Buzz Off - By Hannah Reed Page 0,28

had a fight and she left. I never said she was here.”

“I’m pretty sure you did.” Or he’d implied it, at least, with his gestures and facial expressions. Would that hold up in court?

“We argued,” he said.

“About what?”

Clay’s eyes went to the ceiling, a sure indication that he was concocting a lie. “Um.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

His eyes came back down. “I’m not talking about it.”

“Okay, fine, you argued with her. Then what?”

“She stomped out. At first, I thought she was outside cooling off. When she didn’t come back, I figured she’d walked down to Stu’s and called for a ride home.”

That seemed reasonable. I assumed she’d had friends who would have picked her up.

Clay tucked his feet in and rolled up in a ball.

“Clay, look at me,” I said.

Clay glanced up.

“Meet my eyes.” Toward the end of our rocky marriage, I’d perfected the ability to sense when he lied to me. His mouth told all sorts of stories, but his eyes didn’t know how to play along. “Did you or did you not murder your girlfriend?”

His eyes never left mine. “I did not kill Faye. There, are you happy? Besides, I wouldn’t have made love to her in your kayak if I planned to kill her in it. That would take a crazy man!”

“What? You had sex in my kayak?”

“In the afternoon. While you were having your divorce party at the store.”

“You are so gross!”

I slammed out of his house, disgusted and thinking of a zillion names to call Clay. But I was 99 percent certain killer wasn’t one of them, which meant I’d wasted a whole night’s sleep for nothing. It also left the field wide open, if I was right. Did Faye have any enemies who hated her enough to kill her? Did I have any who hated me enough to frame me for it? I tended to blurt out things without thinking them through sometimes, but I’d never intentionally hurt anybody. Well, nobody other than Johnny Jay, but that was mutual.

I showered, made a pot of strong coffee, poured it into a carafe, and carried it down the street to open up The Wild Clover.

Milly Hopticourt, my recipe tester, arrived at the store at the same time I did, carrying a cardboard box filled with bouquets of flowers from her garden—cosmos, sunflowers, Russian sage, borage, Shasta daisies, globe thistles, baby’s breath.

“Every last bunch I brought in yesterday sold,” Milly said proudly.

“They are so beautiful. Come on in.” I held the door open for her then set the carafe on a counter.

After turning on lights and flipping the open sign around, I helped Milly arrange the bouquets in a big bin. I added a few inches of water to them, wiped my wet hands on my jeans, and surveyed my dream come true.

Everything was bright and shiny and inviting. Buying the church and opening the store had been the right decision.

“What recipes should we put in the next newsletter?” Milly asked. “I should start testing soon.”

“I found some wild grape vines next to the river bank, in my secret place. How about whipping up something with ripe grapes as the main ingredient? I’ll pick them for you tomorrow.”

“Perfect. I’ll start with that.”

“Tell me, Milly, were you at the library yesterday afternoon?” I poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her.

“Me and the rest of the town,” she said, taking the cup.

“That many people came?”

Milly nodded. “Tons. It was so much fun even with the rain, because we were all dry there under the tent. But when the news came about Faye, the place cleared out like there’d been a bomb threat, with everybody running to the river by Stu’s for news. You can imagine what we all thought when we heard you were out on the river with your ex-husband’s dead girlfriend’s body.”

“Yes, well, that must have kept everybody busy.” I’d gotten out of there just in time, thanks to Grams.

“You bet. And now we hear that she really was murdered.”

“We did?”

“It’s all over town that she drowned, and it wasn’t an accident, either.”

Secrets don’t last long in a town this size. If Johnny Jay wanted to hold back information, he’d have his hands full. And I had to hope our conversation at the police station didn’t leak out. That’s all people needed to hear, rumors that I’d been overheard fighting with Faye before her death.

“Was Clay at the library, too, when you found out about Faye?” I reached for another cup to pour coffee for