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I shook my head. “You didn’t know Lily. She did things the same way all the time. All the time. She told me once she thought maybe she was a little OCD.” I stamped my feet on the brick sidewalk. The cold was beginning to seep through my heavy boots. “If it were anyone else, I’d agree with you, but not Lily. And you have to have heard how much upset there’s been over her refusing to sell for the North Landing project.”

“Wait a minute. You think someone killed Lily?” he said, a frown forming between his eyebrows.

I remembered what Jess had said about desperate people doing stupid things. Killing Lily went way beyond stupid. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something off about this.”

Nick did put a hand on my arm then. “Sarah, I promise, if there’s anything even a little suspicious about Lily’s death, we’ll look in to it.”

“Thank you,” I said. I glanced over my shoulder. “I should check with Michelle and see if Avery and I can go.”

“I’ll call you later,” he said. “I might have some questions.”

“I’ll be at the shop all day,” I said, managing a small smile.

We walked back to Michelle and Avery.

“You two can go,” Michelle said to me as we came level with the SUV, “but I’ll need to talk to you later.”

I nodded. “You know where to find me.”

Michelle and Nick headed for the front door of the bakery. I walked around the SUV to get in the driver’s side and couldn’t help looking back at the building. Nick was just going in the door. He turned and looked back at me, raising a hand when he caught sight of me. I lifted my own hand in return.

Avery had already fastened her seat belt. Now she shifted in her seat. “What did the detective ask you?” she said.

“She just wanted to know what happened.”

“Yeah, that’s what she asked me, too,” she said. She slumped back against the seat as I pulled out of the parking spot, navigating carefully around the glut of police and other investigative vehicles.

“So do you think that developer guy killed her?” Avery asked.

I almost drove though the stop sign at the corner.

“Nobody said Lily was killed,” I said firmly. Even as the words came out, I was aware that, technically, I’d said it to Nick.

“Oh, c’mon, Sarah,” she said, sliding down so she was sitting on her tailbone with her knees pressed up against the dashboard. “I know what’s going on around town, and I know Lily was the only person keeping that development thing from happening. And now, big surprise, she’s dead. What are the odds of that happening?”

I reached over and flicked her knee with my thumb and index finger. “Sit up,” I ordered. “If I have to stop fast, you’ll find out what the odds are of you choking on your shoulder belt.”

She made a face, but she straightened up.

There were no cars behind us, so I turned to look at her before I crossed the intersection. “I don’t know what happened to Lily. Neither do you. Let the police do their job. It doesn’t do anyone any good to speculate.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. “But I’m right. I told you there was something creepy about that old guy last fall and then he ended up dead.”

The “old guy” Avery was referring to was Arthur Fenety. He’d come into Second Chance a few days before his death. Avery had pronounced him “skeevy” at the time, and in truth I’d agreed with her, although I hadn’t said so.

I was uncomfortably reminded that his death was the reason Rose and Alfred Peterson, along with Charlotte and Liz, had gone into business as Charlotte’s Angels. They’d had only two cases since Fenety’s murder: the missing set of false teeth I’d told Nick about and a would-be suitor who wasn’t the woman she’d pretended to be—or, it turned out—even a woman at all. I knew Rose was going to be all over Lily’s death if she thought there was anything suspicious about it. I also knew there was no point in telling Avery to keep her suspicions to herself. Like most teenagers, she had the ability to suddenly lose her hearing with respect to certain subjects.

We drove over to McNamara’s. I parked in front and turned to Avery.

“I know. Keep a cork in it.” She must have seen the surprise on my face. “That’s what Nonna would say,” she said. “And I will. Lily’s mom and her friends shouldn’t find out about what happened to her from someone telling someone telling someone else.”

“Thank you,” I said. Sometimes Avery could be surprisingly thoughtful.

I bought her a hot chocolate and a scrambled-egg-and-ham sandwich from Glenn McNamara. Then I asked him if he had enough rolls in his freezer to sell me five dozen, explaining only that there had been a problem at Lily’s without saying why. When he found out they were for the hot-lunch program, he wouldn’t take my money.

“A few rolls aren’t going to break me, Sarah,” he said with a smile.

“I owe you,” I said, smiling back at him.

The smile got bigger, and he raised his eyebrows at me. “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me,” he said in a pretty good Marlon Brando impersonation.

I laughed. “Anytime, Glenn, as long as it doesn’t involve doing anything with a horse’s head.”

It was almost time to open the store. I decided to detour there first and then take Avery and the bags of frozen rolls to the school after that. I’d already called to let the vice principal know that we were running a bit late, again without saying why.

“As soon as Mac gets here, I’ll run you over to the school,” I said to Avery as we pulled into the lot at the shop. “You can call me when you’re done.”

“Okay,” she said cheerfully. She’d finished the sandwich in about four bites, but she was still nursing the giant hot chocolate.

Mac and Rose came in together about ten to nine.

“Avery, dear, what are you doing here?” Rose asked when she caught sight of the teenager. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the elementary school?”

“Yeah, we got held up,” Avery said.

“What happened?” Rose asked as she took off her coat.

I shot Avery a warning look, which she either didn’t catch or—more likely—decided to ignore. “Well . . .” She let out a breath. “Lily’s kind of dead.”

“Dead?” Rose repeated, her eyes widening.

Mac caught my eye, and I gave a slight nod.

Rose put a hand to her chest. “Oh, my word,” she said. Then she looked at me. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Michelle and Nick are there.”

“But Lily’s so young.”

I could see the thoughts turning in her head, or as Jess had once described it, the hamsters running on their wheels.

I walked over to Rose and took her coat from her, laying it across the counter by the cash register. “This is not a case, Rose,” I warned. “This is a job for the police.”

She nodded at once. “Oh, of course, dear,” she said.

I didn’t believe her for a moment.

Chapter 5

We heard very little about the investigation into Lily’s death for the rest of the week. Both Michelle and Nick came by separately to ask Avery and me a few more questions, but they were both tight-lipped about what they’d discovered so far. It was Nick’s job, as an investigator for the medical examiner’s office, to figure out how and why Lily had died, and Michelle’s to investigate if it turned out a crime had been committed. The fact that no one had said immediately that her death was an accident made me wonder if my suspicions were right.

Rose seemed to be staying out of things. She didn’t try to wheedle information out of me with cookies and hot chocolate. She didn’t try to eavesdrop when Michelle came by with her follow-up questions. She seemed to be doing exactly what I’d asked her to do. Which told me she was up to something.