Free An Appetite for Murder by Lucy Burdette

it.” I straightened my shoulders and tried to look professional. “But the point is, I was doing a job for Connie.”
    “You must have been aware that this was a crime scene?”
    “Look, this is Wednesday, the day he wanted his place cleaned. Obviously, if it had been marked off, I never would have gone in,” I said. “But there was no signage, no yellow crime tape, nothing. Just some leftover fingerprint dust once I got inside. I would have thought Chad would be grateful that I was going to clean that mess up.” Which wasn’t true—­I never expected Chad would be happy. I hoped he wouldn’t find out.
    The detective shook his head and asked one of the officers to bring Connie into the room. As she entered, I flashed her the most pitiful pleading look I could muster. She took the seat across from me.
    “Miss Arp, Miss Snow says she was working for you and that’s why she was in Mr. Lutz’s apartment. Care to comment on that?”
    She stared at me for the longest time and then nodded. “She’s telling the truth. She does work for me and Chad Lutz was on today’s schedule.”
    Phew.
    The detective shifted his gaze back to me.
    “Mr. Lutz said you were savaging the papers on his desk when—”
    “I was dusting!” I threw my hands up in outrage—­and Chad said
I
had a tendency to be histrionic—­and then pointed to Officer Torrence. “Ask these guys. Didn’t I have a feather duster in my hand when you burst in?”
    The cop nodded. “She had the duster in one hand and the knife in the other.”
    Bransford stared at me again, then turned to thank Connie for coming in. “You’re free to go.” She picked upher carton of cleaning supplies and started for the door without looking at me.
    “See you back at the ranch!” I called to her retreating form. She didn’t answer.
    The detective pulled the newspaper from his pocket, smoothed it out on the table, and tapped my byline. “Is there anything you’d like to tell us about this?”
    “Just that it might be a long time before I have a craving for key lime pie?” I tried. No one smiled. “The timing was not fortuitous,” I said. “But you can ask the editor at the paper. That piece was in the queue for almost a month—I sent it in even before Chad and I broke up. I wrote it on spec and there was no guarantee they were going to publish it, never mind when. But it’s not like I wrote it last week and then got the bright idea to poison Chad’s new girlfriend.” I stopped to take a deep breath. “Why aren’t you looking at him?”
    He ignored my question. “I thought your editor was the deceased Kristen Faulkner.”
    “She was the co-­owner of the magazine I hope to work for—­a different entity from the local newspaper,” I said stiffly.
    He made me hash through another series of questions about my aspirations to become the food critic at Kristen’s magazine and her aspirations to win my boyfriend. And I did my best to explain why these connections were unrelated to the murder.
    “Where does your job stand in relation to Ms. Faulkner’s death?”
    “That’s a darn good question. Look,” I said, trying tosound reasonable. “You’ve seen the security down at the Truman Annex. How would I even get into Chad’s apartment to poison Kristen?”
    Officer Torrence took a step forward and deposited Connie’s key ring on the table, the same keys I’d dropped on the floor in Chad’s place. “Exhibit one.”
    I should have thought of the keys before asking the damning question. I could only hope they’d believe I was too dumb to pull off a murder.
    When I was finally dismissed, I found Connie had left for home without me. So I phoned Eric and asked if he could swing by to give me a ride back to the Truman Annex to collect my bike. It wouldn’t have hurt me one bit to walk the twenty minutes across the island, but I needed the company.
    When he pulled up in his Mustang convertible painted with scenes of sea life, I almost burst into