Page 103 of Murder on the Page

I held up a hand to stop him. “My opinion doesn’t matter. Got it. I just hope her story pans out. What about my other text regarding the water bottle?”

His brow furrowed. “I didn’t get another text from you.”

Of course, he hadn’t. I’d forgotten to send the text because I’d been distracted by Katrina’s reveal. Quickly I told him what Tegan and I had theorized, that the water bottle could have been tampered with earlier than Saturday, and the killer could have left it for Marigold, who had been consciously rehydrating.

“Allie, stop.” Zach pursed his lips, pausing as if to prevent himself from blurting something he didn’t want to say. “I like you. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. But you’re not—”

“All right, everyone, let’s get started!” Tegan cried, clapping her hands. “Convene in the reading nook. Allie Catt will be our moderator. Let’s go. Chop-chop.”

I stared at Zach.What had he been about to say? You’re not seeing the forest for the trees? You’re not a professional investigator? You’re not my type?I pushed the niggling thoughts from my mind and settled onto one of the folding chairs. “Welcome, everyone.”

The book club went off without a hitch. A few hadn’t finished reading the book, and I told them what Marigold would have said, that it was okay. Not everyone read at the same speed. There would be no spoilers tonight. We dove into the character of Charlie and his relationship with Diesel. We discussed Charlie’s former classmate, a best-selling author who was an arrogant jerk. We mulled over the setup of the suspects and their motives. By the time the book club ended, everyone had contributed, much to my delight.

Zach and Bates said good night in synch and headed for the exit. Zach stopped by the door as Bates ran something by him. I doubted they were discussing the book. Neither of them had shared the enthusiasm that the others had for an amateur sleuth handily solving the crime.

Idly Zach bounced his key chain in his palm. Seeing the action made me think of Marigold’s missing keys, which were ultimately found, and I revisited a previous theory. Was itpossible a customer stole the set and made a copy of the shop’s keys and then, forgetting where they’d found the keys, stuffed them into a random drawer? I continued to stare at Zach’s movement, the rabbit’s foot attached to the key chain dancing merrily with each bounce, and thought of Katrina’s key fob. Marigold had asked her about Dates and Places. Truly believing Marigold never wanted to date again after she lost the love of her life, I wondered if she’d purposely asked for the information so she could do a deep dive into Rick, aka Ricochet. Had she found something incriminating? Neither Tegan nor I had scrolled far on the app. Was there more to learn about him?

When the book club participants left the shop, I edged to one side and pulled my cell phone from my jeans pocket. I opened the Dates and Places app and pulled up Rick’s profile again. I scrolled down to below where Tegan had stopped and continued reading. He touted himself as an investment banker, which wasn’t a lie. He said he worked with hospitals. Also true. He claimed one of his great loves was money, saying one could never have enough. That was blatantly honest. He gave his age as sixty-two. I doubted he’d fudged that. He admitted he was divorced.

In answer to a standard app prompt,Previous employment,he wrote that he used to work in banking telecommunications and had also served as a sales rep before breaking out on his own to raise funds for hospital bonds. The sales rep mention made me laugh. He’d told Tegan and me that his ex-wife couldn’t handle his being on the road because her father had been a traveling salesman, but then Rick had joked that he sure as heck wasn’t a salesman. Wasn’t a sales rep the same thing?

I read further and froze. Rick had repped pharmaceuticals. Someone who had worked in the drug industry might know a thing or two about poisons. As Tegan had glibly asserted, had he killed Marigold? Tegan patently did not like him. Was there more to her aversion than being overly protective of Noeline?

I thought again about the misplaced keys. What if Rick stole Noeline’s set of keys from the B&B, made a copy of the shop’s keys, and used one or both of them to access the bookstore on Saturday morning? In order to cover his intended duplicity, with malice aforethought, he swiped Marigold’s keys and deposited them in a desk drawer so it would appear that she, like Noeline, had a tendency to misplace things. The theory was a stretch but sounded plausible.

Something else occurred to me. At the pawnshop, Rick had rubbed his arm as if eager to conclude his business transaction and get a move on. Was it possible his arm had a scratch on it? Inflicted by Marigold?

My cell phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the number but answered.

“Miss Catt?” a man with a genteel Southern accent asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Frank Fitzwilliam, Fitzwilliam and Sons.”

Frank, not Darcy.Either Marigold had dubbed the agency’s contact as Detective Darcy in jest, as Tegan and I had speculated, or she’d done so as a diversion to ensure someone wouldn’t realize what she was up to. “Did Marigold Markel hire you?” I asked.

“She did.”

“Did you hear that she was murdered?”

“Yes. What a shame. I didn’t reach out with my condolences. Our matter was concluded well before that time.”

“Could you tell me why she hired you? I’m a dear friend and a partner in the bookshop.”

He hesitated.

“Sir, please. Did it have anything to do with”—I made a wild guess—“prejudice?”

“Prejudice?” He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I can’t say it did, but I won’t say it didn’t. She wanted me to find out about a man she didn’t trust.”

“Rick O’Sheedy?”

“That’s correct. I delivered my findings.”

“In writing?”

“In a PDF file.”

---