“Really? Aren’t you over the romantic stuff yet?” Ed asked, handing his coat to Lucy. She turned and hung it up in the closet and closed the door.
“What can I help you with, Allie? Do you need any help in the kitchen?” Lucy asked.
I gave Alec a look and shook my head. “No thanks, Lucy, I don’t need any help.”
I headed into the kitchen to take a look at the Cornish game hens. They were on the plump side, so I supposed that we could cut them in half, and each of us would eat a half. We wouldn’t starve.
“What have you got in there,” Lucy said, coming to the oven and opening the door. She gasped. “Cornish game hens? Are you kidding? I love Cornish game hens. Not that I ever cook them, of course. They’re a lot of work. I’m starving.” She closed the oven door and turned to me.
I nodded. “Me too.” I got to work and removed the Cornish game hens from the oven along with the roasted potatoes. The carrots were already done, so I put them into a serving dish, and Lucy helped me carry everything to the table in the dining room.
Lucy stopped and looked at the dining room table. “Oh my, you were going to have a romantic evening. Candles and fresh flowers and everything. You did a lovely job.”
I nodded. “I’m glad you approve.”
“Oh, I do. I wish I had the energy to do something like that, but Ed wouldn’t care one way or another. There’s no point in me going to the trouble.”
“Hey, candles,” Ed said, coming to sit down at the table.
“I’m glad you like them,” I said. We had the food on the table within a few minutes, and we sat down. Alec lit the candles, glanced at Ed and Lucy, and then shrugged.
“So Alec, how is the investigation going?” Ed asked as he helped himself to the roasted potatoes.
Alec served himself one half of a roasted game hen and then looked at it as it sat by itself on his plate. “I guess it’s going all right.”
I had already filled Alec in on seeing Della and Jared at the coffee shop. I helped myself to some glazed carrots. “I think that Jared had to have done it. If he’s as bad as you say he is, and as other people say he is, then he has to be the killer. I just don’t understand what he has to do with Della at the coffee shop yesterday.”
“That looked pretty suspicious to me,” Lucy agreed, taking the bowl of glazed carrots from me and putting some on her plate. “It’s just weird. Della knew that Richard was dealing drugs from her back door, so she had to know that Jared was Richard’s supplier.”
“Maybe he just wanted a job?” Ed suggested.
“He might have,” I said. “But why on earth would she hire him? It’s suspicious.”
“I don’t like it either,” Alec said as Ed handed him the bowl of roasted potatoes, and he put some on his plate.
“Maybe the two of them were in on it together,” I said. “Maybe they had something on Richard, or Richard had something on them, and so they got together, and they killed him.”
Alec looked at me for a moment. Then he nodded. “That’s a possibility. Once drugs enter the equation, anything could be possible.”
“Yeah, people on drugs don’t think straight, and there’s no telling what they might end up doing,” Ed said.
Ed had a point. Unfortunately, it could have been anything at this point. “And don’t forget that both Della and Jodi are diabetic. They could have had access to that medication.”
“We just have to figure out why Richard would have taken it,” Lucy said.
There were still plenty of questions about this case. But I could feel in my bones that we were closing in on the killer. My money, for now, was on Jared because he was the most obvious.
Chapter Nineteen
There were too many things that didn’t add up in this case for me to be satisfied to sit around the house and do nothing. I decided to go back to the hardware store to see if they had gotten any of their gardening items in yet. It had only been a few days since I’d been there last, and I knew chances were that they hadn’t gotten much in, but I wanted to talk to Skip again.
I walked down the aisles of the hardware store and then out onto the patio where I had last seen Skip working. I was surprised to see there were two more fountains next to the one I had looked at previously, and I headed over to take a look. One was a very simple white, round fountain. It was only about three inches deep, and it wasn’t anything like what I had imagined putting in my yard. The other one was a blue art deco style that was cute, but still not what I wanted. The original foundation was closer to what I had imagined, but I wanted a larger one. And I wondered if the hardware store would even carry one as large as I wanted. I probably needed to go to a specialty patio shop to find a larger one, but it was worth checking here first to see if they had gotten anything new in.
“Hey, Allie,” Skip said, heading over to me. “We got a couple of new things in, but not much yet. The owner said she placed several large orders for garden supplies, so you keep checking back. I’m sure we’ll have what you need.”
I turned to him and smiled. “I certainly will keep looking. These two new fountains are nice, but still not quite what I’m looking for.”
He nodded. “Yeah, there wasn’t much on the truck for the
