to see her in one piece and hugged her tightly. I could feel her heart palpitating and noticed that her breath seemed a little ragged.
“They stopped me when I tried to go into to my own house,” she said. I urged her to take a deep breath before she continued. “There are cops everywhere,” she said gesturing in the general direction of her street. “Detective Heather is there.” I nodded and told Dinah I’d seen the detective when I’d gone down the street. Dinah swallowed hard when our eyes met. “I started asking the cops questions and they started asking me questions about when I left and things like that.” Dinah stopped to regroup. “I didn’t get many details, but it’s Kelly Donahue. Something about her husband came home and found her. It was too late. They think it was a robbery gone bad. I heard some cops talking about looking for the murder weapon. I’m pretty sure she was shot. The cops asked me if I heard anything before I left.”
“Did you tell them we were at her house earlier today?”
Dinah shook her head. “It’s my policy not to volunteer information that will only cause me trouble. I know I didn’t kill her. . . .” Dinah stopped and looked at me.
“Take a deep breath,” she ordered. My best friend knew what I was thinking.
“Molly, it isn’t personal. No matter what Mrs. Shedd has said about not wanting to go anywhere with you because dead bodies keep showing up. It’s not your fault. You’re not some kind of jinx.”
I was embarrassed to admit that was exactly what I was thinking. “Dinah, I’m terrible. A woman is dead, and here I am thinking about me.” Once that was out of the way, I began to ask Dinah for more details, but she didn’t have many.
“They blocked off the whole area and shut down the production. I’m guessing they’re talking to all the neighbors around Kelly’s house,” Dinah said.
Adele breezed by after she finally dismissed her crowd. She looked at the two of us. “I didn’t see you two in the group when I was explaining what happened. I guess you just wanted to hear it from me personally. It must be kind of embarrassing to not be the one in the know.” The last comment was aimed directly at me. All the attention had gotten to her and she looked like her head might float away from all the hot air inside as she straightened the strap on her gauzy sundress. The lime green swirled with purple made me think of a snow cone. She had pulled her brown hair into tiny little pigtails that stuck straight out.
“No problem,” I said. “Dinah just filled me in.” Trying not to sound too pleased, after all I was talking about somebody who had just died, I told her I already knew that Kelly had been shot and what the cops thought. I watched as Adele deflated like a Mylar balloon with a big leak.
“Oh,” she said with a harrumph. Then she brightened. “But I don’t suppose you know who they think the killer really is. Eric was the first responder,” she said before giving me her spiel how motor cops were often the first ones on the scene in any kind of emergency. “Even though he’s technically off duty while he’s working as security on the production, in his heart, he’s always on duty,” Adele said with a flutter in her voice.
“So?” I said, annoyed with myself for falling for her bait.
“So, he saw the crime scene. It was Kelly’s workroom,” Adele said. “There was stuff tossed around, but he thought it was just a cover-up to make it look like a robbery. He said the first person they’ll be looking at is her husband. He’s the one who found her. Eric said that’s a common ploy to try to cover up being the killer,” Adele said, savoring her moment of being in the know. “The cops are questioning everybody, anyway. All the production people and actors.”
I thought about seeing Dan and his concern over names for his store. He didn’t seem like somebody with murder on his mind. But then Barry had always said you couldn’t tell a book by its cover when it came to murderers.
“That’s nothing special in the information department,” I said, embarrassed that I’d gotten sucked into her game and was trying to one-up her. “In fact, what you just told me is investigation one-oh-one in The