“Good morning,” Mac said when he caught sight of me. “I’m just about set to try your magic degreaser potion on these.”
I took a couple of steps closer to him. “Could you watch things out front for me?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “Nick’s here. He has more questions about Lily.”
“No problem,” Mac said, brushing off his hands. He followed me back into the store.
Nick was studying our collection of Valentine’s Day cards from the fifties and sixties. Avery had arranged them between two thin sheets of plexiglass that Mac had mounted on the wall with mirror clips.
“Do you remember when we were in school we used to give little cards like these to each other?” Nick asked. “And those little heart-shaped candies with sayings in the middle.”
“I remember those,” Mac said with a smile. “Never give one that says ‘Be Mine’ to three different girls.” He shook his head.
Nick nodded in sympathy. “Yeah, it’s pretty much the same deal with cards that say ‘My Sweetness.’”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “See? That’s why little girls grow up to be big girls who stay home on Valentine’s Day with a chocolate cheesecake and a Ryan Gosling movie marathon.”
Nick put a hand to his chest in mock woundedness. “It’s not our fault. We were wild stallions. We couldn’t be tamed with just one saddle.”
“Absolutely,” Mac agreed.
I rolled my eyes at the two of them. “We’ll be up in my office,” I said.
Mac nodded. “Take your time. Good to see you,” he said to Nick.
Nick smiled. “You too.”
With Nick in my office, the space seemed even smaller. I gestured at the love seat. I’d finally surrendered my red womb chair to the store, where it had sold in two days, replacing it with an armless chair I’d reupholstered in a vivid green-and-black-geometric print. I pulled it closer and sat down. Nick took off his wool topcoat, tossed it over the arm of the love seat and sat down as well.
He was wearing a charcoal suit with a crisp white shirt and a red tie. Avery would have said he looked so fine. She would have been right. He was a very handsome man, but he still had a bit of the small-town-boy quality.
“I’m just trying to clear up a few loose ends,” he said. He pulled a notepad and a pen out of the pocket of his coat. “You said that Lily had a routine she followed in the morning.”
I nodded. “She did. I think she had routines for everything. She told me once that she got everything ready the night before so she could start baking as soon as she got in the next morning. I think that was one of the reasons she hired Erin Lansing as an assistant baker. They worked the same way.”
Nick wrote something on the notepad and looked up at me again. “Tell me about the argument Lily had with Liz the night before she died.”
I should have guessed someone would have told the police about that. “Isn’t it your job to figure out how Lily died and Michelle’s to catch the bad guy—if there is one?” I asked.
“It is,” he said, “but there is some overlap in what we do. Tell me about the argument, Sarah.”
“It wasn’t really an argument.”
“So what was it?”
Before I could answer, there was a tap on my door and Rose bustled in carrying a cup of tea in one hand. One thin, star-shaped ginger cookie was tucked onto the saucer.
“Hello, Nicolas,” she said. “It’s awfully cold outside. I thought you might like a nice, warm cup of tea.”
He smiled and took the cup from her. “Are you sure this isn’t a bribe so you can pump me for information?” he asked.
“If I were trying to bribe you, I would have brought more than one cookie,” she said, smiling sweetly at him.
“How did you know Nick was here, and why didn’t you bring me a cookie?” I said.
She reached into the pocket of her apron, pulled out something wrapped in a red-and-white-polka-dot napkin and handed it to me. I could see the curved edge of a round cookie peeking out the top.
“I knew Nick was here because I heard you tell Mac when you asked him to watch the front of the store.” One eyebrow went up. “People underestimate me because I’m old.” She smiled sweetly at me and left.
“How could she have heard me tell Mac you were here?” I said to Nick.
He’d broken his cookie in half and was about to dunk it in his tea. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I have ears like a wolf,” Rose called from the hall.
Nick laughed and put the entire piece of cookie in his mouth. I shook my head in defeat, leaned against the back of my chair, broke off a bit of my own cookie and ate it.
“Lily and Liz, that Tuesday night,” Nick prompted.
“Right,” I said. “I was walking Liz to her car. We’d had supper together at Sam’s. When we came level with the bakery, Lily saw us through the front window and came out.” I stopped and exhaled slowly. “She was very angry.”
“About?”
“Liz had gone to her mother to see if Caroline would agree to talk to Lily about selling the bakery for the development.”
“What happened when Lily confronted Liz?” Nick asked, taking a drink of the tea. The cup look very small in his large hands.
“Nothing really,” I said. “Liz apologized. Lily had her say and went back inside. The whole thing was over in less than a minute.” I broke another piece off my cookie and ate it. Then I leaned sideways to peek out my office door and make sure Rose wasn’t still lurking in the hallway. There was no sign of her.
I straightened up. “Seriously, Nick. Liz isn’t really a suspect, is she?”
He finished writing in his notebook, closed it and put it and the pen back in his coat pocket. “I can’t tell you that,” he said, softening his words with a smile.
“How about blink once for yes and twice for no?”
“How about I need to get back to the office?”
He stood up and so did I.
I saw his gaze flick to the door. “She’s not there,” I said. I reached over and closed the door. “Better?”
He nodded and reached for his coat. “Sarah, I know you said that it’s pretty much impossible to keep Rose and my mother and the rest of them out of this case, but it would be a really bad idea for them to get involved. There’s a lot of emotion tied up in this whole development proposal. Things could get ugly.”
“Hang on. You think Lily’s death is tied to the development?”
His mouth moved. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer me. Then he sighed and said, “I didn’t say it had anything to do with the North Landing proposal.”
“All right,” I said.
It didn’t seem like a good time to point out that he hadn’t said it didn’t, either.
“This is something ‘the Angels’ should keep their wings out of,” Nick said as he wound his scarf around his neck.
I rolled my eyes at him. “And you and I have had so much success convincing them to stay out of things in the past.”
The collar of his coat was folded under on one side. I reached over and fixed it, smoothing it flat with my hand. He smelled wonderful. Hugo aftershave, of course, and something else. Oranges?
Nick smiled down at me. “Thanks,” he said. “I never quite mastered getting all dressed up.”
“I think you mastered it just fine,” I said.
Suddenly the room seemed too warm, and I took a step back from him. I still had half a cookie in my hand, and it seemed like a good time to finish it.
He smiled. “When you talk to Jess, tell her the nachos are on me this week.”
I laughed. “I think you’re going to regret that offer.”
There were no customers in the store, but Liz and Charlotte were downstairs, both wearing their coats, standing by the big front window and talking to Rose. The three of them turned to look at us.
“Hi, Mom,” Nick said, smiling at Charlotte. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” He started toward her. She met him halfway, reaching out to put a hand on his arm.
I joined them. I could see by her stance and the expression on her face that Rose, to use an expression of my grandmother’s, was loaded for bear. Her eyes were fixed on Nick.