At five to seven, sandwich fillings were in the fridge and scones in the freezer. We tidied our work spaces, took off our aprons, and washed our hands. I glanced outside at the sound of a car taking the corner into our driveway faster than was probably wise. Bernie had arrived.

  “You’re welcome to join us for what passes for dinner,” I said. “Bernie and Rose organized it, so goodness knows what we’ll be having. Whatever was the specialty of the day at the supermarket, I suspect.”

  “Didn’t you tell me Rose had been a cook in a grand house before her marriage? I’m surprised she doesn’t cook for you and her.”

  “She cooked her entire life. She started work as a kitchen helper in an English stately home when she was fourteen. She married my grandfather and moved to Grand Lake, Iowa, where she raised five children and helped with the raising of numerous grandchildren. Every day of her married life, except for the occasional vacation break, she prepared three delicious, well-balanced, nourishing meals. Sometimes more than three times a day, as family could drop in at odd hours. The day of my grandfather’s funeral, she hung up her apron and said no more. She’s stuck to that vow, and now she doesn’t cook. She reheats. As for Bernie, she never learned to cook and has no desire to do so now.”

  “I’ll pop in and say hi,” Simon said. “If it doesn’t appear as though there’s enough to provide for an unexpected guest, I’ll take my leave.”

  There was enough, more than enough. Bernie had gone to the Indian restaurant in town for takeout. She knows my tastes perfectly well, but unsure of what Rose likes, she got a serving of just about everything. Which was highly convenient, as Bernie and I like just about everything.

  We sat around the small Formica table in the kitchen of the B & B. Éclair settled herself on the floor under the table, on guard waiting for something to drop, and Robbie perched on the counter. Once drinks were served and our plates piled dangerously high with onion bhaji, butter chicken, rogan josh, spinach paneer, aloo gobi, steamed rice, garlic naan, and a variety of pickles and chutneys, Rose said, “Who wants to go first?”

  “I will,” I said, “as I don’t have much to report.”

  “Report?” Simon ripped a piece of naan into quarters and scooped up butter chicken sauce.

  “Didn’t I tell you? This is a strategy meeting as well as a dinner. I learned quite a bit about Tommy Greene from my friends who work in Manhattan restaurants, but not much we didn’t know.” I filled them in quickly as I ate. It was all sooo good.

  “You’re saying it’s unlikely someone from the mob followed him here and bumped him off because he owed them money.” Rose waved her fork at me.

  “Right. The man could be rude in the extreme when he believed someone hadn’t met his expectations, but if that was grounds for murder in the restaurant world, there wouldn’t be many people still around to cook your food.” I knew of what I spoke. My most recent ex-boyfriend, Wesley Schumann, was a Michelin-starred chef, and I’d made the desserts at his popular steak house. I’d left both him and that life when he came after me with one of his butcher’s knives when I’d accidently knocked over a bottle of cooking oil. “It’s possible Tommy was rude to someone in other parts of his life, to someone not used to it, like Marybeth, but I can’t see such a person following him here and luring him into Tea by the Sea under the cover of darkness. Or Tommy allowing himself to be lured.”

  “Under the cover of darkness,” Simon said around a mouthful of rice and paneer. “Any chance he was meeting a woman for a secret assignation?”

  “Anything’s possible, but even if he was the type to fool around—”

  “They’re all the type to fool around,” Bernie interrupted. She dipped her head in Simon’s direction. “Present company probably included.”

  A slight smile touched the edges of his mouth as Simon tore another piece of naan in half, but he didn’t reply.

  “An assignation in a restaurant, when he has a perfectly pleasant room in a lovely seaside B & B?” Rose said. “Unlikely.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to be seen.” Bernie lifted an overflowing fork to her mouth.

  “He had a key to the house for coming in after hours,” Rose said. “All the guests do.”

  “Irrelevant,” I said. “As no such woman is on the radar, at least as far as we know.”

  “Scarlet? Claudia? One of the women on the crew?” Bernie suggested.

  “Unlikely. I noticed no secret glances or deliberate avoidance of eye contact between him and anyone. Not that I was watching everyone all the time.”

