Free A Tale of Two Biddies by Kylie Logan Page B

what was going on until he got there and once he got there, he wouldn’t let us over to where you and Levi were waiting for him and he cleared out the bar and made us leave along with the rest of the crowd and you were in there so long so I came home but I couldn’t sleep all night, just waiting to talk to you, and it’s all Hank’s fault because he knows I could have stayed there. It’s not like I was going to do anything, right? I mean, he already had a dead body on his hands. Poor Richie! The least Hank could have done was let those of us who knew Richie stay there with the body. He’s impossible. I mean Hank, not Richie, because of course, Richie was impossible, too, but in a whole different way than Hank is impossible. Only Richie isn’t impossible anymore, and Hank knew that, and he knew I was there because he saw me when he walked in, and he could have let me in on what was going on. The man’s as annoying as a mosquito in the bedroom in the middle of the night. He’s—”
    Good thing Chandra had to stop to catch her breath or I never would have gotten a word in edgewise. I decided on the very noncommital, “Well, you know Hank.”
    Understatement.
    Hank was Chandra’s husband number two, and just for the record, she never said much about either number one or number three. Hank, though? She had plenty to say about Hank. Then again, they both lived on the same four-mile-long by one-and-a-half-mile-wide island. I’m not very good at math, but even I know that’s not a lot of square footage. Especially when it comes to tripping over an ex.
    “Did he say—”
    “He asked all the usual questions,” I told her, and it’s not like I was eager to get rid of Chandra or anything; it was just that she was so anxious to find out all the details of what had happened at Levi’s the night before, she showed up at my front door not long after the sun came up. I’d been sound asleep when she started in on the doorbell, and now my hair was a fright, I’d left my glasses on the nightstand next to my bed, and I was dressed in my jammies, waiting for the coffeepot to fill. I hoped Chandra’s arrival didn’t disturb Dino and the other Boyz because I was in no condition to play hostess.
    The coffeepot stopped dripping—hallelujah—and I filled one mug for myself and another one for Chandra. “Hank is very straightforward. You know that. He asked what I saw, how I found Richie, if I knew how long he’d been there.”
    “And you told him . . . ?”
    I thought my shrug pretty much said it all until I saw Chandra’s eyes still lit with the fire of curiosity. “I told him what happened. We were outside watching the fireworks. We came inside. I walked by on my way to the ladies room and found Richie.” Not for the first time since the night before, the realization hit me somewhere between my heart and my stomach. “Poor guy. To die like that in a dark bar with nobody around.”
    “Unless there was!”
    I knew it would come to this, given Chandra’s tendency to let her imagination run away with her and all. In an effort to ignore the gleam in her eyes—and all that last comment of hers suggested—I kept myself busy getting ready for the day’s breakfast. From what I’d seen the morning before, I knew my guests weren’t early risers, but still, I promised breakfast at nine and I had to be ready by then, just in case. In keeping with the week’s theme and the French tricolor, Meg had made some blueberry/cranberry muffins before she left, and I got them out of the freezer so they’d have plenty of time to thaw, then busied myself getting plates and bowls and silverware ready to go.
    “Bea, don’t tell me you didn’t think the same thing.”
    I set down a handful of spoons and turned to Chandra, my back propped against the granite countertop. “I didn’t.”
    “Except you did, or you would have asked what I was talking about.”
    I sighed. “There was no sign that Richie was murdered.”
    “Except