“What?” She hurried over, but he held up his other hand to stop her. “It says flour on the canister.”
“What were you making, exactly?” I asked her.
“Pumpkin roll.”
“And you blew it up?” Disappointment gripped me hard. I would’ve killed for a pumpkin roll. I’d killed for less. At least, I liked to tell myself I’d killed for less in those rare moments I tried to be a badass. A level of coolness I never quite achieved.
Roane put the canister on the counter and slowly opened the lid. After a quick sniff, he turned back to her and nodded. “Nitroglycerin.”
What the actual fuck? I shot her an accusing glare. “Annette! We’ve talked about this. Friends don’t kill friends with nitroglycerin.”
She sank into a chair beside Gigi. The chief stood and walked over to him. “I need to get a team in here. There could be fingerprints.”
“There aren’t,” Roane said. “None other than Annette’s.”
“And you know this because…?”
He gave him a sideways glance and said, “Wolf.”
The chief nodded, accepting Roane’s conclusion without further question, as though it explained everything. A fact I found more than a tad confounding. How could he, wolf or not, possibly know there were no other fingerprints on the canister?
I walked over to see what nitroglycerin smelled like. Roane pulled it away.
“Roane, what could I possibly do?”
“Do you know anything about your magics?”
“Yes,” I said, my hackles rising. “Wait, why?” Clearly, he knew something I didn’t.
Instead of explaining, he gave in and eased it closer, but just barely. “One sniff. Not too close,” he added and slid his fingers into my hair to hold it back when I bent over the canister.
One sniff was all I needed. The acrid scent reminded me of burnt caramel. I rubbed my nose and turned to my grandmother. “Gigi, could this be what poisoned you?”
She’d hired us to ferret out who’d poisoned her. Breadcrumbs, Inc., the new venture Annette insisted we start so we could capitalize on my newfound ability as a finder of lost things, was off to a horrible start. Especially since Annette used part of the evidence in her cake and then blew up the kitchen with the rest of it. We’d have to up our game if we wanted to survive the rest of the week.
“No.” Ruthie shook her head and thought back. “I distinctly remember the taste of belladonna and mushrooms, most likely death cap.”
“I found those already,” Roane said, gesturing toward the pantry where Ruthie had died. Of course the wolf would sniff out any kind of discrepancies. “They were ground into a powder and tossed into a soup mix.”
“Yes,” Gigi said, nodding. “I’d made soup that day, but I’d had it not two days earlier as well.”
“That narrows our window of opportunity.” I sat beside her at the small oak breakfast table and took her hand into mine. “Then it’s official. Someone definitely poisoned you.” Not that we didn’t already know that, but Roane’s confirmation seemed to solidify it all. “I’m sorry, Gigi.”
She lifted her delicate chin, as though refusing to let the incident hamper her life—her second life—any more than it already had. She patted my hand. “You two will find them. I’d bet my very existence on it.”
I hated to state the obvious, but that was exactly what she was doing. Betting her existence on what she believed Annette and I were capable of. Because we’d led so many murder investigations throughout our careers, what with me being a washed-up restaurateur and Annette being an out-of-work office manager-slash-barista. Thank God we had the chief on our side.
The chief and Roane sat at the table.
“I’ll have to dispose of that,” Roane said, gesturing toward the canister, “but first you need to know it wasn’t there earlier this evening.”
“The canister?” I asked.
“The nitroglycerine.”
I rested my elbows on the table. “What do you mean?”
He looked at Annette. “I found the belladonna and the mushrooms. But just in case, I checked out everything in the entire kitchen, including all of the canisters. Two hours ago, there was no nitroglycerin.”
Annette straightened. “What are you saying?”
“There was no nitroglycerin in the flour,” he repeated.
Was he accusing my BFF of something? “Roane, maybe you missed it. I mean, you were searching for—”
“Anything,” he interrupted. “Anything out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t have missed it. I have a lot of experience with nitroglycerin.”
“Okay, then maybe… wait.” I tossed him a wary frown. “Why do you have a lot of experience with nitroglycerin?”
“And no,” he said, ignoring my question and glancing at Annette again, “I am not accusing you of anything. I’m just wondering if you saw anything out of the ordinary. Was the canister already out on the counter? Was the lid open? Anything unusual.”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I found it in the cabinet between the canisters of sugar and coffee.”
He nodded in thought, but I had questions. “Then how did it get there?” I asked him. When he didn’t answer, I looked at the chief.
He was studying the table, deep in thought as well. “For now,” he said, his voice grave, “everyone in this room eats only takeout. Nothing from the house until further notice.”
“I agree,” Roane said.
My heart sank in my chest. “But coffee.”
“Not even coffee,” he said, and the edges of my vision darkened.
The stark reality of the situation hit Annette then, too. “You can’t mean it.”
“How long will it take you?” the chief asked Roane.
“Tell me you don’t mean it.” She was beginning to hyperventilate.
Roane pressed his full mouth into a straight line. “Not long. I’ll be back before morning.”
“How are we going to survive?”
“Wait, what?” I asked as Roane stood. “You’ll be back from where by morning?”
He winked at me, lifted his shirt over his head, and all seemed right with the world again. Gigi agreed. She perked up, and an adoring smile settled on her face. The chief covered her eyes, knowing what was coming next when Roane toed out of his boots. He walked to the mudroom off the kitchen and dropped the kilt to the floor, and I sat mesmerized. That ass.
Gigi tried to see past the chief’s hand, but Roane stole out the back door before she got a good look if her disappointed expression was any indication. I scrambled to my feet, wanting nothing more than to see Roane shift into the red wolf, but by the time I reached the back door, all I saw was a patch of fur being swallowed by the darkness.
“God, I love when he does that,” Ruthie said from behind me.
I stood there mourning the loss of witnessing Roane’s shift and the majority of his assets—mostly the majority of his assets—when Annette yelled, “There are laws against such cruelty!”
Four
A good night’s rest can make you feel energized,