After she was safely in bed, I walked through the house, turning off the lights and checking the locks one final time before I called it a night myself.
I needed my rest if we were going to start our investigation the next day. Though I hadn’t lost someone I’d been close to at one time to murder, I had nearly as much motivation to solve Grant’s murder as Maddy had. I knew from bitter experience that our lives wouldn’t be the same until we could wipe this dark cloud away.
Tomorrow Maddy and I were going to once again go looking for a murderer, and I hoped for all of our sakes that we would be able to find whoever it was who killed Grant Whitmore.
Chapter 4
“Hey, are you awake?” I asked Maddy the next morning as I tapped lightly on the guest-room door.
“Come on in,” my sister said, and I pushed the door open to find her sitting up in bed. It was pretty clear by looking into Maddy’s eyes that she’d been crying, but I wasn’t about to bring it up if she wasn’t going to. She had the right to mourn in whatever way she saw fit, and whether it was for Grant or his mother, I was going to respect it.
“How did you sleep?”
“Off and on,” she admitted. “You know, I wasn’t Grant’s biggest fan, but I still can’t believe that he’s actually dead, can you?”
“I know. It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that he’s gone, too. It would have been one thing if it had happened somewhere else and we hadn’t seen him so recently, but this really brought it close to home, didn’t it? If I’m being honest about it, he was my least favorite of all your ex-husbands, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to see him dead.”
Maddy frowned just a little. “Eleanor, there haven’t been that many husbands,” she protested.
I sat down on the edge of her bed. “I know, and I apologize. That was in pretty bad taste, and I shouldn’t tease you about it, certainly not right now.” It was time to lighten the mood a little. “Are you in the mood for some breakfast?”
“That would be nice,” she said. “Any chance you’d make me pancakes?”
“I’m on it,” I said as I got up. “You’re welcome to take a shower, or even just laze around up here alone if you’d like, but if you’re in the mood for some company, I’d be delighted if you’d come into the kitchen while I work.”
“I’ll be there shortly,” she said. “We’re still opening today, aren’t we?”
“If you’re up to it.” I’d thought briefly about shutting the Slice down until we found Grant’s killer, but there were a few reasons why it wouldn’t be such a great idea. I needed the income, since the line between profit and loss was fine indeed, but more importantly, if we shut our presence down to the folks of Timber Ridge, it would most likely look as though we had something to hide. Besides, leaving the pizzeria open might bring us leads or other information that we wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. My customers loved to gossip, and with any luck, someone had seen something at the festival last night, and they’d share it with us.
“Eleanor, if it’s all the same to you, I need to work, and besides, it might give us a chance to tap into our Timber Ridge network of friends to see if any of our customers saw anything last night that might help us.”
“Great minds think alike. I’ll see you in a bit.”
We were just finishing up with our meal when there was a knock at my door. I approached it tentatively, remembering a few times in the past when the chief of police had come by my place unannounced, either bringing bad news or trying to grill me about something. When I opened the door and saw who it was, though, I started smiling.
“Come on in,” I told Bob. “We weren’t expecting to see you so early this morning.”
“I know. Sorry about that. I should have called first, but I was on my way into my office, and I wanted to have a word with your sister while I had the chance.”
As he followed me into the living room, I called out to my sister, “Maddy, Bob’s here to see you.”
We passed each other as I entered the kitchen. I figured the two of them needed some privacy, and besides, I had dishes to do. I was up to my elbows in soapy water when Maddy came back into the room.
“Did Bob leave already? I didn’t even hear the front door close.”
“He’s surprisingly stealthy, isn’t he?” she asked with a smile.
“Is everything all right?”
As Maddy grabbed a towel to dry for me, she said, “I’d be lying if I said that things couldn’t be better. Actually, he wanted to know if we were still planning to dig into Grant’s murder.”