“Good grief,” she muttered. “They’ve all been stripped!”

•   •   •

Mariana and Pixie were hard at work collating the inserts for the upcoming newsletter when Tricia arrived back at the Chamber office. “Did you notice anything unusual about Main Street when you went out to lunch?” she asked Mariana.

She looked thoughtful. “Now that you mention it, yes. There was a big black limo double-parked outside the Patisserie. I wondered if a rock star or maybe Nigela Ricita herself was in town today.”

Knowing Angelica didn’t travel around in a limo, Tricia muttered, “Probably a rock star. No, I meant the hanging flower baskets. I just walked past twelve of them on my way back from Booked for Lunch and not one of them had a flower in it.”

“None?” Mariana asked.

“Where’d they go?” Pixie asked.

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Tricia looked at her boxed lunch. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

“Sure thing.”

Miss Marple jumped from Sarge’s basket. Tricia figured she liked to leave her scent there to drive the poor dog crazy. Miss Marple followed Tricia into the kitchen, waiting patiently for a few cat treats, which Tricia had promised herself she wasn’t going to give the cat on demand but always seemed to do so anyway. She poured herself a glass of iced tea and sat down at the bistro table with little appetite. She retrieved her cell phone and called Angelica, but got only her voice mail. She decided not to leave a message. The missing flowers were too big an announcement for that.

Picking up the plastic fork that came with her salad, Tricia picked at a piece of iceberg lettuce. She used to get annoyed when Angelica didn’t immediately answer her calls. Now she realized that her sister must have to juggle a lot of responsibilities controlling not only her three in-village business plus all her Nigela Ricita obligations. Antonio was the public face of Nigela Ricita Associates, but Angelica was the mastermind. She’d even put her publishing aspirations on hold when she’d taken up the Chamber presidency. She didn’t stop from the minute she got up until the minute she closed her eyes at night, and she was happier than Tricia had ever seen her. Somehow, working so hard seemed to be her preferred method of relaxation.

Tricia stabbed a hunk of tuna, shoving it into her mouth. She felt so ineffectual—as she had for a good portion of her life. Of course, Angelica wasn’t doing it all alone. Her solution had been to hire really good people and pay them accordingly. Meanwhile, Tricia had one store with two employees and sometimes felt overwhelmed. Of course, if she was honest with herself, those times usually came after a sudden, violent death.

Of course, she knew why she felt so powerless. It was the seemingly endless wait for the insurance company to make a settlement on the fire damage to her store. She had no doubt that the minute the check came through she’d be feeling on top of the world. In the meantime, she, at least, had her volunteer duties for the Chamber.

But what Mariana had told her earlier came back to haunt her. She’d enjoyed working with her contractor, Jim Stark, during the initial renovation at Haven’t Got a Clue and had thought him easygoing. Now to find out he was a jealous kind of guy—who collected a variety of firearms—and that he may have believed his wife had had an affair with a man who had just been murdered . . . Well, it was a bit too much to take in all at once. Preposterous as it would have seemed scant hours before, Tricia now wondered how her future would be affected if Jim actually had done the deed.

Would anyone mention to Chief Baker that Stark might have had a motive for murdering Pete? If no one volunteered that information, should she? And how would Stark react to her betrayal? There were other contractors in the area, but everyone agreed Stark was the best. He came highly recommended, he came up with cost-saving solutions when the reno ran into problems, and he and his men did good work on schedule. Tricia wanted to go home as soon as possible. Stark had promised that, when the insurance company finally came through with a check, he would make her renovation a top priority. Would he even deal with her if she dared mention his name in connection with Pete’s death?

How badly did she want to return to her home and workplace?

Pretty damn bad.

Tricia set her fork down and closed the carton on the salad. She’d had enough.

Feeling terribly depressed, she placed the foam container in the fridge and headed back to the office without making a decision on what she should do with what she now knew.

EIGHT

Once again, the Chamber did not get a full day’s worth of work from Tricia. Why was she obsessing over a rumor—and that’s all it was—that her contractor may have been jealous of the attention another man paid his wife? Much as she tried to distract herself with Chamber work, she could not concentrate.

What she wanted to do was haul out her book and read. When life got tough, she could always count on getting lost in a mystery novel, but since Pixie was getting paid by the hour, Tricia couldn’t very well rub her nose in the fact that an unpaid volunteer had leeway to goof off on a whim. That Tricia had allowed Pixie to read on the job at Haven’t Got a Clue had been a perk her assistant had practically wallowed in. And yet, Pixie wasn’t afraid of work. She seemed to look at every task as a chance to excel—and she did.

At 5:57, Pixie began to gather her purse, shoes, and waitress uniform in preparation for leaving.

“What have you got on tap tonight?” Tricia asked.

“Fred’s coming over to my place to barbeque some steaks. His boss gives him the stuff that’s just about to turn.”

“Oh, how awful,” Tricia said, appalled.

“No, it’s not. Fred’s dad was a butcher. He said you have to hang meat for it to get full-flavored. They don’t do that nowadays and the meat tastes like sh—” She paused and seemed to think better of her descriptor. “Crap. I asked Mr. E, and he agreed. He used to be a butcher, you know.”

Yes, she did know.

“What are you having?” Pixie asked.

“I’m going to Angelica’s. She said something about shrimp pastasalad.”

“That sounds like lunch.”

“I prefer to think of it as light,” Tricia said. If carb heavy. “It doesn’t matter what she makes; it’s always good.”

“No doubt about it. She’s good in the kitchen. She’s shown me a few tricks over at Booked for Lunch. She said your grandma taught her.”

“That she did.”

Pixie frowned. “My granny ran a brothel. Is it any wonder I ended up the way I did?”

Tricia wasn’t sure how to reply to that piece of news. Luckily, Pixie continued.

“We’re having a salad and baked potatoes. Making them is gonna be my job, so I’m off to Shaw’s in Milford to get the stuff.”

“Have a good evening,” Tricia called as Pixie headed out the door. Once she was gone, Tricia locked the office and immediately headed to the Cookery for dinner with Angelica. She had a lot to tell her—and really felt the need to unload. She just hoped Angelica would be in a receptive mood.

As usual, Sarge was ecstatic to see Tricia. It had been almost twenty-four hours, and he let her know that her absence had been keenly felt. She rewarded him with two biscuits that she slipped him, which did not go unseen by his mistress.

“He’ll get fat if you keep indulging him,” Angelica scolded her.

“They’re small biscuits,” Tricia said in her own defense.

Angelica scowled and turned back to her cutting board, which was covered in good-sized cooked, peeled shrimp she’d been in the process of cutting into bite-size pieces.