“I’m coming with you.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. Whoever it was might still be out there.”

  “They’ll be long gone,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Besides, if they’re not, you’re the one who had a blow on the head. Not me. You need me to protect you.”

  He smiled at me, and then he said, “Let’s go, then.”

  Not wanting the dog to disturb what there might be of a crime scene, I told Éclair to be on guard and left with Simon. I’d found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer and handed it to him. He took my hand in his, and I did not pull it away. I held my phone in my free hand and used it to help light our way. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and the grass was sodden underfoot. Raindrops dripped from the trees and the roof. The grand old house was shrouded in darkness, except for the soft yellow glow cast by the lamp over the front door and one in the hallway. I put my finger to my lips as we rounded the corner next to Rose’s rooms. My grandmother, so she’d told me, didn’t sleep very well these days. “Old bones,” she’d said.

  We didn’t have long to wait before headlights lit up the night and turned into our driveway. Simon dropped my hand and lifted his in greeting. The car pulled to a stop next to us, and Amy Redmond got out, bathed in a circle of light from our flashlights. She lifted one hand to block the light from her eyes and said, “What happened?”

  Simon told her what he’d told me.

  “You didn’t see this person?”

  “No. Not a glimpse. Sorry. They got me.” He pointed. “There.”

  She switched on her own heavy Maglite and studied the back of his head. “Yeah, that’s gonna be sore. Nice bump starting. Sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You don’t have to play tough guy, you know,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “Where did this happen?” Redmond asked.

  Simon shone his light over the grass. “Right around there. I’d gone straight from work to Matt’s to give him a hand installing his new kitchen cabinets, so I hadn’t taken the bike. I was coming from his house, walking in a more or less straight line to the garden shed to get the bike. I used the flashlight on my phone to light my way. I didn’t see anyone around, but I wasn’t looking, and it was pitch dark. Like now. I’d crossed the driveway, taken a few steps, and then I felt as much as heard something behind me and . . . wham.” He started to walk.

  I made to follow, but Redmond put one arm out to stop me. “You stay here.” She fell into step behind Simon. I shifted and glanced nervously around me as they walked away. The shadows were very deep. I tiptoed after them.

  “There.” Simon focused his beam of light on the ground, and Redmond’s joined it. “The grass is disturbed, and there’s my phone over there. I dropped it when I fell.”

  Redmond cast her light in a circle. It caught the sparkle of wet grass, the edge of a flower bed, the glow of white daisies, the shiny metal of Simon’s phone. And glittering red stones hanging from a silver earring.

  Chapter 19

  “She told you she lost it,” Amy Redmond said. “Doesn’t mean she did.”

  “But I saw for myself,” I protested. “She had only one of the earrings on. That happened before Simon was attacked, not after. She couldn’t have predicted she’d lose it.”

  “It might have been caught in her clothes,” Redmond said. “And fell out later. That’s happened to me more than once, and I’m sure it’s happened to you.” She lifted one hand to stop my protests. “I’m not saying that’s what happened here, Lily, but I am saying I need to talk to Cheryl Wainwright tonight. I have to tell Detective Williams I’m bringing her in.”

  We were standing at the side of her car. Simon had thrown his arm around my shoulders as I tried to argue with the detective.

  “I saw Cheryl this afternoon,” Redmond said as she dropped the earring into an evidence bag, “but I can’t say if she was wearing one of these or two or none at all.”

  I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. The moment I’d seen the earring in the grass, I said, “There it is. Cheryl was looking for that.” I moved to pick it up, but Redmond had stopped me.

  “Cheryl has no reason whatsoever to attack me, Detective,” Simon said.

  “Do you know of people who do have reason to attack you?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then that doesn’t help, does it?”

  He said nothing.

  “I’ll have people here first thing in the morning to go over the area in the daylight.” She’d taken a length of yellow police tape out of the trunk of her car and looped it around the trunk of a stately maple, through a boxwood hedge, and tied it off on a fence post. “In the meantime, keep people out of there.”

