Murder By Muffin (Lucy McGuffin, Psychic Amateur Detective 3)
“I can’t speculate on that.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Have you ever seen Tara in this kind of condition before?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever suspect that she might be taking drugs?”
“I thought you said she was poisoned. Where did you hear she was taking drugs? Is that what Gilly said?”
“Until the toxicology report comes back I have to explore every angle. Is there anything else you noticed that night? Did she say anything unusual or out of the ordinary?”
“Not unusual, but she was worried about something.”
“She told you that?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Then how do you know she was worried?”
“I sensed it.”
“Sensed it how?”
How do I explain this to Travis without telling him about my gift? “You know when someone just seems off?”
“Can you be more specific?”
“She asked me how I solved the El Tigre case. She also wanted to know if I could tell if someone was bluffing.”
His gaze turns thoughtful. “Why do you think she asked you that?”
“I’m not sure, but I sensed she was in a dilemma or maybe even some trouble. I thought she was going to ask me to help her, but she didn’t. Oh God, do you think that’s why she came to The Bistro? To ask me to help her?”
“Help her with what? What kind of trouble do you think she might have been in?”
“I have no idea. What do you know about Tara’s background? Could someone she worked with have a reason to hurt her? She wasn’t exactly the nicest person on the planet, you know.”
“We’re looking into possible motives for foul play,” he says carefully.
“You want to know what I think?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“I think Tara burned someone in the past. A co-worker or someone and they wanted revenge.”
“Not a bad theory.”
The little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Ha! Not a bad theory, my bum. This is exactly what Travis thinks too.
“What about Gilly? She was there when I came to visit Tara, and honestly, I wouldn’t have thought her capable of hurting a fly, but you should have seen her at the meeting this evening. She’s prancing around like the queen bee. From the looks of it, she’s in charge now that Tara is gone.”
“Like I said, we’re looking into every possibility.”
“Sounds to me like the cops are doing a lot of looking and not a lot of solving,” I mumble. But something about the way he says possibility puts my Lucy laser on full alert. I decide to take a stab in the dark. “Who else went to see Tara that night besides me?”
The surprise on Travis’s face is beyond satisfying. “How did you know Tara had other visitors?”
Visitors as in plural. Now this is getting interesting.
“Lucky guess? So who else came to see her?”