Dead Velvet Cake by James Emily

Author:James, Emily
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-988480-29-9
Publisher: Stronghold Books
Published: 2020-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

14

We’d just finished Sunday night dinner, and I was helping Dan wash and dry the dishes while Claire got Janie ready for bed.

Dan’s cell phone pinged with a text, and he dried his hands on a dish cloth. He glanced at the screen. “It’s from Mark Cavanaugh. He says he didn’t know if we’d have a way to find out, and he wanted us to know that our hunch was right. Anthony Rigman died of antimony poisoning.”

Relief rushed through me. That made all the difference. Or it could make all the difference. The suspects who’d had concrete alibis were now possibilities again. Eve and I weren’t the only ones.

“Mark also wanted us to know that antimony poisoning doesn’t mean Rigman couldn’t have died when the medical examiner originally thought. It just means the window of death is larger.”

Much larger. A whole week larger. Anthony Rigman could have been killed at any point during the week between the argument I’d broken up and the sandcastle competition. Detective Strobel would probably still think Eve and I were the most likely suspects unfortunately. Just because he could have been killed at some other time didn’t mean he was.

But I was confident now that he had been. I barely sleep most nights listening for footsteps outside my truck. There’s no way I could have been so tired or distracted that I wouldn’t have heard someone burying a body right in front of me. “It seems like the day after he argued on the street with Eve makes the most sense. Otherwise, someone would have seen him or heard from him during that time. He’d have gone to work.”

“He didn’t have many messages on his answering machine.”

“True. But we don’t know if that’s because most people called his cell phone rather than his house phone or if it’s because he was playing them.”

Dan moved next to me and leaned against the counter, so we were both facing out in the same direction. “Would I be right in guessing you’re planning to continue investigating now that a lot of the people of interest are back on the table?”

I nodded, turned back to the sink, washed the final plate, and handed it to him.

Dan accepted the plate from me. “If I know Strobel, he’ll be re-interviewing everyone who knew Rigman to see if he can figure out the last time someone spoke to him. Now that he has a bigger gap for a possible time of death, he’ll want to narrow it down.”

I stripped off the yellow rubber gloves. I couldn’t even take myself seriously while wearing them. “I’d like to start with the caterer.”

He shifted beside me, and I looked up to meet his gaze. Standing side by side this way, we were close enough that I could smell the peppermint he’d popped into his mouth after dinner. He was looking down at me.

My brain felt like it suddenly ground to a halt, and it took me a minute to realize I hadn’t asked if he was still onboard.

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