Murder By Muffin (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 3)

“Sure. He’s a regular. When he first started coming here, he could barely hold a stick without smacking someone in the head. Now he can run a rack better than most guys who’ve played all their lives.”

Run a rack?

“I’m sorry, are we talking about the same person? The dark-haired guy with the glasses standing at the bar?”

“Yeah, he’s been coming here every Wednesday night for the past … oh, I don’t know, six months or so.” Her face screws up. “Uh-oh, you’re not his wife, are you? Did I just get Will in big trouble?”

“No trouble. Um, thanks … ”

“Colleen,” she supplies.

Will still hasn’t noticed me, he’s so engrossed in his conversation with this Dave guy. I take the opportunity to ask a few more questions. “Will’s pretty good at pool, huh?”

“He won a tournament last month. Real nice guy, too. Great tipper.”

This is all so bizarre, I don’t know what to make of it.

“So the two of you don’t need a table?” she asks.

“No,” I say, still in a bit of a daze. “We just came by to bring Dave an envelope from a couple of guys who apparently did some damage the other night.”

Her mouth puckers in distaste. “Alan and Pete.”

“You were here when it happened?”

“Unfortunately. They friends of yours?”

“Not exactly. They were camera guys working on a TV cooking show that I was involved with.”

“Battle of the Beach Eats. Yeah, Alan bragged on that hard. What a creep. He not only got drunk and broke a mirror, but he couldn’t keep his hands to himself either, if you know what I mean.”

“Yuck.”

“Tell me about it. He kept hitting on me even though I told him to cut it out. After he and the other guy, Pete, broke the mirror, Dave called them a cab and told them never to come back again. And good riddance. The Florida State football game was just starting on the big screen, and the customers couldn’t hear it because they were making too much of a racket.”

Will spots me talking to Colleen. From the look on his face, he doesn’t seem happy. He immediately makes his way to us. “I thought you were going to stay in the car,” he says. He shoots Colleen a nervous glance. “Hey, Colleen.”

“Good to see you on a Tuesday, Will.”

“Uh, yeah.” He takes me by the elbow. “See you later,” he calls to her.

Before I can say boo, he has me out the door.

“How come I didn’t know you were some kind of pool shark?”

“Is that what Colleen told you?”

I’m about to respond when out of the corner of my eye I notice a police car blocking the alley where I—Rats. A female in uniform is hunched over, scribbling on a pad.

“So sorry! I was just—”

The police officer turns around at the sound of my voice. It’s Grace Cullen. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

“Lucy,” she says, showing no surprise at seeing me. “Did you realize you’d parked your car in an illegal zone?”

Okay, so it’s a bad thing. It’s clear that she’s already run my plates because from the smug look on her face, she knew darn well who she was ticketing. You’d think she’d cut me some slack since we share a mutual friend in Travis.

“I was only in the bar for a minute,” I say in my defense.