  She got into her car and drove away. Simon and I watched until her lights had disappeared in the distance.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t have called her,” Simon said.

  “We had to. It was the right thing to do. Someone hit you over the head, and whoever that person was has to be found.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “No. I do not. Cheryl wasn’t creeping around tonight, ready to pounce on the first person who wandered by. I can only hope she stayed in all night and her husband was with her.” I had a moment of doubt. Had I put too much faith in Cheryl? How well did I know her, really, and did it matter if I did? How well can we know anyone? Maybe she had killed Tommy Greene because he was rude to her daughter. Maybe she thought Simon was a threat to her in some way only she understood.

  “If not Cheryl,” Simon said, “then who? And why? I promise you, Lily. I don’t have any enemies. No debts to the mob. No enraged former girlfriends. No jealous husbands or boyfriends of former girlfriends.” He tried to laugh. “Not in America, anyway.”

  “A distraction maybe, to take the police’s focus off Tommy Greene’s death?”

  “Funny way to go about it. I’d say the police focus is back on.”

  “Back on Tea by the Sea. Maybe off someone else.” I groaned. “What an awful, awful mess. I wish that TV program had never called me. I didn’t want to do the show, but Rose and Bernie talked me into it. See if I ever listen to them again.”

  “Come on. I’ll walk you back.” He took my hand, and we crossed the yard. No lights had come on in Victoria-on-Sea, not even in Rose’s suite. The lights were all off at Matt’s place.

  “How’s the work on the house coming?” I asked.

  “Slowly but steadily. Matt’s pleased. He got a big foreign language rights deal for his last book, which means he has some more money coming in, so he can afford to gut the main bathroom sooner than he’d planned.”

  We climbed the steps to my cottage. I opened the door, and Éclair rushed out. She sniffed at Simon’s feet and then went on to investigate what scents the short rainstorm had deposited.

  “I’m not happy at that blow to your head,” I said. “And you did black out for a while.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Yes. Yes. Famous last words. You’re sleeping here tonight.”

  His eyebrows lifted, and his eyes widened. Something sparkled inside them.

  Blood rushed to my face. “On the couch, so I can check on you every two hours. Like they say to do in case of a possible concussion.”

  “If you insist,” he said.

  “I insist.” I led him into my house, called to Éclair, and shut the door. Then I pulled out my phone.

  “Who are you calling at this time of night?” Simon asked.

  “A text to Bernie. I have a bad feeling I’m going to need her in the tearoom tomorrow.”

  I made up the couch for Simon, brought out a clean bath towel, and told him to help himself to anything he might need in the kitchen. Éclair danced happily around our feet, delighted to have an overnight guest. When I was finished, I said, “Good night. For now. I’ll be checking on you soon. You’d better get out of those damp clothes.” My face burned as I realized he had nothing to change into.

  “As should you. Your pajamas are wet.” He took a step toward me. He ran his fingers lightly across my right cheek. I looked into his eyes, and I liked what I saw there. I liked it very much.

  “Good night, Lily.” He dropped his hand and took a step backward.

  I managed to stammer, “Good night,” before running for my bedroom. Éclair didn’t follow.

  Chapter 20

  I set my alarm to wake me every two hours, but I needn’t have bothered. I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night between the need to get up and check on my guest, burning awareness of Simon lying only a few feet from me (wearing what?), and tumbled thoughts of what had happened.

  Every time I checked on Simon, I found him sleeping peacefully. The blanket was pulled up to his chin, so I couldn’t tell what he was wearing, if anything. I shook him gently and said, “It’s Lily. Tell me you’re still alive.”

  “Alive,” he grunted and fell back to sleep. Éclair spent the night on the floor next to the couch.

  I lay on my back in the dark, looking up at the ceiling, and thought.