  “Still,” Bernie said, “they aren’t actors, but they are in show business, so they must have learned some tricks.”

  “If anything,” I said, “I’d say Tommy and Scarlet didn’t like each other much. And it shouldn’t matter, though it usually does, but Claudia’s older than he was.”

  “Which brings us to what or who is on the radar.” Rose nibbled at a slice of chicken. “This is tasty. And that’s Cheryl.”

  “Bridge club gossip?” Bernie asked.

  “The best and the most reliable. Although I have to say trolling for gossip at a duplicate tournament should qualify a woman for danger pay. Every time I opened my mouth, other than to bid or counterbid or pass, that ridiculous Mabel Thurmond summoned the director.” Rose harrumphed. “Woman can’t play bridge to save her life, so she has to be a stickler for making sure superior players are chastised and threatened if—”

  “What did you learn, Rose?” I asked.

  “Nothing worthwhile at bridge, except that Mabel Thurmond likes to bid whether or not she has sufficient points in her hand. The only thing I did learn with relevance to our case is a negative. Before the start of play, as we were taking our seats, several members asked me if I’d met the late Mr. Greene. It was immediately clear that Tommy Greene has no ties to North Augusta. It’s unlikely he’d ever set foot in the area before this week.”

  “Negatives are important,” Bernie said. “Helps to keep focus on the positives.”

  “I had to suggest to several of the ladies, who seemed inclined to want to share what they know, that we go for coffee after the game. Unfortunately, it was after four o’clock by then, so someone suggested a bar instead, and as I’d offered to pay . . .”

  I cleared my throat.

  Rose got the hint and continued. “Cheryl’s a generation younger than most of my bridge companions, but they know her as a schoolmate or colleague of their own children. Cheryl was what passes for a ‘bad girl’ at North Augusta High. Not in the sense of running around with unsuitable boys, but for getting herself into trouble over things such as shoplifting, being suspected of theft at school, leaving cafés and diners without paying.”

  “Did that behavior carry on into adulthood?” Simon asked.

  “This is confidential, of course,” I said, “but when I hired her, I ran a standard records check and found nothing of concern.”

  “My friends enjoyed relating the old gossip,” Rose said, “but they had nothing more recent to add. Cheryl married Jim Wainwright, generally considered to be a good man from a longtime Cape Cod fishing family, and had two children. She never had what you’d consider stable employment, but that’s hardly cause for concern in a seasonal, tourist-orientated economy.”

  “As I suspected,” I said. “The idea that she’d suddenly revert to her teenage rebellion years and kill a man is preposterous.”

  “It might be worth noting that one of Cheryl’s boyfriends during those rebellious years was Chuck Williams,” Rose said.

  I choked on my spinach paneer.

  “You have got to be kidding,” Bernie said.

  “Small towns,” Simon chuckled. “Gotta love ’em.”

  “That was a long time ago, and the women who told me were relating secondhand news, but such appears to have been the case.”

  “A long time ago,” I said, “but old resentments can linger.”

  “Particularly if one party humiliated the other or carelessly broke their heart or such like,” Bernie said. “Did these women know what happened?”

  “No. Both parties married other people not long after leaving school, and no one thought another thing about it until my gently probing questions had the memories coming back.”

  “Gently sounds like the right word,” Simon said. “Anyone want the last spoonful of lamb?”

  “Help yourself,” Bernie said.

  And he did.

  “Did you ask your friends about Allegra?” I said. “She seems to be carrying a substantial amount of anger toward Cheryl.”

  “More high school rivalry. They’re the same age and would have known each other in school, but my friends didn’t know any specific details. Something of interest happened much later, however. Marybeth, Cheryl’s daughter, took a summer job at North Augusta Bakery when she was in high school.”

  “Marybeth told me she’d worked there briefly,” I said. “Let me do the math. Marybeth’s twenty-seven, so that would have been about ten years ago.”

  “Correct. Allegra’s mother had recently relinquished control of the bakery, and Allegra had taken over. Marybeth didn’t work there long.”

