A Cup of Murder (Roasted Love Cozy 1)

"I had two, but it’s okay. I needed to wake up. What’s up?"

"Can you drop by tonight? I have something I want to talk to you about."

He agreed on seven. The kitchen door to Roasted Love opened and Eddie waved to me. I waved back. When I finished with Daniel, I gave Eddie instructions on things that needed to be done right away.

"Eddie, do you like working here?" I asked him.

I ignored the wary look he gave me.

"Sure," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"I may be able to give you a few more hours if you have time. Are you interested?"

The grin that spread across his face restored the familiar Eddie. He worked until closing when he and Lily walked to their cars. I looked around once more to make sure things were secure for the night. Thor and I got into my car. As I turned the corner I saw the now familiar blue BMW tagging behind Eddie’s ten year old Chevy. When Eddie turned toward his apartment, the BMW went the opposite direction.

For a politician who had responsibilities of the State, I wondered how James Simms had so much free time. Some of the shop owners on the Piazza had remarked they saw more of him now than when he was campaigning.

Thor attacked his dinner that night as if he hadn’t eaten for days. I found a ball that I used to play tennis with and took him outside to play.

Sitting on the patio, he couldn’t get enough of me throwing it to the end of the yard for him. When I had enough of it, I gave him a treat and leaned back to relax. I heard a car stop in front and glanced at my watch. It was five minutes before seven. I went in to open the front door for Daniel.

"Hi, Daniel," I said. "I hope you didn’t mind coming over."

"I don’t mind at all. I’m curious about what the detective has found out today."

His laugh warmed me to the bone. I led him over to the corkboard that was slowly and methodically filling up. I pointed out people I had either talked with or wanted to talk to.

"I left Jacob up here, but I don’t see any real reason to," I said.

I took an index card and wrote Janie Donovan on it.

"Why are you adding Janie?" he asked.

I told him everything that had happened that morning.

"I don’t know how much, if anything, I can believe that she told me," I said. "It just seems far-fetched that a Senator would ask a server in a coffee house to help him out. Anyway, why would he want to put false evidence in Jacob’s office?"

"I agree with that. If he wanted to frame him, he could have just planted something on his own in Sunrise. I would think it would have been easier than trusting someone he barely knew. Or does he know Janie well?"

"She told me he knows everything about her. According to her, she knows very little about him. She’s scared, Daniel. She's scared of the Simms family because of their wealth and prestige."

"You don’t have anything, really, except hearsay from Janie."

He was right. There was nothing to say she told me the truth about James Simms. It could be something else that had her scared. I had other issues to discuss with Daniel regarding the mysteries that kept unfolding on the Piazza.

"Do you think Michael’s wife, Leticia and James have a thing going?"

A chuckle came from Daniel. "What makes you think that?"

"I saw them together soon after Michael’s death going into Sunrise."

"Maybe it was because one of them was his wife and the other one was his brother."

"Do you have to keep making sense of things?" I said. "You are tearing down all my hard work."

"I’m just pointing out things that a cop would point out to you if you were talking to one. I’m sure the police are very much on top of things."

"Obviously they aren’t. Jacob Weaver is still sitting in a cell." My voice was heated and I knew it. "Look, we both know Jacob is innocent. I’m just trying to find out who really killed Michael Simms."