"Fine."

  "Fine." I paused. "You're investigating a murder at our best friends' house, and all you can tell me is fine?" I nudged him in the ribs. "Spill it, mister."

  He chuckled. "There's not much to tell. The DeVine autopsy was today."

  I perked up, meeting his gaze. "And?"

  "And nothing. ME's findings were consistent with his original determination of acute cyanide toxicity."

  "Meaning she was definitely poisoned?"

  "Meaning she was definitely poisoned," he confirmed. "Lab found traces of sodium cyanide crystals in her teacup."

  While I'd already known that was likely the case, the reality of it hit me. We'd all been witness to her murder, as she'd sipped her tea in front of us.

  "You know, Mom said that she usually drank her tea before every reading," I mused out loud. "But she was late. Chico didn't get a chance to make her tea before the crew needed to get started."

  Ramirez nodded. "He said much the same thing in his statement."

  "Whoever contaminated the tea probably hoped it would kill her before she told Ricky a thing. Which suggests someone knew in advance what she planned to say."

  "That's some crack speculation there, Springer," he joked, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me in closer.

  "I'm serious." I wriggled free of his grasp. "Can't you get a warrant for her records? See what kind of notes or scripts she had prepared for Ricky's reading?"

  "I already have."

  That surprised me. "I thought you needed probable cause?"

  He cracked an eye open. "So you do listen to me occasionally."

  "Ha. Ha. Very funny." I gave him a peck on the cheek. "I always listen to you." I just sometimes chose to ignore him.

  "We got our reasonable grounds to search when the lab also found traces of sodium cyanide in the tea tin DeVine kept in her studio." Ramirez opened the other eye. "Meaning the studio was the primary crime scene."

  "And you could go through the files kept there?"

  He nodded.

  "So? What did you find?"

  "Maddie, it's late. I'm tired." He closed both eyes.

  I gave him a sharp nudge in the ribs. "Not a chance, buster."

  He gave a mock pained look and chuckled. "Honestly, there wasn't much to find."

  "You mean she didn't keep any records?" I felt my hopes deflating.

  "She may have. At one time." He stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. "The forensics IT guys tell me someone tried to delete most of the files on her computer after she died."

  "Tried to?"

  "Nothing's ever completely gone," he said. "They can recover the files, but it may take some time."

  "But they're sure they were deleted after she died?"

  He nodded. "They can tell something was opened the evening after she passed away."

  "You think it was the killer covering their tracks?" I asked.

  "Or Chico covering up what a fraud his employer was," Ramirez answered. "We went through her financials and found payments to a whole network of informants. Some as high as five figures."

  "Whoa." I could see how tempting that would be to an underpaid assistant or day worker. "I guess she was raking it in with the TV show."

  Ramirez yawned. "Who knows? She could have even expensed it to the network. Cost of doing business."

  "Subsidized fraud," I murmured.

  "Entertainment," Ramirez said.

  "So at the very least, the person she paid off to tell her about Ricky must have known what she was going to say?"

  "No record of payments to any of Ricky's staff," Ramirez said. "And before you ask, none to anyone at his agent, manager, or publicist's offices either."

  "You've been busy," I noted.

  He nodded. "I have," he said around another yawn.

  "So you don't think there's any connection?" I pressed.

  "Connection with what?"

  "With DeVine's death and what she was about to reveal about Beth Montgomery's death?"

  He pulled in a deep breath—something I knew was a classic stall technique of his. "I don't know. But Moira DeVine's record is not pristine. Turns out about twelve years ago, back East, she cut her teeth as Suzanne the Seer. Then there was Psychic Savannah, along with a few other names as she worked her way to the West Coast."

  "So the Hollywood Psychic wasn't her first con job."

  "No. The 'psychic to the stars' was just her latest. She was running a con as Dora the Palm Reader in Burbank prior to that. Specialized in getting little old ladies to change their wills based on her predictions."

  "That's terrible."

  "That's Moira DeVine for you. As soon as someone caught on to that scam, she set her sights on the Hollywood Psychic thing. Guess she figured she could make some real money there."

  "Which she did."