  “Three days, she told me,” I said.

  “She started work shortly before the tourists arrived en masse, so the town didn’t have a lot to talk about yet, so the story got around. Marybeth was fired for stealing from the till.”

  “Wow!” Bernie said.

  “Marybeth? I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “No one did,” Rose said. “The police were called, meaning none other than our good friend Detective Inspector Chuck Williams, newly promoted from walking the beat.”

  “Williams isn’t a DI,” Simon said. “And I’ve never seen a beat cop in North Augusta. They’re always in their cars.”

  “Rose knows that,” I told him. “She likes to pretend she doesn’t. It’s part of her English airs. Go on, Rose.”

  “Allegra insisted on charging Marybeth. Nothing came of it, and the case was quietly dropped. Marybeth was either fired or quit, but the result was the same. As you can imagine, she had trouble finding a job for the remainder of that season. Too much of the old ‘If there’s smoke, there’s fire’ nonsense.”

  “Cheryl must have been furious,” I said.

  “To say the least,” Rose said. “My friends remembered it clearly, because she was on the warpath. She marched into the bakery at the busiest time of day, and words were exchanged. The police were called, and Cheryl agreed to leave.”

  “Okay,” Simon said. “I get what you’re saying. If Allegra had been killed, it might be possible, at a stretch, to suspect Cheryl. But Allegra wasn’t killed, Tommy Greene was, and no one has claimed that he—”

  “But he did!” Bernie interrupted. “Tommy Greene told Lily to fire Marybeth. That Lily, unlike Allegra, had no intention of doing so might not have mattered. Cheryl’s daughter was bullied, as she saw it, and her job threatened.”

  The table fell silent.

  I studied my empty plate. “I refuse to believe Cheryl had anything to do with this,” I said at last. “Cheryl might have been a wild teenager, but she’s no longer a teenager, and she’s no longer wild. She’s a grandmother, for heaven’s sake.”

  Rose sniffed. From his perch on the counter, Robbie also sniffed. “Grandmothers can be wild, love,” Rose said. “We don’t all take up knitting by the fire in our old age.”

  I gave her a fond smile. “As you prove to me every single day.”

  “Although,” she admitted, “more often than not the spirit might be willing, but the flesh is weak. The knees and hips in particular.” Robbie leapt off the counter and landed on the floor next to Éclair. The dog emitted a startled bark. Robbie curled himself around Rose’s legs and purred, and Éclair settled back down with a sniff of disapproval.

  “Point taken,” I said. “Marybeth might have unfairly lost her high school summer job, and her mother tried to intervene on her behalf, but Marybeth isn’t in high school anymore. She’s a married woman and a mother. She doesn’t need her own mother to fight her battles for her.”

  My grandmother laid her hand on top of mine. Her warm blue eyes were so full of love, I had to swallow a lump that rose up from nowhere and threatened to choke me. “All mothers, all grandmothers, want to fight their children’s battles, no matter how old those children might be. The sensible ones know we can’t. The unsensible ones . . .”

  “Great,” I said when I could speak again. “We’ve uncovered a motive for Cheryl to have killed Tommy Greene.”

  “Have to go where the evidence leads, regardless of where we want it to lead,” Bernie said. “If you’ve nothing more to report, Rose, it’s my turn.”

  I stood up and collected the dirty dishes. “First, can I top anyone up?”

  Bernie pushed her wineglass toward me. Simon said, “Cheers,” meaning he’d have another beer, and Rose said, “No thank you, love.”

  Éclair stumbled to her feet and hurried to help me dispose of the leftovers, and Robbie returned to his post on the counter to sniff at the empty dishes. I picked him up and put him on the floor, knowing he’d be up again as soon as my back was turned. Rose had never attempted to train Robbie to stay off tables and counters, and it was too late now.

  “Okay,” Bernie said when the table was clear, I’d served the drinks, made tea for Rose and resumed my seat. “I spent a good part of the day online. Before you ask where online, Simon, don’t bother. I never say. Plausible deniability and all that.”

