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„You got a maid or a housekeeper?“
    „There was a live-in housekeeper. My niece, Bitty, tried to save her soul, and she ran away from home. Now my sister, Cleo, deals with an agency. They send different people every week.“
    Done with the fingerprinting, Heller gently wiped the ink from her hands, then filed his print cards away in an envelope. He was working on the identifying labels when he and Riker looked up to see Bitty Smyth hovering in the doorway, asking with her eyes if she might enter.
    „Come in, dear,“ said Nedda. „This is Mr. Heller, and you’ve met Detective Riker.“
    For a moment, Riker believed that Bitty might curtsy, but instead, she held out her Bible as an offering, voting him the most likely soul to be in need of religion. „It’s a gift,“ she said, when he failed to take it from her. „You are a Christian, are you not?“
    „My church is Finnegan’s.“ And Riker’s religion revolved around sacramental bourbon and beer. Finnegan’s was the cop bar beneath his Greenwich Village apartment. Free drinks, courtesy of his new landlord and barkeep, made it a religious experience every night.
    The tiny woman patted his head in the manner of rewarding a dog.
    „Bitty,“ said her aunt, „do you know where the ice pick is?“
    „It’s on the floor beside the body.“
    „No, dear. Where is our ice pick?“
    The younger woman shook her head, uncomprehending. Suddenly, one pointing finger rose in the air as a divining rod, and she walked in a straight line to a drawer beside the sink. She pulled out an ice pick, then placed it on the table in front of Nedda and left the room. Heller followed after her, fingerprint kit in hand and calling out, „Ma’am? Miss Smyth? A minute, please?“
    Nedda Winter studied the plain ice pick on the table. Its wooden handle was cracked and worn. „Doesn’t quite go with the silver ice bucket, does it?“
    „No, ma’am, it doesn’t.“ And he had already found this one during an earlier search of the kitchen. Riker’s eyes were on the hallway when Mallory paused just outside the door, standing there in low conversation with the police photographer. She moved on down the hall, no doubt wanting pictures of a sewing room with no scissors. He turned back to face Nedda. „We’ll keep looking till we find the other ice pick – the good one.“
    If she took this as a threat – and it was – she showed no outward sign. Leaning toward Riker, speaking in her dry way, she said, „Our Bitty is a soldier in the army of the Lord – in case that escaped your notice. She’s also very delicate. I hope you don’t see her as a woman who fancies dangerous men, maybe lures them home so she can murder them.“
    „I like your sense of humor, Nedda.“ He had already surmised that if Bitty, the Christian soldier, were hanging nose to nose with a fruit fly, the fly would beat the living crap out of her.
    A shriek came from the front room, and now Bitty Smyth was screaming, „No fingerprints! No, you can’t do this!“
    Riker watched Kathy Mallory passing the kitchen doorway again, advancing on the front room with grim resolve. He was already feeling sorry for the smaller, weaker woman; the little soldier was indeed delicate in mind and body.
    Oh, yes, there would be fingerprints, and right now.
    Mallory’s end of the conversation was not intelligible at this distance, but Riker could imagine the scene in the other room: his partner’s attitude conjuring up a faint aroma from the sulfurs of hell and maybe a little smoke; Bitty’s eyes growing wide and wild.
    „No!“ Bitty Smyth yelled. „I want a lawyer!”
    B itty Smyth flitted about the room, staring into every face, silently begging for relief. She avoided looking at Mallory, whose eyes were green neon signs with the words no mercy.
    Nedda Winter entered the room, followed by a more languid Riker, who hardly ever moved quite so fast as an old lady, though Mallory knew that her partner would not call this