Carter gave Abby a quick scratch behind her ears as he entered and Charlotte led him into the kitchen. She moved a mug on the counter into the sink.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” she mumbled before turning to face him. “Do you want coffee?”
He removed his hat. “If you have some.”
Charlotte nodded and opened a drawer to find a coffee pod. “Mariska got me one of those one-person pod thingies. I’ll run it through for you.”
“Mariska?”
“Oh, sorry. You don’t know her. I’m used to everyone knowing her. She’s like my adoptive mother. She lives across the street.”
He nodded. “Frank told me something about that. He said he sorta adopted you?”
Charlotte chuckled. “The whole neighborhood did, with Mariska in the lead. Long story short my parents died, and left me here with my grandmother, who also ended up dying. The neighborhood arranged it so I could stay and not be thrown into the system.”
“Lucky girl.”
“I was.”
A silence fell and Charlotte suddenly felt self-conscious. She scrambled for something to say.
“Milk?”
“Black.”
“Of course. Big bad sheriff would take it black, wouldn’t he?”
Charlotte smiled to keep from cringing. Why did I say that? That might be the dumbest thing I ever said.
If Carter thought she was a weirdo, he didn’t let on. He chuckled as she turned to hand him his coffee.
“So what’s this about the Miller Estate?”
She realized she’d given him the mug that said I got high on Pike’s Peak on its side, a gift from Mariska after a trip to Colorado. Sheriff Carter held up the mug and cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Do I need to arrest you?”
“Gift from Mariska. I’m not sure she got the joke.”
“Hm.” He took another sip and then put down the mug. “I’ll let it slide this time.”
He smiled and winked and Charlotte hastened to make herself busy throwing out the used coffee pod. She felt like he was flirting with her. It probably came naturally to him. He was a strapping, handsome sheriff in uniform. He probably had the ladies swooning everywhere he went. If she had to guess, he was close to forty, which would make him a good ten years her senior, give or take, but not so old it might not cross his mind to flirt a little.
“Single pods,” he said, as she dropped it in the trashcan. “You live here alone?”
She nodded, cognizant it was a stretch for him to leap from the pod to her living status. A coffee pod maker didn’t mean she was alone. She’d never seen a machine that made multiple pods at the same time. Mariska had a pod machine and she had Bob.
His reason for the leap was obvious.
He wants to know if I’m single.
“I have a boyfriend,” she blurted a little more forcefully than she meant to.
My god, I sound like a spaz.
“I mean, I live here alone but I have a boyfriend.”
Oh much better. He didn’t ask if I had a boyfriend.
“Of course you do.” Carter opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else and then scowled, seeming to think better of it, and cleared his throat. Charlotte suspected it was his old-fashioned southern gentleman fighting with his modern-day workplace rules. If he’d said, Of course you do, a good lookin’ gal like you, it wouldn’t have been professional. He’d probably had to take a sensitivity class at one point. It maybe hadn’t entirely worked. For one, he needed a woman to follow him around and smack his nose with a newspaper every time he called someone little lady. The idea of a personal nose-smacker made Charlotte smile and she turned away to keep him from seeing.
“Please, sit,” she said, motioning to her kitchen table. She took a seat across from him.
Carter took a sip of his coffee and then locked his gaze on hers. For some reason, it made her face twitch.
“So anyway, I’m here to let you know Ms. Powell wants to see you.”
“Who?”
“Mina Powell.”
“Oh, the housekeeper. I didn’t know her last name.”
“Turns out she’s a little more than a housekeeper. She was the deceased’s sister.”
“His sister?”
He nodded. “I’m sure I had the same look on my face when she told me. It’s a little weird. But she said her being the maid was how they both liked it. I guess she got a place to stay and he got a housekeeper.”
“That explains why she was the only one allowed upstairs. She’s family. Why does she want to see me?”
“Probably because I brought her in this morning. I’m holding her.”
“For what?”
“I want to talk to her about the murder of her brother.”
“It was definitely murder?”
“It’s looking more likely. You’ll see the autopsy when you stop by the station.” He leered a little, as if access to the autopsy was some sort of bait.
Charlotte ignored the come on. “But what about Lyndsey and the puppies? The earring. I didn’t even get to tell you about the mask.”
“All still possible. But Mina admitted she told Lyndsey to take the dogs during a panic.”
“What panic?”
“Lyndsey went upstairs and found the old man dead. When she heard Mina coming she panicked and hid. Mina found her, panicked some more and sent her away with the dogs.”
“What? So Lyndsey did take the dogs but she didn’t kill Miller?”
Carter shrugged. “I questioned the girls, too.”
“The twins? They’re involved now?”
Carter shrugged and took a gulp from his inappropriate mug. “TBD. It’s a bit of a free-for-all at the moment. Anyway, Mina’s a crier and she’s driving everyone at the lockup insane. Maybe you could get down there and