  He raised one eyebrow at me, and I shrugged in response.

  “Gary Powers, husband of our esteemed mayor, brother-in-law of Allegra Griffin, is a part owner of North Augusta Bakery.”

  “I didn’t see that one coming,” I said.

  “Part owner, and strictly a silent partner. He bought a half interest about a year ago. I don’t know why, but at a guess, I’d say the bakery needed an infusion of cash, so Allegra went to her sister and brother-in-law. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a look at any of their banking records.” She shook her head, disappointed at her own failure.

  “Meaning,” I said, “if Allegra needs the money from the sale of the bakery to fund her new, much-desired lifestyle, she needs even more if Gary’s to get his share. I wonder if he’s considering buying it outright?”

  “That would be tricky,” Bernie said, “if he lost the head baker at the same time. He’s an insurance broker. No evidence of experience either cooking or running a restaurant operation.”

  “My money,” I said, “is on Gary being the one who complained about Josh and the others staying here at Victoria-on-Sea.”

  “Almost certainly,” Rose said.

  “What complaint?” Simon asked, and I told him.

  “The question I have,” Simon said, “is, why would either Allegra or anyone else involved in the bakery want to get rid of Tommy? They hadn’t even filmed anything there yet. Maybe he’d love their food and they’d win.”

  “Motives for murder don’t always appear logical to outsiders.” I fingered my wineglass. “Although they make perfect sense to the killer. Sometimes. I hate that I know this. There is one other thing . . . I wasn’t witness to it, but I heard that Gary and Tommy got into an argument on Monday.”

  “That’s right,” Bernie said. “They did. Gary was being a total and complete jerk all day, and he made some clumsy moves on Scarlet. Tommy told him to sit down and shut up. Tommy might have even said a word they’ll have to beep out of the program.”

  “Do you mean he made moves on Scarlet, as in wanted to get to know her better, or was he playing for the camera?” I asked.

  “Hard to say.” Bernie looked at Rose.

  “He was playing for the cameras for sure. He had that look on his face that means someone knows they’re being watched and they’re enjoying it. As for his intentions toward Scarlet . . . it’s not a secret in North Augusta that Mayor Powers’s marriage is not entirely stable.”

  “Meaning they both fool around, and everyone in town knows it.”

  “To the apparent obliviousness of the couple involved,” Rose said.

  “How can she still be the mayor, and on her second term?” Simon asked.

  “Rumors of infidelity don’t appear to have hurt her political fortunes,” I said. “North Augusta people are generally a practical lot, and as long as Susan’s doing a good job, her approval ratings remain high. They don’t have children, and so far, no families have been destroyed, so what Susan and Gary do in their private lives is considered to be their business.”

  “What did Scarlet think of this attention Gary was paying her?” Simon asked.

  “Again, hard to know,” Rose said. “Tommy moved in almost immediately and ran him off.”

  “What else did you learn, Bernie?” I asked.

  “As much as I hate to say it, nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not yet. I remembered a guy I worked with when I first started at the firm. We went out for drinks one night. I had a super-fun time, and I was getting to like him. And then he up and quit and moved to Los Angeles. Which is totally my luck, but also totally beside the point. Anyway, he’s still doing the same sort of work, but this time for the US attorney’s office, so I dropped him a line. I sent a link to a story on Tommy’s killing, explaining Lily and my connection, and asked him if he’d mind finding out what he could about CookingTV and the people involved in America Bakes!, those who were in North Augusta this week, anyway.”

  “You think he’ll do that for you, even though you had one date and then he moved across the country?” Simon asked. “It must have been quite the date.”

  Bernie tossed her long red locks, turned her head to one side, lifted her shoulder, gave Simon a flirtatious wink, and said in a deep voice, “Did you doubt it, doll?” She laughed and dropped the pose. “Nah. He talked a lot about what he liked most about our jobs. Digging and digging and digging and following a long and complicated trail to uncover that one salient detail someone has gone to a lot of trouble to hide. That’s probably why I liked him so much, because I like doing that, too. In this case, I figured he’d enjoy the challenge.”