  How had Cheryl’s earring come to be found at the spot where Simon had been attacked? She could have gone for a walk earlier to admire the daisies, and it had fallen out then, but she hadn’t told us she’d been in the garden when we were searching everywhere for the lost earring. That left two possibilities.

  That Cheryl, for some deranged reason, had attacked Simon. If so, the police would get the proof, and they would charge her. I’d be minus a waitress, probably two, as it would be unlikely Marybeth would keep working for me, but so be it.

  If, however, someone else had attacked Simon in an attempt to frame Cheryl, that was another matter entirely. The chance that this was unconnected to the murder of Tommy Greene was infinitesimal. Cheryl had been arrested and then released. Was the real killer wanting to apply pressure on her, keep the police’s focus on her? If so, it could be for only one reason: to keep police attention away from the actual killer.

  I’d told Bernie I was no longer interested in doing what I could to find the killer of Tommy Greene.

  As I stared up into the darkness, I changed my mind.

  We’d speculated that Tommy’s killer might have come from outside of North Augusta, a personal or business enemy who had no connection to the filming at my tearoom. That this person had known where Tommy was staying and had somehow lured him out of his room and into meeting them. But if this same person had deliberately attempted to frame Cheryl by dropping her lost earring at the scene of the attack on Simon then they had to have been at my tearoom today. I imagined Cheryl’s earring slipping unnoticed out of her earlobe, falling to the ground or the floor. Someone silently scooping it up and slipping it unnoticed into a pocket or bag in case they got the chance to use it.

  I mentally drew up my version of what Bernie had called a suspect list. The list was long—the entire film crew, including the two remaining judges, Claudia and Scarlet; Josh, the director; and Reilly, the assistant director. “Not a happy set,” Melanie, the makeup artist, had told me. Everyone bickering with everyone else. Power plays, rivalries.

  Allegra Griffin and Gary and Susan Powers had been at the tearoom today. Gary had been angry at Tommy for mocking him on that first day of filming. Angry enough to kill? Who knows what might make some people angry enough to kill. That Gary had attempted to set up an assignation with Bernie, a woman twenty years younger than him, in a public place, with his wife sitting only a few yards away, told me the man was arrogant beyond belief.

  As for Allegra . . . I underlined her name on my mental list. Did she hate Cheryl enough to frame her for murder? Seems a heck of a stretch to still be carrying that much anger all these decades later over high school humiliations.

  Did Allegra try to frame Cheryl because she hated her? Or because if Cheryl was charged, the police would focus their attention on building their case against her? Not on trying to find a new suspect.

  Robyn Simpson had hesitantly identified Cheryl as being in our garden the night Tommy died. But, as was pointed out, it was dark, she was at a distance, she didn’t get a good look, and Allegra and Cheryl had similar body shapes.

  Allegra had been in the tearoom when Tommy yelled at Marybeth. Allegra had been on the patio today when Cheryl lost her earring. Any motive Allegra might have to kill Tommy seemed dubious to me, but I was aware that the police don’t always need a motive. People can act in strange ways and do things that seem beyond all common sense. Had she been so worried that I’d win the competition, she decided to fix the judging by “fixing” one of the judges?

  I became aware of movement in the outer room, Éclair shuffling about, and the opening of a door.

  I glanced at my bedside clock. Twenty to six. I turned off the unneeded alarm, climbed out of bed, and peeked into the living room. Simon was dressed in yesterday’s clothes and folding the blankets. Éclair was nowhere to be seen, so I assumed Simon had let her out.

  He turned and saw me watching him. He gave me a grin. His sandy hair was tousled from sleep, his clothes damp and badly wrinkled, his feet bare. “Morning, Lily.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  He touched the back of his head. “As though I’ve been hit on the noggin and someone woke me up every two hours. Do you have any paracetamol?”

  “Any what?”

  “Headache pills.”

  “Oh, sure. In the bathroom vanity. Help yourself. I’ll get dressed and be right out.”

