“Maybe it’s time we learned a little more about the former Mrs. Chapman,” I said to the boys.
“Merow,” Owen said.
Okay, so he was in.
I looked at Hercules. “What do you think?” I asked. He was washing the white fur on his chest. He raised his head and looked in the direction of the hooks by the back door where I hung my jacket and briefcase.
My briefcase.
“Crap on toast!” I said, slouching lower in my chair. I’d left my briefcase with my laptop in my office. “Okay, as soon as I have my computer again we’ll see what we can find online about Dana. In the meantime maybe we can use that other information superhighway.”
Hercules frowned at me. Clearly he didn’t know what I was talking about. Or he’d just noticed a knot in the fur on his tail. He started working on his tail, but I decided to believe it was the former anyway.
“The Mayville Heights grapevine,” I said.
Marcus knocked on my back door a little after nine thirty. I was curled up in the big chair in the living room with the cats stretched across my legs watching a movie. They weren’t happy about having to move.
“Hi,” I said as Marcus stepped into the porch and knocked the snow off his boots.
“I saw your light on. It’s not too late, is it?” he said, leaning down to kiss me. The man could kiss. I tended to forget where I was and what I was doing when his mouth was on mine. I hoped the day never came when that didn’t happen.
I smiled up at him and then remembered that he’d asked me a question. “No. We were just watching a movie on TV,” I said, pushing my hair back off my face.
Marcus followed me into the kitchen. He draped his jacket on the back of a chair and then sat down. I was wearing a pair of old stretched-out sweatpants, heavy woolen socks and a baggy sweatshirt, and my hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. I felt self-conscious for a moment. Then I remembered that Marcus had seen me covered in mud when the embankment behind the carriage house collapsed, and when I was half-frozen with a mild case of hypothermia, wandering the woods with a bleeding arm wearing only long underwear after making it out of a cabin just before the building exploded.
“Hi, guys,” he said.
I realized he was talking to Owen and Hercules, who were looking around the living room doorway.
“Have you had any supper?” I asked, leaning my hip against the table.
He pulled both hands through his hair. “I had three cups of coffee and some beef jerky.”
“That’s not supper.”
I heard a meow of objection from the doorway. “No, beef jerky is not supper, Owen,” I said. I kissed the top of Marcus’s head. “I’ll warm you up some stew.”
He reached for my hand as I moved past him. “You don’t have to do that.”
I smiled. “I know.”
I got the stew out of the refrigerator, put a bowl of it in the microwave and poured Marcus a glass of milk. When I turned around he had a couple of “friends” sitting next to his chair.
“I said I would warm up some stew for Marcus, not you two,” I said.
In perfect synchronization both cats leaned their heads to the right. Marcus noticed and did the same thing so all three of them were in their most adorable poses.
I leaned down toward the cats. “Don’t encourage him,” I stage-whispered.
Behind me Marcus laughed.
Once his supper was hot, I made myself a cup of hot chocolate and joined him at the table. Owen had a dab of gravy on his whiskers and I caught Hercules licking his lips, so I knew Marcus had snuck the two of them a bit of chicken and maybe part of a dumpling from his dish.
I folded my fingers around my cup and watched Marcus eat for a minute. “You didn’t find anything in Olivia’s kitchen, did you?” I asked. “Or am I asking a question you can’t answer?”
He set his fork down. “No, we didn’t. And she insists she didn’t put nuts of any kind in the chocolates she made for your party because of her own allergy.”
“That was why she reacted to the chocolate that she ate at the theater.”
Marcus frowned at me.
“Cashews and pistachios are in the same family.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said.
I knew he’d file that little piece of information away in his head somewhere. It was like that with everything he learned.
He picked up his fork again. “Well, there were no pistachios in the kitchen where the chocolates were made, or any nuts, for that matter, or in her house, either, and she gave us permission to search both places.”
I leaned over, grabbed the container of marshmallows from the counter and dropped two into my cup. “Not the kind of thing someone would be likely to do if they had something to hide,” I said. “Did you talk to Georgia and Earl?”
“Uh-huh. Neither one of them uses nuts in anything.”
“According to Abigail, Georgia makes anything with nuts at Fern’s.” I leaned back in my chair with my mug and took a long drink. “I don’t think I told you. Abigail helped pack the chocolate boxes.”
Marcus finished half a dumpling before he answered, “I know. I talked to her and to Nic Sutton, who made the boxes.”
“I wish people could have taken them home,” I said.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
I smiled at him. “It’s okay.”
My cup was empty, so I got up to make another cup of hot chocolate. I knew where the other half of the dumpling would go as soon as my back was turned. I poured more milk into my cup along with a big spoonful of the dark chocolate cocoa mix I’d gotten at the Farmers’ Market and put the whole thing in the microwave. When I did turn back around, Owen was licking his lips, Hercules was washing his face and Marcus was spooning a carrot out of his bowl. It was cute how they actually thought they were fooling me.
I leaned against the counter while I waited for the milk to heat. “So the nuts weren’t in anything Eric served or even with the coffee or the tea?” I asked.
Marcus reached for his glass. “No. We checked the kitchen at both places. Nothing.”
“Wait a minute,” I said slowly, turning to get my drink from the microwave. “You didn’t actually say the nuts weren’t in the chocolates. You said there didn’t seem to be any way Olivia could have put them in.”
Marcus looked at me, just the tiny hint of a smile flickering across his face. “You’re right, that is what I said.”
I sat down across from him again with my cup and the marshmallows. “So? What haven’t you told me?”
He swiped a hand over his neck. At his feet both cats seemed to be listening intently. “All three of the chocolates in the box that Dana Chapman had were coated with pistachio oil. None of the other boxes that have been sampled had anything on the chocolates inside.”
There was one piece of chicken left in his bowl. He pulled it apart with his fork and leaned over to give half to each cat, not even trying to hide what he was doing.
“So that’s how you know somebody meant to kill Dana Chapman?”
Marcus nodded, wiping his fingers on his napkin. “Yes. I’m not telling you anything that won’t be common knowledge in a few hours. In fact, maybe it already is.”
He started to get to his feet and I stood up instead, reaching for his dishes with one hand and putting the other on his shoulder to tell him to stay put.
“The paper?” I asked. The Mayville Heights Chronicle was one of the few smaller newspapers in the state whose readership was actually on the rise.
“Yeah. Everywhere we went, one of Bridget’s reporters was right behind us.” He exhaled loudly. “Sometimes I think it’s impossible to keep anything secret in this town.”
Dayna Chapman had been murdered. Murdered, just a few hours after she’d arrived back in town. Why, and by whom?
Maybe it was impossible to keep some things secret, but clearly not everything.