‘Are you done?’ he asked, and I shrugged.

  ‘That was it,’ I said with a sad smile. ‘Just go and find your happy ending.’

  ‘You seem to have it all figured out.’ He glanced down at the wilted flowers. ‘I bet some water might help these. And I hate to be a bother, but I just drove out to Weston to take Ashleigh home and back here to talk to you. I could really use a cup of coffee.’

  I picked up the flowers, feeling sorry for them. They looked like I felt. Maybe if I cut off the bottom of the stems and put some sugar in the water they would revive. As for the coffee, I could do with a cup as well, and he did deserve something for his effort. It was pretty brave of him to face me. And now that I’d spoken my piece, I felt a sense of relief. Lastly, if I meant what I’d said about the writers’ group, I needed to show him that I could be around him without it being uncomfortable.

  He stayed in the living room while I took the flowers into the kitchen. I put the coffee on, then snipped the ends of the stems before putting them in a vase with lukewarm water and three teaspoons of sugar. I wasn’t sure what to do with them after that. Normally when I got flowers, I put them on the dining-room table, but I wanted to show him I’d cared for his gift, so brought them into the living room. In the short time, they already had started to perk up.

  He looked up from his phone as I set them on the coffee table. He was probably sending a message to Ass— No, I was going to have to drop that even in my mind … Ashleigh with some reason why he wasn’t home. ‘So you didn’t give up on them,’ he said. ‘A good trait.’

  He seemed to have more to say, but I wasn’t ready to hear it, and went back down the hall to get the coffee. We both took it black, so I returned carrying just the two mugs.

  ‘Now can I speak?’ he said when I’d set them down on the table, maybe a little too hard. I had done my whole farewell speech and sounded so mature and unemotional, but honestly, I was upset at the circumstance. Maybe more than upset, more like angry.

  ‘Sure, go ahead,’ I said, sitting in the wing chair. There would be no more sharing the couch. We were back to teacher and student.

  He took a sip of the coffee and set down the mug before turning toward me. I’d never noticed before, but he really had soulful eyes when he didn’t have the cop face going. ‘To start with, how about you’re wrong – about everything.’ He let the words hang in the air before taking a deep breath and continuing. ‘Ashleigh went to Sara’s on her own, on the train and unannounced. She had a present for Mikey – completely out of his age range – and tried to act like family. She knew that I was coming over later and gave Sara the impression that I knew she was coming over earlier so they could spend some time together. Her real motive was to get Sara to like her and want us to be a couple.’

  He leaned toward me. ‘As if there was any chance of it happening. You do know my sister doesn’t like her. If she said anything to you about her, I’m sure Sara used the special name she calls her. She doesn’t think I know, but I do.’

  I tried to give a noncommittal shrug as he continued. ‘Ashleigh is doing everything she can to force the issue. She could do things one-sided when it came to walking out, but getting back together takes two to tango.’ He cracked a smile, knowing I’d react to the cliché. I bit my lip and held it in. How fidgety old-maidish would it sound if I went into an explanation that the phrase originated in a 1952 song and gained popularity as an expression, before I offered alternative ways of saying it.

  His face lit into a chuckle. ‘You’re thinking of other words, aren’t you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, uncomfortable that I was so predictable. ‘Was there something else you wanted to say?’

  ‘Just that I’m staying out of the dance, but trying to keep things peaceful so that she’ll sign the papers.’ He went on about how annoyed Sara had been. ‘I had to use all the resolution tools I learned at the academy to keep things calm between them.’ He kept his eyes on me. ‘Are we good now?’

  ‘Is that something you learned at the academy too?’ I didn’t know what to do with the matter-of-fact way he’d asked if things were now OK between us. I was stunned that I had been so wrong. And relieved.

  ‘No,’ he said with a mirthless laugh. ‘They left it up to us to figure out how to deal with our personal relationships.’ There was a moment of dead air, and in some rom-com movie we would have fallen into each other’s arms, but neither of us made a move. He took another drag on the coffee and looked at me. ‘Now that we’ve taken care of that, are you going to tell me who that guy was?’

  It took me a moment to figure out who he was talking about, and then the episode in the coffee shop replayed in my mind. ‘Remember the woman who may or may not have fallen down the stair on her own. That was her husband.’

  ‘As a police officer, one of my jobs is to size up a confrontation and, while I couldn’t see his face, his body language looked threatening. What was that about?’

  It seemed like we were both glad to talk about something other than personal stuff, even though it seemed that even after all that he’d said, I was still in the third-wheel position. I figured that his mind had been kind of occupied with Ashleigh, so I didn’t know how much he remembered about the situation. I repeated the whole story of how Michael Angel had been trying to stop the project I was working on, or at the very least get approval of the manuscript. I added that he seemed to think there was some damning information about him in it. ‘He’s under the impression that his wife gave me a more complete draft than she did. It’s really just notes and prompts, along with some journal entries. She intended for us to work on it together. Every time I look through the papers again, I find something new. Whatever he’s so worried about has to be in there somewhere.’

  ‘You probably know what my advice would be as a law enforcement professional,’ he said, cracking a smile.

