“It doesn’t have anything to do with a pretty damsel in distress needing to be rescued?” His mouth twitched.
“I think I liked you better when you were anti love and relationships,” I snipped.
Grayson just smirked.
“Besides, I only date other lawyers, not a literal widow with twenty cats. I need someone who understands me.”
Moose, riding on the back of one of the Dalmatians, meowed at me.
“Don’t want to be a stepfather?” Only someone who had known Grayson as long as I had would detect the undercurrent of humor. “Also didn’t the last lawyer you dated dump you because her dad was mad you didn’t go to Yale?”
“Maybe.”
We walked in silence for a moment.
“Emmie Dawson doesn’t seem like the murdering type,” Grayson said.
“They never do.”
We headed past a stall selling Christmas ornaments made out of beer cans.
“You don’t think she did it?” Grayson asked after a moment.
“If it goes to trial, I could make a good case that it was someone else.”
“Who?”
“Not sure yet. Small towns aren’t like the city. People hold grudges. The motive could be as simple as someone said something mean to someone in high school, and they finally got revenge.”
“Then you’re suspect number one.”
“Fuck off.” I elbowed my friend.
There was a skit underway at the stage in the center of the market. The children were acting out the gruesome cupcake murder. One little boy took a large bite out of a cupcake then convulsed dramatically. Then the grim reaper solemnly came out and took him away. The kids linked hands and bowed to applause.
“What kind of wholesome small-town event is this?” Grayson hissed in my ear.
The grandmaster of the Christmas market blared into a megaphone, “Stay tuned for part two of theCupcake Murdersnext week, folks. And now on to the raffle.”
Grayson handed me a scrap of paper and shifted the dog leashes to his other hand. “I bought you a raffle ticket.”
“Only tourists buy raffle tickets.”
“Don’t those people live here?” Grayson nodded. Oakley and Beatrice were close to the front of the crowd, giving flowers to the kids who had just finished the play, many of them little blond doppelgangers of their older, more obnoxious Svensson siblings.
“Don’t let them see us,” I hissed as the brothers collected the kids.
“Too late.”
Garret, a blond man, locked in on us. He sneered, “Why aren’t you at work? Don’t you have a contract you’re supposed to be finishing for us?”
One of his little brothers flung himself down to the ground and bit Garrett’s shoe. “I didn’t get a cupcake!”
“I just have to thank you and your brothers for putting this together, Garrett,” Oakley said, sobbing, wearing a big black hat.
Beatrice handed her a handkerchief.
“It is so comforting in my time of need to see people care about Brooks’s murder.”
