s been at work.”
    Phil said, “We were wondering if we could . . .” He looked around at the seething crowd in the shop and finished, “But I guess not.”
    Godwin said, “Here, let’s step outside, away from all these people.”
    They did, and Godwin dialed 911 on his cell. “There’s been a burglary at Two Hundred South Lake Street in Excelsior, in an upstairs apartment.” He explained that he was not the renter, Doris Valentine was, and that she would be waiting at the bottom of the stairs for the police to arrive.
    “I’m going back in to tell Betsy,” he said upon disconnecting. “Stay with her, Phil.”
    “Oh, yes, don’t worry about that,” said Phil, putting an arm around her shoulder. “Come on, Dorie, let’s get you in out of the cold.”
    They’re so sweet together , Godwin thought. He went to tell Betsy what had happened. “Are they all right?” was her first question. Reassured, she then asked, “When did this happen?”
    Godwin stared at her briefly, then smiled. “I bet it didn’t happen in broad daylight. I bet it happened last night. When she wasn’t there.”
    Betsy stared at him for a moment, then smiled back. “That’s cute!”
    “Let’s not ask them, because then they’d have to lie, and it’d be cruel to do that to them.”
    “Well, the police are going to ask Doris why she wasn’t at home,” Betsy pointed out.
    “Fine. Let her lie to them. But don’t you ask her, and I won’t, either.”
    “All right.” She looked over Godwin’s shoulder. “Yes, Mr. Woodward, what can I do for you?” Gary Woodward was a high-schooler who was both Betsy’s computer expert and a superb knitter. He loved exotic yarns but could only buy them on sale.
    Godwin smiled at Gary and went to help Mrs. Anderson pick two shades of maroon yarn for a sweater she wanted to knit.
    In a very few minutes a squad car, lights flashing, pulled in to the curb in front of a fireplug. A police officer climbed out and went into the center door of the building, where a staircase led up to the second floor. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and for an instant Betsy wondered if he was her good friend Lars Larson. Then she remembered that Lars had been promoted to sergeant and was pretty much working a desk nowadays. He didn’t like it, but with a pregnant wife and a toddler already in the household, he couldn’t afford to remain just another officer on patrol.
    “What’s going on?” asked Gary.
    “I don’t know,” Betsy said falsely, as others turned to see what he was talking about. No need to slow the sale while curious customers crowded the front windows to stare. “Do you want all four of those skeins?”
    A few minutes later, a dark sedan drove past the big front window of