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Theo smiled. “Of course he’s not.”
She might have asked more, if Mac Etheridge had not arrived.
The men shook hands warmly. “I was gone for one day,” Gus grumbled.
Mac laughed. “Well, you know how to pick your exits.” He handed Theo a box. “To replenish your secret stash.”
“What stash?” Gus demanded.
“Hardly be a secret if I told you.” Theo opened the box of handmade chocolates. “I’ll replenish tomorrow…tonight we need chocolate.”
“That’s probably true,” Gus conceded. “It looks like this man calling himself Burt Winslow was murdered.”
Theo inhaled sharply. “How?”
“He was shot. They expect there was a silencer of some sort involved because nobody heard the shot. They haven’t found the murder weapon. The snow made determining the time of death quite easy. Between quarter to and quarter past eleven.” Mac turned to Theo. “As we worked out this morning, he does not live at number 277, and the police know nothing else about him.”
Gus groaned. “Well, why are they turning this place over? They couldn’t possibly suspect Theo—she’s never even touched a gun, let alone one with a silencer.”
“It’s the letter,” Mac said grimly. “They suspect that Burt Winslow was trying to blackmail Theo, or that his murder and Dan Murdoch’s are somehow linked.”
“Of course they’re linked,” Theo said angrily. “Just not by me!”
“Judging by their line of questioning, they are considering some ludicrous scenario in which I supplied Theo with a gun and then took it away again. They’re searching my house now.”
“So what did this letter say?” Gus asked grabbing three exquisitely made chocolates from the box.
Mac said nothing. Theo recounted everything she could remember from the second page. Then she explained what she and Mac had already discussed about the fact that despite professing to send her manuscript to a friend at the Sandra Djikstra Literary Agency, Dan Murdoch had sent it to Veronica Cole at Day Delos and Associates instead.
“That’s a little weird, don’t you think, Theo?”
“Maybe.” She curled into a corner of the couch. “I don’t know.”
Gus’s brow rose. “Perhaps he made a copy of the manuscript and sent it on to both.”
“It should be fairly easy to find out if this agency in California has Theo’s manuscript,” Mac said.
“It’ll be under Theodosia Benton,” Theo said thinking for no particular reason, of the fact that his name was Cormac.
He smiled. “I’ll remember.”
Gus reached out to scratch Horse behind the ear. “I’ll have a security system installed tomorrow, since this turncoat has proved he’s anybody’s for a pat.”
Mac nodded. “I think that might be a good idea.” He looked at Theo, noting the suppressed panic in her eyes. “Mendes is looking at two murders in the space of a week,” he said. “He’s clutching at any straw right now. As the police learn more, they’ll work out that they’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Theo looked up. “I meant what I said—I want to hire you.”
“Hang on,” Gus said. “You want to what?”
“I want to retain Mac to find out who killed Dan. I have that money you got out of the trustees—”
“That’s what you want to do with that money?”
“Yes,” Theo replied firmly. “I need to know, Gus.”
Mac shook his head. “You don’t need to retain me, Theo. I’ll find out what I can, off the books.”
“I can’t ask you to do that.”
