Софи Келли - A Midwinter's Tail

She couldn’t hold my gaze.

“You do!” Roma crowed.

“He’s not my type,” Maggie said, pulling her painting pail a little closer. “He’s so serious and competitive. He wears suits. He’s a lawyer, for heaven’s sake.”

“So?” I said.

“So I like the sensitive type—artists, musicians, guys whose idea of dressing up is putting on a clean T-shirt.”

“Brady has a sensitive side,” I said. “When Marcus’s sister needed a lawyer, he took her case. He’s been helping Ruby get the last of Agatha’s estate settled and I know he’s only charging her for his expenses because the money’s all going into art scholarships.”

I held up a finger before she could interrupt me. “And he stepped in to be goalie for the first responder team because Derek isn’t going to be able to get back for Winterfest.”

“He sounds like a nice guy,” Roma said.

“Brady is not interested in me romantically,” Maggie insisted.

Roma and I exchanged a look, which Maggie caught.

“Now what is it?”

“You’ve been out of the dating pool a little too long, Mags,” I said.

“You really haven’t noticed the way he looks at you?” Roma asked.

Maggie was clearly surprised. Then she shook her head. “No. Anyway, things are too complicated right now, with his mother coming back and then dying the way she did.”

Roma looked down at me. “Does Marcus know what happened yet?”

I shook my head.

“That was such a bizarre accident,” Maggie said, pushing back the sleeves of her gray T-shirt.

“I know,” Roma agreed, turning back to her painting. “What are the chances that Dayna Chapman would come back to town and then end up dying from an allergy attack the same day she got here?”

Maggie had glanced over at me and she must have seen something in my face, or maybe it was just the fact that I didn’t immediately agree.

“Kath, no,” she said quietly.

Roma turned around again and looked down at us. “What is it?” she said.

“You think that Dayna Chapman’s death wasn’t an accident,” Maggie continued, as if Roma hadn’t spoken.

“What?” Roma said.

“Why?” Maggie asked.

“I could be wrong,” I said, looking from one to the other. “I probably am wrong.”

Maggie made a face. “Sure, because you’re always wrong about this kind of thing.”

“The police are still investigating and so is the medical examiner’s office.”

“Why would anyone want to kill the woman?” Roma asked. “She hasn’t been here in more than twenty years.”

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning over to put more paint on my roller. “And maybe no one did. It just seems like an awfully big coincidence that Dayna would show up and then eat the one thing that could kill her. And Olivia has been so insistent that there were no nuts of any kind in the chocolates she made. At least none that she put there.”

“She could just be trying to cover herself,” Maggie said.

“Why?” I said. “If she had put nuts of any kind in the chocolates she made for the fundraiser, why lie about it? She hadn’t made any promise that they would be nut free. And then she picked up that other chocolate from Dana’s box and ate it and had a reaction herself. Not very smart if she knew there were nuts in it. She could have died, too.”

Maggie shook her head

“Mags, it doesn’t mean I’m right,” I said. I turned back to the wall with my paint roller.

Roma had come down the ladder and was moving it to the right. She didn’t look at me and I realized she hadn’t said a word. My stomach gave a little twist.

“Roma, something’s wrong,” I said. “What is it?”

She turned to look at me then, leaning against the side of the ladder. “It’s just, I was running a little late Thursday night. I stopped to check on that dog I told you about. So I was probably one of the last people to arrive at the Stratton.” She let out a breath. “When I came in I saw Dayna and . . . Burtis, just off to the side of the stage. They were . . . talking.”

“Talking or arguing?” Maggie asked.

Roma hesitated. “Arguing.”

I saw Maggie swallow. She cared a lot more about Brady Chapman than she was admitting, probably even to herself.

“But I saw them later,” Roma said, “just before the chocolates were handed out, and everything seemed fine between them then.”

I stopped painting for a moment and looked from Roma to Maggie. “Look,” I said. “I know the kind of reputation Burtis has around town. I know that not everything he does is on the up-and-up, but he wouldn’t kill anyone, especially not the mother of his children. Seriously, would Lita be going out with him if there was any possibility Burtis was that kind of person?”

“Lita?” Roma said.

“And Burtis?” Maggie finished.

So much for me not spreading Burtis’s business all over town. Although I’d had a feeling after they’d shown up at the fundraiser together that it was pretty obvious they were a couple, it was apparently not as clear to Roma or Maggie.

“Lita and Burtis,” Roma said. “How long has that been going on?”

“A while,” I said, working my way across the stretch of wall she’d just moved the ladder away from.

“How did you know?” Maggie asked, hanging her head almost upside down once again as she worked her way along the bottom of the window.

I put more paint on my roller and turned back to the wall. “I saw them together at the library, a while ago.”

“Were they holding hands over by the DVDs?” Maggie asked. “I know Lita is a Clint Eastwood fan.”

“No, they weren’t,” I said. “Although I did catch Everett giving Rebecca a kiss over by the magazines earlier this week.”

I remembered how the two of them had smiled at each other a bit like two unrepentant teenagers when I walked around the shelves and surprised them. Neither one of them had seemed embarrassed at being caught in a public display of affection.

“That’s what I want,” Maggie said.

“You want someone to kiss you in the library?” Roma asked.

I was glad the conversation had shifted away from Burtis and his ex-wife.

“No,” Maggie said. “I want to be crazy about someone the way Rebecca and Everett are about each other when I’m their age. Or right now, for that matter.” She glanced over at me. “Your parents are that way, aren’t they?”

“My parents are crazy, period,” I said. “And yes, they’re still crazy about each other.”

We spent the next hour painting and talking about great love affairs and thankfully nothing more was said about Burtis or Dayna Chapman. I tried not to think about what Roma had said, that she’d seen the two of them arguing. I’d meant what I’d said. Burtis was many things, but he never would have deliberately hurt his ex-wife. And he wouldn’t have asked me to look into her death if he’d had anything to do with it. Would he?

With three of us working, it didn’t take long to get the walls finished. Then we sat around the kitchen table and Roma showed us the rough sketches she and Oren had made for the work she wanted to do outside in the spring.

The sun was low in the sky when I looked at my watch. “I should get going,” I said. “Who knows what Owen and Hercules have been doing?”

Roma hugged us both. “Thank you,” she said. “It would have taken me the next two weeks to get this all done if I’d had to do it by myself.”

“Anytime,” I said.

Maggie nodded her agreement. “When you decide what you want to do upstairs, we’ll come back.”

“Let me know about Smokey,” I said as I pulled on my boots at the back door.

“I will,” Roma promised.