Free A Deadly Grind by Victoria Hamilton

broken into? Her neighbors on the other side, for example, hadn’t arrived for the summer yet. Their home was locked up tighter than Mrs. Bellwood’s Royal Doulton figurines. Locked, yes, but still, with no one home it would have been less risky than breaking into
her
house.
    Was the dead guy a thief specifically targeting stuff they had bought at the auction? The cookbooks were everywhere, and the carton of sewing stuff and the box of vintage cookware were down on the floor. But that was all crap, worth only a little more than she had paid.
    The only thing worth anything was Becca’s Crown Derby. He was a very well-dressed thief, and might have recognized the value of that box of china. Becca’s professional evaluation of it was eight thousand dollars—a lot of money.
    The detective finally came back. “All right, Ms. Leighton, your story checks out.”
    “Well, of course it does,” she blurted out, startled. “What, did you think I killed him?”
    “Did you?” he said.
    “Of course not!” She stared up at him, disconcerted by his blank expression.
    “No problem, then, is there?”
    “No, no problem at all,” she retorted. “Detective, assuming the killer used my grinder to kill the guy, why did he do that? If we assume the guy who was killed broke into our house, then he must have used something strong to pry our screen door off; why didn’t the murderer use that? And who
is
the victim?”
    “First, you’re making a lot of assumptions that we haven’t established yet as to why and how the victim was in your house. And we don’t know the victim’s identity; he didn’t have any identification on him.”
    “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
    “You’d be surprised how few crooks want us to ID them,” he said, with deadpan irony.
    “He was really well dressed; that can’t be normal for a thief. He was wearing a cable-knit cardigan, for heaven’s sake.”
    “Maybe he forgot his black cat burglar suit. Ms. Leighton, as I said, we can’t assume anything at this point. You can go home now. We’ll be in touch if we have more questions.”
    He shook her hand and left, and an officer was assigned to drive them all home. Jaymie saw Clive folded into his wife’s arms, as Tabby toddled about near them on the sidewalk in front of the Shady Rest Bed-and-Breakfast. She unlocked the front door to their home, trailed by Rebecca, who looked gray with weariness. The body had been taken away, and the crime scene had been investigated thoroughly, she had been assured.
    But what to do about the scene of the crime, her summer porch? The sun was high in the sky as she and Rebecca walked into their house and looked around with trepidation. But their beloved home was just as it always was, calm, quiet, bars of color from the stained glass sidelight slanting across the front hall’s hardwood floor.
    “Guess it’ll be okay,” Becca said.
    “It will be,” Jaymie said, linking her arm through her sister’s. “Life goes on. It was awful, but we’ll be all right. We still have the Tea with the Queen tomorrow to prepare for.”
    “I’ll help later,” Becca said on a wide yawn. “Right now I’m so tired I could drop. I’m going to
try
to get a few more hours of sleep. You should, too.”
    Jaymie nodded. “You go ahead. I’m too wired on bad coffee to sleep. I’ll get the summer porch cleaned up.”
    Rebecca stopped at the foot of the stairs and touched Jaymie’s arm, watching her eyes. “Jaymie, no. Let’s call in a professional. I asked the cops, and they said there’s a company in Detroit that specializes in crime-scene cleanup. I got their card. Let’s call them; we can do that now, then get some sleep.”
    Crime-scene cleanup! Jaymie hesitated and glanced toward the back of the house. She didn’t even know what to expect. “These crime-scene-cleanup people . . . could they come right away?”
    “Probably not.”
    “I don’t want that . . . that
awfulness
to sit there for days . . . or even for