“You bet it does,” he says, winking at me.
“Brittany, you have to let up on this poor man. It’s bad enough you have him working all day but on Saturday night too, and during an FSU football game,” I tease.
Brittany makes a face. “Football is so rough. I prefer watching tennis, myself. But give me some credit, Lucy. We didn’t work all through the weekend. Just part of the day Saturday.”
“Oh, I thought you said you missed the game?” I say to Darren.
He swallows down his muffin before he answers, “Did I say I missed last week’s game? Man, these crazy hours are messing with my head.” He laughs like he’s made a joke. “Of course I watched the game.”
I feel like I’ve stuck my finger in a light socket and all the electricity went straight to the hair on the back of my neck.
Darren has just lied to me.
And it’s not some obscure little lie.
It’s a big one.
Chapter Twenty
Brittany looks at me at strangely. “What’s wrong? You look like you just heard that muffins were outlawed or something.”
“Wrong?” I squeak, then clear my throat. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Why on earth would Darren lie to me about something as mundane as whether or not he watched a football game?
A match lights up inside my brain.
Holy wow.
The football game.
The night I went to see Tara, I distinctively heard voices in the kitchen that I assumed were Gilly and one of the camera guys. Only it couldn’t have been Alan or Pete’s voice I heard because I was at Tara’s house at 8 p.m., the same exact time the FSU football game started. Colleen specifically said that the patrons at The Draft House were upset because Alan and Pete were creating a disturbance just as the game was starting.
But if it wasn’t Alan or Pete in the kitchen with Gilly, then …
My heart starts to thud with excitement.
My internal lie detector isn’t broken after all! Gilly didn’t lie. She didn’t poison Tara. Maybe that thing that was staring me in the face is literally staring me in the face right now, calming munching on one of my blueberry muffins.
Darren wasn’t watching the football game because he was at the beach house that night. It was his voice I heard in the kitchen with Gilly. Which means Darren had the opportunity to poison Tara. But what about motive?
Brittany frowns. “Lucy, are you sure you’re okay?”
Darren looks concerned as well, only the concern isn’t for me. I can see it now. Why did I never notice how shifty his eyes were before?
“You know,” I say, trying to control the shake in my voice, “I thought that after Tara died, the network was going to cancel this season of Battle of the Beach Eats. Lucky for you and Catfish Cove that someone changed their mind. Who, um, made that decision to keep the show going? The network?”
“I believe so,” Darren says mildly.
“I’ll bet Gilly had a big say in it too, huh? Since she’s officially been given Tara’s job.”
Paco looks between me and Darren like he’s catch
ing on. He stares at Darren the same way he stares down the vet when she’s coming at him with a needle in her hand.
Oh boy. Things are about to get interesting.
Darren smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “What are you getting at, Lucy?”