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Lexie’s. Her roommates confirmed she’d been baking lately, nearly every single day. Two of them got sick from something she made two days ago. Wouldn’t eat anything after that. Too risky.”
    “Belladonna jars?” I shook myself. Accidental poisoning? That made no sense. He was throwing information at me rapid-fire and I barely kept up. Though I wasn’t actually asking smart questions. “Why would she have toxic berries? Why would she make such a thing? Why would she eat cake?” I assumed dancers had some sort of health ritual that did not involve berry-filled frosted cupcakes.
    “Another possibility we’re exploring, though not publicly, is suicide,” he said without answering my questions and closed his notebook.
    “Suicide?”
    “Made for a very dramatic scene, which is not unusual for a young adult. Especially an artistic one. She bakes the cupcakes, gets dressed for the performance, dies right before going onstage in front of all her friends.”
    “She was wearing sweat pants, not a tutu,” I said. 
    He shrugged. “The poison probably hit her more quickly than she expected.”
    “Sure, sure.” I heard a hoard of kids rush down the hall and into the foyer. All giggles and shouts and footfalls and coughs. I took another squirt from the pump. “Just so I’ve got it,” I said slowly. “You’re saying Lexie Allen kept poison berries in her kitchen, and either she grabbed them by mistake, or deliberately to kill herself?”
    “The evidence is stacking up that way,” he said and stood. “I’m sorry, Red. I know this one hit close to home. We’ll get it wrapped up quickly.”
    He looked sympathetic. Genuine, sincere, kind. And full of shit. I’d known Nick Ransom since our first evidence class in college more than twenty years earlier. He was sharp, intense, and extremely thorough. He didn’t keep his cards close to his chest, he kept them face down on the table. Like Harvey Specter negotiating a settlement with an unwitting adversary about to sign away the rights to his own company.
    “No foul play?” I asked.
    “It doesn’t seem so.”
    “And all the crime scene techs, police personnel, interviews, and investigating at the theatre? You were there most of the night.”
    “Standard procedure,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
    I waited two full blinks and then thanked him. “I appreciate the heads-up. Nice of you to keep me in the loop.”
    “Just making sure you’re up to speed, so you don’t feel the need to get involved.” And there it was. In case I’d missed the point of his “update.” We walked down the hall and into the busy foyer. “I know you’ve got your hands full this time of year,” he added.
    Matty lifted a tiny girl up close to his shoulder so she could loop a string of popcorn around the tree. A boy hung a colorful ornament on the lowest branch, keeping his other hand pressed into Matty’s leg for balance, and a third promptly dropped her ornament on the floor. It splintered. Crying ensued.
    “Indeed,” I said.
    “I’ll leave you to it,” he said and left.
    Leave me to it is right, I said to myself as I stalked straight back to my office. The phone rang as I grabbed my hipster handbag from the bottom drawer.
    “Elliott! Hello!” Mr. Ballantyne shouted into the phone. The line crackled, though I could hear him clear as the sky outside. “This is a terrible day for us, my dear Elli. Terrible! Vivi is devastated.”
    “It’s awful, sir,” I shouted back. I lowered my voice. He was in Guatemala, not on the moon. I’d only spoken to him briefly the night before, and he sounded the same. And I couldn’t imagine how sad Vivi, his wife, was. She was as gentle as a kitten on a stack of down pillows. Together they’d run the billion-dollar Ballantyne Foundation since the day Edward Ballantyne inherited it from his father over fifty years ago. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss, sir. I stayed at the theatre, but Tod spent time with the family last