  ‘You would tell me to leave it alone,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ he said with a nod. ‘Just fulfill the contract and create a pleasant memoir of the woman and her artist husband. Let him know that’s what you’re doing. You don’t know what lengths he’ll go to keep whatever it is a secret. She’s dead and most likely it was homicide. Let the cops do their job and pin it on him.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can do that. I feel like I have a commitment to Maeve to finish what she started.’ I looked in my coffee cup and then drained the remains. ‘Remember she thought that I might be able to figure the ending myself. Talk about catnip for someone who wrote a mystery.’

  ‘Any ideas of what it is?’ he asked. ‘You do realize that could be why she got killed.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘And the reason you were in Maeve Winslow’s kitchen when the paramedics arrived again?’ Detective Jankowski asked, staring at me from across the table in the coffee-shop booth.

  He’d made another surprise visit the next morning. I’d figured out that cops didn’t make appointments when they wanted to interrogate you. He’d rung my bell, and when he glanced up at me leaning over the railing from the third floor, he’d suggested I come down and we go across the street to the coffee shop.

  I knew it was the stairs, but also going to a neutral place made it feel more friendly. Less like an interrogation and more like him just checking the facts again. It might have worked the first time, but I knew his game by now. My guess was he was coming up empty with evidence for any other suspects, and so had circled back to me. Honestly, I could see why. Claiming to find a body had been used by killers attempting to cover up their crimes, and it probably worked sometimes. The only good news was that despite waiting for the tox screen, he hadn’t put the investigation on hold.

  ‘The same reason I told you before,’ I said. He was familiar with the coffee shop as it was a favorite among cops, and had ironically chosen the same booth in the window I’d been sitting in when Michael Angel had confronted me. ‘Maeve had hired me to do some writing for her and we were supposed to discuss it,’ I said. ‘She was expecting me, so when the front door blew open in the wind, I went inside, figuring she had left it unlocked for me.’ I shrugged and put up my hands to try to tell him that was it.

  ‘And …’ he waved his hand for me to go on, but I did the same shrug move again.

  ‘There is no and,’ I said. Technically there was. I had been vague about where I’d looked for Maeve before going to the kitchen where I’d found her. I hadn’t mentioned that since we’d had our last meeting in her workroom, I’d gone up there expecting to find her. I’d barely taken more than a few moments to look around before I went down the back stairs expecting to catch up with her. I’d left all that out before and didn’t want to add it in now.

  ‘And no one knew about what you were supposed to be working on with her?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, reminding him that my work with Maeve was supposed to be a secret.

  ‘Then you never discussed it with Suzzanna Angel?’ he said, holding my gaze.

  I started to shake my head and then it came back to me that I had said something about a memoir the first time I’d gone to the house when she had answered the door. That’s when she had scoffed at the idea. The only thing I could do was tell Jankowski the truth.

  ‘I did mention it vaguely to her,’ I said. There was a glint in his eye and the slightest of nods.

  ‘So maybe your visit was a little different than you have suggested. It was about giving back the check. Ms Winslow had doubts about your competence, since most of what you do is create descriptions of ice-cream flavors and write love notes. She had decided that someone who made up a mystery would make up lies about conflict and negative information to make her memoir more exciting.’ He looked at me, trying to read my reaction to what he’d said. ‘I understand how hard it must have been to have her insult your ability and demand the money back when you needed it so badly.’

  I didn’t have to ask who’d told him this new version of what happened. Was this a hint of the or else that Michael Angel had talked about? He and Suzzanna must have gotten together and concocted this story. Did she actually lie and claim that Maeve had discussed the memoir and my qualifications with her? They were trying to trash me and say that I’d write lies. Now I was really angry, but I couldn’t really show it. I had to stay calm as I dealt with Jankowski.

  I had been vague about the writing project until now, but since Michael seemed to be feeding him inflammatory information, I decided to lay it out for the detective.

  ‘Here is exactly what happened,’ I began. ‘Maeve had pitched writing a memoir, sort of a me and the famous artist, and gotten a publishing deal. But when she tried to write it, well, she couldn’t. Time was running out, so she hired me to fix up what she’d started and go from there. She had meant to keep it a secret from her husband until it was done. She said it was supposed to be a surprise. I thought a happy one, but the way he’s been acting, trying to stop the project, demanding to see what I have, and now spreading a story that it’s going to contain lies, makes me wonder about the happy part. There is probably stuff he’d rather not come out.’

  ‘Can I have a look at those notes?’ he asked.

  ‘If you have a warrant,’ I said. He tried to hide it, but I saw a flicker of disappointment in his expression.

  ‘Well, then maybe you can tell me if you’ve found anything I should know about in them?’

  ‘Why? Because you think her death wasn’t an accident?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not saying that, but if I did, do you have any idea who might want her out of the way.’

  ‘You’re asking if I have a list of suspects,’ I said.

  ‘No. I’m just curious as to what you’ve uncovered so far in the memoir.’

  ‘A lot about art and Scotty dogs,’ I said, in an effort to keep it light. He just looked at me deadpanned.

  ‘We collected some fingerprints,’ he said, eyeing me for my reaction.

