My heart went out to her. “When my first husband died, I wrote a blog on grief. I don’t add entries to it anymore, but the articles are still there. You might want to take a look at it. There might be something there that helps you through this time.” I slipped a business card across the table to her. I still carried them with me in case I ran into somebody that might need it.
She picked up the business card, looked at it, and then looked at me. “You wrote about your grief after losing her husband?”
I nodded. “Yes, it helped me to get through it. That and baking pies.” I chuckled. “I still bake a pie occasionally, but it’s for different reasons these days.”
She nodded and smiled. “I might have to check into that blog. And maybe I’ll bake a pie or two.”
Poor Mary. She was having to deal with something she had probably never thought she would have to deal with. Children were supposed to outlive their parents, weren’t they?
Chapter Ten
“Where are we headed?” Lucy asked, squinting out the car window.
The rain had begun before dawn, and it hadn’t let up. The rain was cold, and the dark clouds put a damper on my mood. I was looking forward to summer. “How about the Cup and Bean?”
She looked turned to me and smiled. “I hear they’ve got a raspberry mocha on the menu that is to die for.”
I nodded. “I love raspberry mocha. Heavy on the mocha. I don’t know who came up with the idea of combining raspberry and chocolate, but it’s genius.”
She nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. It’s chilly out, and I need something warm. I wonder if they’ve got any blueberry muffins?”
“I’m sure they’ve got muffins of some kind,” I said as I maneuvered through the street that was on the verge of being flooded. We’d gotten so much rain this spring that I wondered how the entire town wasn’t flooded yet.
I parked the car, and we headed inside. Mr. Winters was sitting at a table in the corner reading his newspaper. I nudged Lucy and nodded my head in his direction. She nodded back, and we stepped up to the counter and ordered our coffees, and then we each got a cranberry orange muffin to go with it. I love the flavor combination of orange and cranberry, and I would take it over a blueberry muffin any day.
We headed over to Mr. Winters’s table. He was one of our biggest sources of information, and since he had come to my wedding and made balloon animals for my guests, I decided I didn’t need to be coy about asking for that information.
He looked up from his newspaper and nodded. “Allie. Lucy. What are you two gals up to today?”
I pulled out a chair and sat down without him asking, and Lucy did the same. “We thought we’d stop by and pick up a coffee. It’s so chilly out that we needed something hot.”
He nodded and held up his cup of black coffee. There was no lid on it, so I could see that he hadn’t had them add anything to it. But that wasn’t a surprise. I didn’t think Mr. Winters ever drank anything but black coffee. “You can’t beat a good cup of coffee in the morning. Or any time a day, for that matter.”
I nodded, glancing at Lucy. “The balloon animals were a hit at the wedding.”
He looked at me steadily and took a sip of his coffee. “Of course they were. Did you have any doubt?”
I did not answer right away. I had doubts about those balloon animals. I had plenty of doubts. But in the end, they had been a kind of fun addition to the wedding. They were better than a dead body at a wedding, anyway.
I finally shook my head. “No, I never had a doubt.” I could sense Lucy turning to stare at me, but I ignored her.
“I’m the best balloon animal maker in the state. Guaranteed.” He took a sip of his coffee.
“I have no doubt. Thank you for thinking of it. I certainly hadn’t.” I took a sip of my coffee and slowly turned to look at Lucy. She was still staring. I shrugged and turned back to Mr. Winters. “So Mr. Winters, what do you know about Richard Thomas’s death?” He had to have come up with something by this time.
He set his coffee cup down on the table and turned the newspaper page. “I know it wasn’t an accident. But I suppose you already know that.”
I nodded. “Yes, Alec has already determined that. But we need to know who would slip him those pills. Or did he take them willingly because he thought they were something else?”
Mr. Winters thought it wasn’t an accident, and neither did I. But there was still that possibility that Richard thought he was taking something else.
He nodded. “What I know is that Richard Thomas got himself into a lot of trouble when he was in high school. I was a high school English teacher for a few years, you know.”
I nodded. “Yes, you told us that.”
“Was Richard Thomas in your class?” Lucy asked him.
He shook his head. “No, I had retired before he got to high school. I heard he was in a lot of trouble, though. I keep in touch with some of the teachers at the high school. He was a smart aleck and had his mouth going all the time. And then there was the matter of the drugs and alcohol that he was consuming.”
“I heard that he went to rehab and got himself straightened out,” I said.
“Sure, it was rehab. If you call
