Liz went and sat with her father. She hadn’t touched her food, but she’d done so much taste-testing she thought if she had just one more bite she might lose it—literally. Who would have thought anyone could get tired of lobster?
“Was the phone call about your new case?” she asked her father.
“No, it was Charlotte—Agent Pearson. She’s a few minutes away and wants to talk to Mr. Worth about something. I told her to come into the dining room. She hasn’t eaten. Can we offer her one of your marvelous lobster potpies?”
Liz looked down at her untouched dish. If she provided the detective with a homemade meal, maybe it would help to get her to open up about the investigation. She was still smarting from Agent Pearson’s question about Liz having a connection to Regina’s missing jewels. “This is the last one, but I’ll take it back into the kitchen and heat it up a bit.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“Don’t worry. I’ve tasted so much lobster in the last few hours, I’ll probably grow claws and a tail.”
“Did I ever tell you that you’re the best, dear daughter?”
“All the time,” she replied. “But keep those compliments coming, dear ol’ dad.”
Liz went into the kitchen. Iris was gone, but the kitchen was spotless. In the pantry, Barnacle Bob’s cage was missing. She hoped he wasn’t in the same room as Venus; the two follicly challenged pets might tangle. BB was an expert at opening his own cage, and Venus—well, Venus was a cat.
She covered the potpie with a damp paper towel, then put it in the microwave on 50 percent power. Liz was breaking the cardinal rule of serving fine cuisine—to never use a microwave. But at this point, she really didn’t have a choice. She would stick the potpie under the broiler for a few minutes after she took it out of the microwave. It wouldn’t be as tasty as if it was straight out of the oven, but it would be darn close.
A few minutes later, Liz peeked into the dining room. Agent Pearson had arrived, and she was sitting in Liz’s seat. Liz pushed the childish notion away that she’d been replaced by the stunning detective, and she pulled out the white-fluted pie dish from the oven.
She brought the lobster potpie and a hastily made salad into the dining room and placed them in front of Detective Pearson. Liz had served a more complex salad earlier, with freshly made goat cheese that Pops had gotten from a local farm, but as the saying went, “beggars can’t be choosy.” Looking at the elegant way the detective dressed, she doubted Agent Pearson would ever be considered a “beggar.”
“Be careful,” Liz instructed, “the serving dish is very hot.”
“It looks delicious. Your father was just raving about it.” Agent Pearson looked around at the other people in the room, and her rare smile turned upside down as she morphed back into a hard-to-read homicide detective looking for a murder suspect.
“Would you like some rosé?” Liz asked.
Agent Pearson put a napkin to her perfect lips. “No, thank you. I’m on duty.”
“Water with lemon?”
“That would be great.”
Liz hoped she was earning brownie points by waiting on the detective. She had a vision of everyone sitting in her father’s office, discussing the murder, with Liz giving the police the one clue they needed to solve the case and catch the killer. She went to the sideboard and retrieved the pitcher of water, then came back to the table and poured some into the detective’s glass. “Anything else?”
Before Agent Pearson could answer, her father said, “Pull up a chair, Liz. You’ve been on your feet for hours.”
Agent Pearson didn’t second the invitation, but Liz walked over to Ryan and David’s table to steal a chair. Of course, there were closer tables with empty chairs, but she’d timed it perfectly. Just as she reached David Worth’s table, Ryan returned, holding a prescription bottle. Liz was thrilled at the thought he’d taken so long to retrieve it. That meant he must have been doing some snooping in David’s suite. Snoopy Pants to the rescue.
Ryan handed David the prescription bottle and said, “The bottle had fallen behind the nightstand. Took a while to find it.”
David didn’t seem to hear his words. He grabbed the bottle, poured several pills into his hand, then downed them with half a glass of wine.
Was he numbing his shoulder pain, or numbing the loss of his wife?
Liz took the chair back to her father’s table. As soon as she sat, the conversation between her father and Agent Pearson quelled. Betty’s table had also quieted, probably due to Betty shushing everybody so she could hear what Agent Pearson was saying to her father.
Agent Pearson must have liked the lobster, because it didn’t take her long to finish it. Fenton recounted a story about a recent case he’d won involving a surfboard that a great white shark had chomped on. The bite mark coincided with the largest jaw measurement for any shark ever recorded and was sold to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. The problem was, the owner of the surfboard was going through a divorce and his better half wanted a share of the proceeds from the sale. Her father had represented the wife and won the case. They all laughed when he described the surfboard in question, propped up on a table in the front of the courtroom.
“I have to ask,” Liz said, “was the husband injured in the attack on his surfboard?”
“No, luckily he had wiped out. When the board shot out of the wave, the great white caught it in its mouth.”
Iris came in and cleared away everyone’s dishes.
Aunt Amelia called over to Liz, “Shall I bring in coffee and dessert, Liz?”
Luckily, before Pierre had tried to “surprise” Liz with the main dish, he’d already made dessert, Julia Child’s Cherry Clafouti. Pierre had added a little lemon zest
