Top Notch by Stephanie Rowe

Author:Stephanie Rowe [Rowe, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Authenticity Playground Press

Chapter 19

Lucy hadn't been exaggerating.

Hattie's kitchen was trashed.

Food everywhere. Someone had spray painted murderer above the stove. Pots and pans were tossed on the floor. A sharp knife was sticking straight up out of a wooden cutting board. A milk carton had been stabbed and leaked all over the carnage. "Wow. This is really hostile."

"Right?" Lucy said. "Who would do this? No one even cares that Rutherford and Glory are dead. And who would even believe Hattie did it? This makes no sense."

Her last words stuck in my head. This makes no sense.

She was right. It didn't make any sense.

I didn't move from the door. I continued studying the chaos. "It looks very intentional, doesn't it?"

Lucy looked over at me, her eyes glistening with interest. "What does that mean?"

"A basic tenet of pickpocketing is to distract people, usually by bumping them. Their attention goes to the distraction, and then they don't even feel it when I lift their wallet."

She nodded. "How does that relate to the kitchen?"

"It means, give a person something to pay attention to, and they won't notice the thing you don't want them to notice." I looked around. "So, what is it that they don't want us to notice?"

"Oh…" Lucy rubbed her jaw. "Like, they stole something?"

"Or planted something, like in my car." I grimaced as I looked at the amount of carnage that had been left behind. "This would take us forever to figure out what was missing or added." If we even could. "Would you be able to tell?"

She shrugged. "I'd notice something major, like if they stole the stove or the dishwasher, but something small? No." She glanced over. "I'm assuming that telling Chief Stone is a bad idea? If they planted evidence to incriminate Hattie, I'm not about to let the cops find it."

I grinned. "You're learning fast. Your mind is turning criminal. I'm so impressed."

She laughed. "I always wanted to be a criminal. I just didn’t realize it. So what do we do? Search it?"

I shook my head. "We need to find out what happened here." I ran back to the front door of the café, quickly pulled down the shade, and locked the door. "We need to deal with this ourselves," I said as I hurried back to the kitchen, where Esther was already locking the back door.

"You know the cops will search Hattie's café," Lucy said. "If they haven't already. We don't have much time."

"Keep an eye out and make sure Chief Stone isn't coming in here. I'm going to call Hattie."

"Okay." Lucy hurried to the window and peered out while I pulled out my phone and dialed Angelina, who was the grandma of the Greek twins who worked for Hattie.

She also worked at the police station and had been very helpful when Lucy had been in trouble earlier in the week.

It took her seven rings to answer, a split second before voice mail would have picked up. "Sorry, Mia," she said cheerfully. "I was running a payment for a speeding ticket.

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