  ‘And you want mine to see if they match?’ The waitress showed up and dropped off a plate of breakfast for him and a cup of coffee for me. ‘I have never said I wasn’t up in her workroom. It was her place to meet with people.’ I didn’t add that it was also probably where she died.

  He began to work on the food. I knew I should probably leave it be, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘There are people who might have wanted her out of the way.’ He looked up with a piece of steak stuck to the end of his fork.

  ‘Is this you or that character Derek Streeter talking?’ he asked. I was surprised when he mentioned my fictional detective by name. I knew that he knew I’d written one mystery, but not who the detective was.

  ‘You read it?’ I asked. He moved the steak to his mouth and, as he chewed it, he nodded his head in a dismissive sort of way. When he swallowed the steak, he tried to explain.

  ‘You’ve been a suspect before and I looked at it as trying to get inside your head.’ He cut another piece of meat and piled some eggs onto the meat on his fork. ‘And it was something to do when I couldn’t sleep. They say laughter is a good antidote to stress.’

  ‘But it wasn’t supposed to be funny,’ I said. He let go of the unemotional cop look for a second and smiled.

  ‘I know.’ He ate the forkful and slathered a piece of toast in butter and jam.

  I might have gotten a little defensive. ‘You’re not my audience,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said, wanting to move on. ‘You might as well tell me about those suspects of yours.’ His tone was off-handed, but I noticed he’d put down the toast and picked up his pen and flipped open the notebook.

  ‘This is from the notes and what I’ve observed. There’s Michael Angel’s ex-wife. Maeve seems to have taken up with him while he was still married to Rina. She has a lot of anger. When they were married, he was a struggling artist. Now he’s bringing in high prices for his canvases and she’s still working at an art supply store. Guess who she blames?’

  He asked if I happened to know the name of the art store and he scribbled it down. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘There’s Suzzanna Angel. She could have blamed Maeve for the end of her parents’ marriage. I’ve heard that happens. And when I met her, she seemed very hostile to Maeve.’ I wondered if I should mention her last phone call to me, but decided to leave it be.

  So far, I wasn’t getting much of a reaction from him, which either meant he was hiding it, or I was really offering lackluster suspects.

  ‘I’m sure you considered Michael Angel,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to tell you that spouses are usually the first suspects.’

  He glared at me derisively. ‘You’re right, you don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘Then of course, you checked his alibi?’ I let it hang in the air.

  ‘He would only need an alibi if it was murder, and I’m not saying it was or wasn’t. But he did account for his time.’ I considered telling him what Kent had said about Michael leaving and then coming back a while later. I didn’t remember where he said he’d gone, but I had already figured that he could have gone wherever then come back and dealt with Maeve and then returned, making it seem like he’d been there the whole time. Then I had a better idea.

  ‘How did you check it exactly?’ I said.

  He pursed his lips in an impatient expression. ‘I certainly don’t have to explain to you, but he went to a fancy charity brunch. A documentary filmmaker was there with him. I gather they didn’t want the filming to be intrusive to the event, and so she operated the handheld camera.’ He gave me a tired look. ‘I’ve done this before.’ I wanted to ask him how he knew Michael had been at the event the whole time. I might not be able to ask that, but he’d just given me the information I wanted to know. It was an old trick, making it seem like you already knew something, and I was surprised he’d fallen for it. I hadn’t known the exact nature of Michael’s alibi until Jankowski had told me.

  Then he did something that surprised me. He volunteered some information. ‘The medical examiner is waiting for some results before he makes a judgment about the cause and manner of her death. We were waiting for those results, too. We need to put the manpower where it’s needed at the moment. But Michael Angel called raising holy hell. He was insistent that I investigate you again. Now I realize it’s something personal he has against you.’ His plate was empty and he waved for the check.

  I went back across the street, thinking over the conversation. I had given more information than I’d gotten and I regretted it. As I went past the second floor, the door opened and Sara looked out.

  ‘Can you come in?’ she asked, seeming a little agitated. She did that a lot when she needed someone to keep an eye on Mikey while she showered or did something uninterrupted.

  ‘Need some me time?’ I said with an understanding smile. I could only imagine how hard it was to try to do anything when you had a toddler walking around with his hands out, just reaching to get into stuff.

  ‘It’s not that.’ She grabbed my arm and pulled me inside just before Mikey ran out into the hall. ‘You saw her, didn’t you?’ She shook her head with annoyance. ‘Did you see those pinched-looking eyebrows? Doesn’t she look like Cruella de Vil? Or maybe Satan’s girlfriend.’

  She seemed very worked up and I just nodded in agreement. She wasn’t even paying attention to Mikey, and ignored it when he started bringing in her sneakers and trying to put them on her feet. His way of telling her he wanted to go out.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when she showed up here, unannounced and not escorted by my brother. I thought I was going to throw up at the way she was so over-the-top friendly. She always looked at Mikey as being a nuisance, and suddenly she shows up with a present for him. Highly inappropriate since it says for seven years and above. I’m just so upset. What if Ben falls for whatever she’s putting out there and gets back with her?’