  "Which she did. Almost legitimately taking people's money for the last decade."

  I shook my head and laughed. "Psychic Savannah?"

  "It's better than her real name."

  "Which was?"

  "Martha Dent," he said. "Only child of Harold and Isabel Dent of Erie, Pennsylvania, both deceased. Whatever name she used, she was a fraud through and through. Believe me, she left a string of people in her wake who might have wanted her dead."

  I thought about that and realized he was right. There could have been any number of people from her past angry enough at Moira to spike her tea. Anyone who watched the show knew she would drink it before a reading. It's possible her killer was looking at any reading as an opportunity.

  But I still couldn't shake the reality that it had been Ricky's reading that had been the chosen one.

  "What was the name of that officer you said worked Beth's death?" I asked.

  "Willis," he mumbled, eyes firmly closed again.

  "Did you get a chance to talk to him?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "Not yet. I'm actually meeting him for breakfast tomorrow morning."

  "Reeeaaallly…"

  Both of his dark eyes popped open. "No."

  "What?" I blinked innocently at him. "I love breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day."

  "No, I'm not dragging you along."

  "Who's dragging? I can walk. Trot. Run, even. In heels." I gave him a sweet smile. "Come on. Don't you want the benefit of my women's intuition about the guy?"

  "Nope."

  "Another pair of ears?"

  "Nuh-huh."

  "Maybe he'll open up more with a woman in the room. It won't feel so much like a colleague coming down on him."

  "I'm not going to 'come down on him.'"

  "Besides, I've met him before, remember? I'm not a complete stranger."

  He sent me a dubious look, but I could tell I was wearing him down.

  "And I can be very charming." I wiggled my eyebrows at him.

  "Yeah?" He kissed my hair and moved down to kiss my neck. "How charming?"

  I knew that was a yes. "Go close the door," I said, "and I'll show you."

  CHAPTER TEN

  The first time I'd met Officer Willis at the Hollywood Psychic studio, he'd been wallpaper in a scenario focused on Chico. This time, as Ramirez made the brief introductions and told the man why we were there, I was solely focused on the officer. With his plump belly and pink cheeks, he struck me as jolly old St. Nick with a white buzz cut and a police uniform. He looked as if he might burst out with "Ho, ho, ho!" when the waitress delivered his breakfast.

  "I remember that case." He folded his toast in half and dipped a corner into his eggs. "Tragic accident. The vic was so young." He chewed, swallowed, and dipped again. "As I recall it, there was a serial arsonist in the area at the time. The working theory was that was our perp."

  "I didn't see that in the report," Ramirez said, sitting across from him in the red vinyl booth of the Coastal Delights Diner. I sat beside him, and while Willis had a plate full of the breakfast special in front of him, Ramirez and I had opted for coffee and a couple of blueberry muffins.

  Willis shrugged. "No? Well, we didn't write every little idea down in those days. Saved paper. You know, back when we used to write on actual paper." He gave me a wink.

  "Did you ever find him?" I asked. "The serial arsonist?"

  He gave a noncommittal grunt. "No. Hardly ever do with that kind of thing. Those guys know how to cover their tracks."

  "I thought the Montgomery fire was deemed accidental," Ramirez said. Despite his promise not to come down on the guy, I could tell he was still thinking Willis hadn't done his due diligence on this one.

  Willis shot Ramirez a look, and for a second I could see concern in his eyes. But it was quickly replaced by a wide, fatherly smile. "Look, I'm a nice guy. Arson isn't covered by insurance. Accidents are. I wanted to help the family out a little, you know?"

  "But you're sure it was this serial arsonist?" I pressed, my mind going to the Riccis.

  "Well, we could never prove anything. I felt terrible about that. But it was just godawful luck that the vic was home at the time of the fire." He chewed thoughtfully.

  "Beth," I said softly, feeling the term vic too clinical when we were talking about the life of a young mother. "Her name was Beth."

  "I know." Willis's eyes shot to me. "It wasn't the first time I was called to her residence."

  "It wasn't?" I asked, shooting a questioning look to my husband.

