“Maybe you should take off all that flannel.” The corner of his mouth quirked. He turned around.
Was he flirting with me? More likely, he was teasing me about my awkward statement.
No way would I want to be with him. He’s a prick,I decided as I climbed up the stairs to my grandmother’s apartment.
To avoid thinking about Marius, I considered the unlocked door and the person running from my café.
It wasn’t a tourist. It had to be someone involved in the murder. That was the only logical explanation—they were removing evidence.
The police were trying to gaslight me, but I was going to solve the mystery.
I logged into the web server for the cheap security camera I’d stuck with double-sided tape on the brick alley wall. It wasn’t anything like the fancy ones and only took a photo when there was motion, but there was a blurry black-and-white image on my screen.
“I knew I didn’t kill my husband!” Now everyone else was going to know it too. “And Marius is going to help me—bad attitude or not.”
4
MARIUS
The only good thing about spending December with Aunt Frances was this. Breakfast.
She lived in a very expensive senior living center. I knew. I paid the bill every month. And it came with catered breakfast and lunch.
“I’m not giving you any,” I warned the cat. “You already ate.”
Moose meowed for some of the sausage patty smothered in gravy.
“You want to turn that OJ into a mimosa?” asked Sadie, who owned the Southern-inspired catering company.
“I have to work. I’m reviewing that contract for your husband’s company,” I reminded her.
Over in the corner, her husband, Parker Svensson—yeah, those Svenssons—was standing around, scowling.
“I told him he didn’t need to come. He refused, what with the murderer loose.” Sadie gave me a pointed look.
“I’m not discussing my clients,” I reminded her.
“Boo. There’s lots more gravy—don’t be shy!”
I dug into the hashbrowns and cheesy scrambled eggs. I’d gone for a run in the snowy morning but probably hadn’t done enough to justify getting a second plate.
“Our first suspect.” A printout of a blurry photo was shoved in front of me right when I was about to take a bite of the fresh steaming biscuit.
“Ms. Dawson—”
“Emmie,” she said determinedly. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”
“No, we’re not.”
“We have to investigate the case, and this,” she said, tapping the photo with her fork, “is suspect number one.”
“Who is it?” I tried to hand the photo back to her.
She ignored it in favor of taking a big bite of her breakfast. “I don’t know. That’s what we’re going to investigate.”
“You’re not a detective.”
“You don’t know me.”
