Free Truffled to Death (A Chocolate Covered Mystery) by Kathy Aarons

chair, annoyed that he’d used my words. “A sport.”
    “For old people?” I asked. “Like, bocce ball or something?”
    He looked even more annoyed. “That’s really one of your questions?”
    “Wait.” I pretended to be appalled. “You don’t play Frisbee golf, do you?”
    He shook his head, more at me than to answer. “No.”
    “Bocce ball?”
    He smiled. “Maybe. I’m half Italian.”
    “So how did this Frisbee golf super-athlete find . . .” My voice trailed off.
    “A Frisbee ended up in a ‘crick’ and our witness climbed down to retrieve it,” Lockett said.
    “Which is the most exercise he enjoyed during the whole game,” I said. “Wait, is it even called a game?”
    “Let it go.” I’d pushed it too far. “When he slid down the small cliff, two vultures flew away and he saw the professor’s body.”
    I felt sick to my stomach. “Vultures?”
    “Unlucky for us, yes.” He was probably enjoying the look on my face. “The damn things attacked the body and most likely destroyed evidence, but the professor was definitely murdered.”
    I sat in silence, but Lockett wasn’t finished. “One thing was lucky.”
    “What’s that?”
    “If it had rained like it was supposed to last night, that crick woulda been a river and who knows where the body would’ve ended up.”
    I stared at him. “Do you think that was part of someone’s plan? That it was premeditated?”
    “We’ll have to figure that out,” he said.
    I remembered my outstanding question. “What did the professor say about Carlo Morales?”
    He raised his eyebrows at me, knowing what I was hinting at. “That he’d never met him and didn’t know why anyone would think he cared if Mr. Morales was at the reception or not.”
    I frowned. “I saw him. He was mad.”
    He shrugged and changed the subject. “I hear Benjamin Russell was in town this weekend.”
    I felt a little frisson of alarm at the studied casualness of his question. “Yes. He left on Saturday.”
    “When’s he back?”
    “I don’t know,” I admitted.
    He stared at me. “Okay.” As if he sensed my disappointment and didn’t want to dig further. “We need to talk to him.”
    “Question him, you mean,” I said.
    “I expect he wasn’t too happy with the professor either,” the detective said.
    “Was anyone?”
    •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •
    T hey finally left. The only good thing was that they were on their way to question Reese, just because I happened to mention that she was actively investigating the robbery and might have learned something to help.
    “They wanted Bean’s new cell number,” I said. “His old one is turned off.”
    “I don’t have it,” Erica said as if it didn’t matter. “He uses burner phones when he’s on assignment. But he wasn’t in town during the time in question. If he was anywhere close, he’d have stopped to see us.”
    I wish I had her confidence in Bean’s desire to see us. I was still somewhat dumbfounded. How could it be that someone we knew was murdered? And that once again, we were implicated?
    I stared at the floor, sneaking glances to see if Erica was ready to talk. She looked out the window, legs outstretched and arms crossed, one of her favorite thinking poses. “The professor’s murder must be tied to the robbery.”
    “Deciding to investigate a murder is a much bigger deal than a robbery,” I reminded her, but the curious mixture of resignation, fear and excitement made me realize it was probably inevitable.
    “We may need to,” she admitted. “Lavender believes I did it. Or she wants to believe it. She’s going to do her best to make sure the police focus on me.”
    I thought of the venom she’d directed at Erica in the shop on Sunday. “Okay. Let’s talk suspects.”
    Erica smiled.

A fter returning way too many phone calls from concerned and gossiping citizens of West Riverdale, we spent almost an hour discussing the