Chapter 14
Four days had passed since Margo Haskell had walked out of the Mercer yard sale and into the back of Jack’s car, and Brooke Ridge Falls had done what small towns do — absorbed the shock, processed it thoroughly through every coffee counter and front porch in a three-mile radius, and begun the slow business of moving on.
At The Cup and Cake, the display case was full again, the yard sale weekend was a memory, and the waterfall across the street caught the late afternoon light in that particular way that made the town look like a postcard.
Nans, Ruth, Helen, and Ida were at the table by the window. Lexy had pulled a chair over from the next table and was sitting on the end of it with her coffee when Jack came through the door with the expression of a man who had done a great deal of paperwork in a very short amount of time.
He pulled up another chair and sat next to Lexy. Lexy slid her coffee over to him.
“Margo’s cooperating,” he said.
Nans nodded slowly. “And the DA?”
“Going light on her. Given her age, her record, the circumstances.” He wrapped both hands around the mug. “She didn’t plan it. That counts for something.”
“It counts for a great deal,” Helen said, quietly.
A small silence settled over the table. The comfortable kind, where everyone was thinking the same thing and nobody needed to say it first.
“What about the murder weapon?” Ruth hated to leave loose ends unexamined. “She said it was the poker from a fireplace set and she donated it to the church rummage sale.
“By the time we got to the church, the rummage sale was over.” He picked up his coffee again. “The set had sold for three dollars.”
The table went very quiet.
Ida set down her eclair. This was notable. Ida never set down her eclair. “Do they know who bought it?”
Jack shook his head.
“So somewhere,” she said slowly, “someone in this town is sitting in their living room next to a fireplace, and they have absolutely no idea that their poker is actually evidence in a murder case.” She picked the eclair back up and stared at it.
“I’m going to think about that every single time I go to someone’s house and there’s a fireplace.
” She looked around the table. “You’re all going to think about it too, now. You’re welcome.”
“What about June?” Lexy asked.
Jack turned his coffee mug in a slow circle. “She gave a statement. Solid. She didn’t know anything, and it shows.” He paused. “She’s going to be all right. It’ll take time.”
“It’ll take more than time,” Helen said. “Finding out a thirty-year-old secret and losing your best friend on the same afternoon is not something you just sleep off.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “But she’s got people.”
Cassie appeared at the table with the plate of remaining lemon bars and the solitary snickerdoodle, which she set in the center without comment.
She looked at the group — at Jack’s paperwork face, at Nans’s settled expression, at Ida already reaching for a lemon bar — and gave a slow nod of satisfaction.
Outside, the waterfall caught the last of the afternoon light. Brooke Ridge Falls went about its business, unhurried and entirely itself. Somewhere in town, someone was sitting next to a fireplace with absolutely no idea that their fireplace poker had been used as a murder weapon.
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