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and a half in a year. And whenever someone asked, he had explained, absolute deadpan: “The return policy expired, so Lucia decided to feed us after all.”
    Probably half of Rosemount believed him. It was too easy to imagine that the boys’ grandmother and reluctant guardian would have declined to feed them.
    According to rumor, she hadn’t, after all, been thrilled to take them in.
    “Dragon Lady” Lucia was the subject of a tremendous quantity of discussion in Rosemount. In fact, if she ever moved away, gossip would completely dry up—or at least, cease to flourish as it currently did. And her neighbor, Mrs. Donnelly, would lose pre-eminent status among the gossipmongers.
    Lucia was supposed to be a witch, or rumored to at least have the Evil Eye. She obviously didn’t give a damn what anyone said about her. She had been known to spin around and shout “boo” at children who boldly dared each other to follow her. That would be more funny if she hadn’t scared the living crap out of me more than once.
    When there was nothing else to fiddle with, I kicked off my heels as though I was much more comfortable in Nick’s presence than I was, and chucked my suit jacket over the back of a chair. I didn’t sit down, but leaned back against the counter, supposedly waiting for the kettle to boil.
    I caught him checking out my legs and was so snared in my Fat Philippa past that I was shocked at his obvious appreciation. I turned back to the kettle, well aware that he was still looking.
    “You’ve changed, Phil.”
    “It’s been a long time.” I had a hard time catching my breath, but tapped my watch. “Time’s a-wasting.”
    “Yeah.” He drew a line on the tabletop with his thumb, giving me the sense that he was trying to hide something from me.
    That would have been a first.
    I opted to help, all the better to get him on his way before I forgot everything I was supposed to remember about him. “So, why did you come back?”
    “Lucia invited me.”
    “I thought you weren’t speaking.” Events of all those years past hovered at the periphery of our conversation but neither of us were ready to talk about that.
    “We weren’t.” His lips twisted, his expression revealing his inexplicable affection for the old babe. He had always been nuts about her, though God only knew why. “Not that such details would stop Lucia from having her say.”
    Then he tapped a finger on the table. “But she didn’t have a chance to tell me what she wanted, Phil.” He looked up, his gaze bright. “She was dead when I got to the house.”
    Dead?
    I opened my mouth and shut it again, not knowing what to say. I couldn’t imagine Lucia dead. She was vital, I had to give her that, and possessed of the strength of ten immortals.
    I tried again and this time managed to croak out something. “Dead tired?”
    “Murdered.”
    Now there is one of those words you don’t much expect to hear in the normal course of conversation—unless, of course, your name is Hercule Poirot or Jessica Fletcher.
    Mine isn’t.
    For a minute, I knew I’d heard him wrong. This was my kitchen, after all, and not usually a hotbed of sordid tales. “Murdered? Are you sure?”
    “No doubt about it.” He looked very grim. “I found her in the greenhouse.”
    I forgot my shyness and sat down opposite him. “But Nick, murdered ? Maybe it was an accident. She could have fallen. Or had a heart attack.”
    He looked skeptical. “And jabbed a knife into her throat in the midst of it?”
    I had to admit that seemed unlikely.
    “She’d been stabbed with a little stiletto that I bought for her when I was in Venice.” Nick rubbed his face with his hands, as though he could scrub the memory of the sight away. “I thought she’d enjoy using it as a letter opener. It’s a nasty but ornate little thing.”
    It sounded like something Lucia would like, but that still didn’t give me a clue what to say.
    “Murder’s not something you get wrong, Phil. There was