  Ramirez's leg pressed against mine beneath the table, cautioning me to let Willis speak.

  Which he did. "No. I responded to a call there a few months before that. A domestic incident."

  "Her husband?" I heard the shock in my own voice. While Robert wasn't exactly shaping up to be the man I'd first thought him to be, I had a hard time seeing him as an actual abuser.

  But Willis quickly disabused me of that notion. "No, no." He shook his head, frowning. "It was her brother, as I recall. She said he'd shown up at her house, threatening her. Real piece of work, that guy."

  "You were the officer who took that call?" Ramirez asked.

  He nodded, his eyes going from my husband to me. "Sounds like you've heard about it already?"

  "We certainly have—" I started, but Ramirez silenced me with another nudge.

  "I'd like to hear your take on it," Ramirez told him.

  "Well, I would have hauled him in, but Mrs. Montgomery said she didn't want to press charges." He paused. Eyes going off in the distance. "I tried to convince her that guys like that—they don't just go away. He'd be back again. But she had a real soft spot for the loser." He shook his head, coming back to present. "You never know with families, right? You get a nice gal like that one and then a bad apple like her brother."

  "So you didn't charge him?" Ramirez pressed.

  "Nah." His full attention went back to his plate of eggs. "I calmed things down and got him out of there, and that was that. Told him if I had to come back again, he'd be leaving in cuffs." He slurped some coffee, putting the cup down hard. "I stayed with Mrs. Montgomery until her husband got home. She was pretty shaken."

  "And then she died six months later," I noted.

  He nodded, forking a mouthful of food. "Real shame, that."

  "I read the file on the fire investigation," Ramirez asked.

  Willis looked up. "This one does his homework, huh?" He gave me another wink.

  "There wasn't much to it," my husband said pointedly.

  "Like I said, there wasn't much to put down. Tragic but straightforward."

  "Was an autopsy ordered?" Ramirez asked.

  "No," Willis said slowly. "The vic's husband was so distraught, there was no point in prolonging things."

  Ramirez cocked his head to the side, narrowing his eyes as if he didn't agree with that statement at all.

  Willis shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Look, it was obvious how she died. The bedroom went up like a tinderbox." He dipped and chewed. "I've been a cop for a long time, so I know the world revolves around paperwork. The t's and the i's had to be crossed and dotted," he said, waving his hands and dripping egg yolk on the Formica table. "But in this case, there wasn't a need for an autopsy, so why put the family through that, huh? I just wanted the guy to be able to bury his wife and have some peace. Him and his boy."

  Ramirez gave a noncommittal grunt as the waitress appeared with a coffee pot. She refilled our cups, and Willis waited until she'd walked away to speak again.

  "So, why all this interest in a fire from thirty years ago?" he asked.

  I opened my mouth to answer, but Ramirez shot me a look that clearly said he was still taking the lead on this one.

  "It's come up in the course of an active homicide investigation," he answered.

  "Oh yeah?" Willis looked from me to Ramirez. "Care to tell me whose?"

  "I think you know," Ramirez said flatly. "Moira DeVine."

  Willis's eyebrows rose. "I know she died, yeah. But I can't imagine what that has to do with Beth Montgomery."

  "Then why were you at her studio?" I jumped in. "I saw you there. Talking to Chico."

  The fatherly grin was back. "Well, sure. The sergeant wanted me to follow up on something the guy said in his statement. I may be old, but I still follow Sergeant's orders, right?" He winked at me again. It was starting to feel like it was a nervous tic.

  "Then you must have known that DeVine died at Ricky Montgomery's house," I said. "As she was giving him a reading."

  "Did she? Is this Ricky some relation to Beth?" Willis asked.

  "He's Beth's son," Ramirez said. His voice was monotone, and I could tell he still thought Willis was covering his tracks and wasn't totally buying the clueless act the older cop was selling.

  "You don't say?" Willis said, forking the last of his eggs into his mouth. "He was just a kid then. Wow, time really flies, doesn't it?"

  "DeVine died right after she had an alleged psychic vision of Beth Montgomery having been murdered," I added.

