Софи Келли - A Night's Tail

Her gaze slipped away from mine for a moment. I’d noticed she sometimes tended to downplay her skills. “Yes,” she finally said.

I waited while she scrolled through her photos. Then she held out the phone to me.

“Oh, Georgia, that’s beautiful!” I exclaimed. The cake pictured on the screen was a four-tiered creation with alternating black and white layers decorated with a curving cascade of flowers from pale violet to dark purple down the front. “It’s almost too pretty to eat.”

She smiled again. “Thank you for saying that.”

“I can’t resist asking; what kind of cake? Chocolate and vanilla?”

“Close,” she said. “The dark layers are dark chocolate and the light layers are hazelnut.”

“That’s even better,” I said. “You’re really talented.” I looked at the screen a second time “Those flowers, they look so real.”

“They’re not hard to make,” she said, swiping her index finger across the phone screen to show me a closer image of the delicate blooms. “I could teach you, I mean, if you’re interested.”

I nodded. “Yes. I’m absolutely interested. As soon as the quilt show is over I’ll have some free time.”

“We’ll set up a time then.” She tucked her phone in the pocket of her jacket. “The quilt show is actually the reason I’m here. Patricia Queen sent me an e-mail—well, several e-mails— while I was out of town.”

“She wants the show to be perfect,” I said. I knew some people found Patricia’s dogged attention to detail annoying, but I admired her work ethic.

“I understand that,” Georgia said. “I can be pretty single-minded myself when I’m baking. It turns out Patricia wants one of my gift baskets as a thank-you gift for Melanie Davis but she couldn’t give me any ideas about what to put in it. I don’t want to deliver a basket of, say, banana muffins, if what Melanie would really enjoy is chocolate cupcakes.”

“Chocolate cupcakes, definitely,” I said at once. I knew that Melanie loved chocolate. She’d asked for the recipe after she tried one of my brownies. And I was positive that she wouldn’t feel like banana muffins—or any other kind of muffin—at the moment.

Georgia scrolled through her phone once again and showed me some of the cupcake possibilities. I’d tried all of them, I realized.

“They all look so delicious,” I said, “and I know how good they taste, but I think Melanie would like the mix of double chocolate, mint chocolate chip and mocha fudge.” Just looking at a picture of those cupcakes made me hungry, and right on cue my stomach growled. Loudly.

I put a hand on my midsection. “Sorry,” I said, feeling my cheeks get red with embarrassment.

Georgia laughed. “Don’t apologize. I take that as praise.” She tucked her phone in her pocket again. “By the way, was your brother happy with his muffins?”

His muffins?

I gave her a blank look. “I’m sorry, what muffins are we talking about?”

“The peanut butter banana ones I made for the workshop he was teaching on Sunday.”

“Ethan ordered peanut butter banana muffins from you? For the songwriting workshop at the hotel?” I knew I was parroting her words but I couldn’t help it. I was trying to have them make sense because they didn’t at the moment.

Georgia frowned. “Kathleen, was there something wrong with them?” she asked.

“No, no,” I said. “It’s just that the workshop was canceled. You probably didn’t hear because you left early on Sunday morning.”

“Yes,” she said, still looking very confused.

How was I going to explain this? “A guest at the hotel . . . died.”

She put a hand to her chest. “That’s horrible!” she whispered.

I exhaled softly. “There’s something else you should know. That guest was, uh, Lewis Wallace.”

Georgia stared wide-eyed at me. “Oh my word. You mean the man from Fern’s who . . . who . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Yes,” I said.

“What happened?”

I hesitated for a moment. I couldn’t bring myself to say he was murdered and I didn’t think Marcus would want me to say anything at this point, anyway. “The police are still investigating but it looks as though he died from an allergic reaction.” I hoped she wouldn’t make the connection, but she did.

The color drained from her face. “An allergic reaction? What? To the peanut butter? Do you mean— Did I kill the man?”

“No!” I said, vehemently shaking my head. “You had nothing to do with Lewis Wallace’s death. Absolutely nothing.” I reached out and gave her arm a squeeze. “Talk to Marcus, Georgia. He’ll tell you the same thing. Please.”

She nodded. “I . . . I think I’ll do that.” She patted the pocket that held her phone. “I’m sorry. I need to get going. Thanks for your help, Kathleen.”

“If I can do anything else—anything—please call me or stop in.”

“I will,” she said. She raised a hand in good-bye and headed out.

I folded my arms over my chest and blew out a breath. My stomach felt as though a troupe of circus acrobats were doing a tumbling routine in there.

Ethan ordered those muffins.

Ethan.

Why hadn’t he said so?

chapter 8

I thought about texting Ethan or even calling him, but I decided not to. He was doing another song-writing workshop with a Boys and Girls Club in Red Wing and I didn’t want to disrupt that. And I wanted to see his face when I asked him what the heck he’d been thinking. I kept telling myself that he had to have had a good reason for not mentioning to Marcus or to me that he’d bought the muffins that had caused Lewis Wallace’s allergic reaction. I just couldn’t come up with one.

I ate the last of the lo mein for supper, grateful that Ethan had made lots of it. Owen kept me company while I washed the dishes, going through his own elaborate personal hygiene routine.

My thoughts kept going back to what I’d learned from Georgia. That’s all that I’d been able to think about since she’d stopped by the library. “Why did Ethan order those muffins and why didn’t he say anything?” I said, more to myself than to the cat. “And how did they get to the hotel?”

“Merow!” Owen said loudly.

I turned to find him eyeing me, one paw hovering in the air and what to me seemed like a confused expression in his golden eyes. At the same time Hercules came in from the porch, stopped halfway across the kitchen floor and looked from his brother to me. “Mrr,” he said as though he was asking what he’d just missed.

I gestured to his food and water dishes by the refrigerator. “You missed supper.”

He glanced over at his food but his gaze came back to Owen. They stared silently at each other in that way that once again made me think that they somehow had the ability to communicate without making a sound. Finally, Hercules looked at me and gave a soft murp while Owen went back to meticulously washing his face.

It really did seem as though Hercules had been asking what I’d been talking about and I knew it would help me sort out my thoughts as well as work out what I was going to say to my brother if I talked to the cats.

“Ethan bought those muffins,” I said. “He knew that Lewis Wallace had died from an allergic reaction. Marcus even said the man had eaten a peanut butter and banana muffin.”

I remembered how Ethan had started to cough and said it was because his coffee had gone down the wrong way.

I pointed a fork in the cats’ direction and drops of water spattered onto the floor. “The little weasel must have gotten them to the hotel somehow. They weren’t here in the house.”

Owen gave a very enthusiastic meow. “Yes, I know they’re your favorite,” I said, setting a bowl in the dish rack to drain. “That’s because they’re Maggie’s favorite.”