  I scurried to do that. When I emerged, Simon was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a glass of water and talking to Éclair.

  “Did you sleep okay?” he asked me.

  “As though I had to get up every two hours and had something on my mind. I have to get to the house and start breakfast. You don’t have to work today, if you’re not feeling up to it.”

  “I’d like to go home. Have a shower and change. Give those tablets a chance to kick in. Then I’ll decide how I feel, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.”

  “Before I go, why don’t you call Amy. Ask if she found out anything more about what happened to me.”

  “Amy is it?” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I made the call. It wasn’t yet six a.m., and Amy Redmond been here after midnight, but she answered, sounding bright and perky.

  “Good morning, Detective,” I said, wondering if it was time I started calling her Amy. Maybe not. “I’m calling to see if there’ve been any developments regarding last night’s incident.”

  “How’s Simon? Have you spoken to him yet today?”

  “He’s right here,” I said. “He has a headache.”

  “Is that so?” she said, and I flushed at the touch of amusement in her voice.

  “He couldn’t go home alone, not after a blow to the head.”

  “I’d like to speak to him again, see if he remembers anything. Have him give me a call when he’s up to it.”

  Simon indicated to me to turn on the speaker, and I did so.

  “I’m here, Detective. I don’t remember anything new. I scarcely remember what happened yesterday. You’ll be pleased to hear Lily paid close attention to my welfare last night.”

  “Glad to hear it. If you do remember anything, anything at all, let me know.”

  “Will do.”

  “In the meantime, a couple of forensics officers are on their way to check out the ground I marked off, see if anything got dropped that we didn’t see in the dark. Lily, will you tell your grandmother what’s happening?”

  “Sure. Did you, uh . . . speak to Cheryl?”

  “I did. Detective Williams and I went to her house. She appeared to be unaware of why we were there, so I decided it wouldn’t be necessary to bring her down to the station. Her husband was at home, and he told us they went to see friends for dinner and to watch a movie last night. He and Cheryl left together around ten thirty. I’ll be confirming that with the friends this morning. Cheryl insists she didn’t leave the house again, and her husband says he was restless in the night, the result of too many beers consumed during the movie, and he would have noticed if Cheryl wasn’t in bed. That may or may not be true, but I don’t intend to arrest a woman because we found a piece of her jewelry in a public garden not more than a few dozen yards from her place of employment. Despite,” she added in a low voice, “what other officers may suggest.”

  By which I assumed Williams wanted to rearrest Cheryl, and Redmond had managed to talk him out of it.

  We hung up, and Simon prepared to leave. “I could use a cup of coffee before I go home.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place.” I called to Éclair, and we left the cottage. As we walked along the edge of the bluffs, I texted Rose: Minor incident in the night. No harm done. Nothing taken. But police will be poking around outside this a.m.

  I took the three steps down to the kitchen door, but Simon lingered on the path. “Don’t you usually leave that light on all night?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s often still dark when I get here.”

  “You’d better check. It’s not on now.”

  I opened the door and flicked the light switch several times.

  “Nothing,” Simon said. “You’ve probably got a blown bulb. I’ll replace it later.”

  “No hurry.” I put the coffeepot on. My phone beeped with an incoming message in response to my text to Bernie telling her she was on standby to work at the tearoom this morning.

  Bernie: Just getting up. Major writing day planned. My brain is alive with ideas! What’s up?

  Me: All okay. Happy writing.

  Bernie: [Thumbs-up emoji]

  “Are you okay on your bike?” I asked Simon. “I can give you a lift, if you think not.”

  “I’m fine, Lily. It’s not far to go, and the headache’s fading already.” He gave me a smile that lit up his handsome face. “I appreciate your concern.”

  I blushed and set about assembling baking ingredients. A cinnamon coffee cake today and muffins out of the freezer if the cake proved popular and went quickly. When the coffee was ready, I poured us both a mug. “As your employer, your health and safety is my primary concern.”