  Willis laughed. "A psychic vision?" He glanced from me to Ramirez. "You're not actually taking that seriously?" he asked my husband.

  "That she had a vision?" Ramirez asked. "No. But someone did kill her."

  Willis emptied a sugar packet into his coffee. "And you think there's some actual connection to the Montgomery fire?"

  "We're exploring all possibilities," Ramirez hedged. I could see him watching Willis carefully.

  "Decades apart? That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it?" Willis stirred his coffee.

  "Like I said, we're exploring all—"

  "Possibilities, yeah. I'm old, not deaf." Willis chuckled and turned to me again. "This one's real by-the-book, huh?"

  Ramirez's eyes narrowed. I could tell he was getting tired of being spoken about in third person.

  "Look, I've seen these celebrity psychics on TV before," Willis said, adding creamer to his cup. "Entertaining, sure, but total baloney. Contacting the other side? Other side of what? What happened to ashes to ashes, dust to dust?"

  "Some people are comforted by the idea their loved ones are still with us," I said, feeling a need to stick up for Ricky. Even if he hadn't been a total believer in DeVine's abilities either.

  Willis chuckled. "Well, ten to one that lady would say anything for ratings."

  "That's occurred to us," Ramirez told him.

  "So, you didn't ever look at Beth's death as a possible murder, then?" I asked.

  "No, no, no." Willis shook his head, sipping his coffee. "Nothing to indicate that."

  "You don't think there's a possibility that the brother came back?" I pressed. "Maybe did more than just threaten her this time?"

  Willis thought about that a beat. "He seemed like a bad apple, but I don't know if he'd go that far."

  "What about a friend of the husband. Lillian?" I asked. "Did her name ever come up in your investigation?"

  Willis wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and set his cup down. "Not that I recall. Why? Who's she?"

  I shook my head. "Probably not important." I hoped. "She's Robert's second wife. Beth's husband."

  "Oh yeah? Good for him. Glad he remarried."

  "What about the Ricci Brothers? Does that name mean anything to you?"

  "Should it?" He blinked at me.

  "They worked with Robert at the time Beth passed."

  He shook his head. "Sorry, I didn't meet any of the husband's colleagues."

  "What about Robert himself?" I said, starting to feel desperate.

  "What about him?" Willis frowned.

  "Nothing felt off about him to you at the time?" I asked. I could feel Ramirez's eyes on me, warning that I was pushing too far, but I refused to meet his gaze.

  "No. No, he was the picture of the grieving husband." Willis frowned. "Look, you don't really think someone set that fire intentionally to hurt that poor woman, do you?"

  "No," Ramirez said before I could answer. He shot me a look. "We're just doing our due diligence." The insinuation that Willis had not in Beth's case hung in the air.

  "Well, I really wish I could be of more help, but this was a real simple case. Tragic, but I'm sure it was just bad luck she was even home that night."

  He might be sure, but I wasn't totally convinced. And I could tell by the look on my husband's face that all Willis had managed to convince him of was that he'd been a lazy cop thirty years ago and was still resting on whatever laurels he'd garnered in his long career.

  Willis wadded the napkin and tossed it onto his plate. "Thank you both for breakfast, but I've got shift starting soon. I assume there's nothing else I can clear up?"

  He didn't wait for an answer before shifting his belly slowly out from beneath the table and standing.

  Ramirez did the same (minus the need for awkwardly shifting girth), and the two men shook hands before we paid our bill and left the diner.

  Ramirez and I parted ways in the parking lot with a quick kiss and a promise on his part to call if he'd be late that night. I jumped into my minivan and quickly made a stop at the bakery for "homemade chocolate chip cookies" before delivering them to the kids' school and heading toward home with the intention of putting some work hours in at my desk.

  However, those plans were derailed the second I pulled into my driveway and spotted three people waiting for me.

  Well, two people and a monkey.

  Ling looked like she'd dressed for a shift at Glitter Galaxy, in a white vinyl minidress and tall green boots covered in sparkles that added a cool six inches to her 4'11" height. Her hair was in two long braids that stuck out from the sides of her head like antennae, and her makeup was thick and smoky for ten in the morning.