Hot Dish Heaven: A Murder Mystery With Recipes Read Online Free PDF Page B

she was after his money, or maybe she was just plain bored. Whatever her angle, it wasn’t love.”
    “How do you know that?” I returned to the prep table, while she made her way to the sink.
    “Less than a month after Ole left her, a new guy moved in. Samantha always liked havin’ a man livin’ with her, especially durin’ the winter. That way she didn’t need to pay the heatin’ bills all by herself.”
    Margie went on to rattle off the names of some of Samantha Berg’s live-in boyfriends. It was a long list that sounded like a Scandinavian phone book: Alex Anderson, Thor Carlson, Sven Hanson …
    While only partially listening, I doodled on a blank index card and thought about Ole and Samantha. I routinely doodled when sorting things out in my head. One of my professors suggested it helped “put order to my musings.”
    I sketched a female stick figure lying dead on a river bank, blood flowing from her chest. “Margie, is it possible Ole came to resent Samantha Berg?” Concerned my picture might be in bad taste or—worse—make me queasy and unable to eat dinner, I scribbled it out and flipped the card over.
    “He should of, but like I told ya, he never said anything negative about her.”
    More doodling on the back of the card. This time mere geometric shapes. “Let me get this straight. Ole’s family fell apart because of his affair with Samantha. And his attempt at reconciling with Lena failed because of her death, which was due, at least in part, to that same affair. That means Ole lost everything because of Samantha Berg. Yet she moved on without any trouble whatsoever.” I raised my head, then my eyebrows. “That had to make him resent her, don’t you think?”
    She nodded. “It made me resent her, that’s for darn sure.”
    “And exactly one year to the day after Lena passed away, Samantha disappeared, and Ole started drinking again.”
    Margie remained silent, and later I came to wish that I had too. “Margie, you said Ole fell off the wagon because he felt bad that no one cared if Samantha was ever found, but that doesn’t make sense, especially if he never had any real feelings for her in the first place.”
    My instincts warned me that I was coming on too strong. Yet I couldn’t stop. I’d developed a theory about Samantha Berg’s death and was hard pressed to keep it to myself. But as I soon realized, Margie wasn’t the ideal confidant. You see, I’d concluded that her brother was the murderer.
    I had no evidence to support my theory, but that didn’t bother me. I thought of myself as fairly knowledgeable about crime solving because of a few investigative journalism classes I’d taken in graduate school. None of my assignments actually dealt with homicide. I always chose non-violent crimes. No blood. No gore. No getting sick in front of classmates. Still, I’d come to believe that most murders were easily solved. Students who worked those cases reported that the killers almost always were found among the people with the strongest ties to the victims. And in this instance, Ole and Samantha’s ties were pretty damn strong.
    “Margie, I can’t help but suspect your brother hit the bottle again to hide from something—something he did—something terrible.”
    Margie braced herself against the sink. Clearly she was having trouble admitting to a killer in the family. Although as far as I was concerned, Ole wasn’t your typical homicidal maniac. His was a crime of passion. And that, I thought, should have provided his sister with at least a modicum of comfort. But I thought wrong.
    As soon as Margie turned my way, I could tell from her expression, I’d gone too far. I’d said too much. She wasn’t comforted at all. Rather, she looked really ticked off. “Ole didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re drivin’ at. I wouldn’t of blamed him if he had. But he didn’t.”
    Ignoring my better judgment, I re-engaged my mouth. “How do you know? How can you be so