A Deadly Grind by Victoria Hamilton

Anna’s groceries and helped her harassed neighbor get them into the house, Daniel and Jaymie went into the Leightons’ front door, just as Becca came down the stairs yawning and stretching.
    Between them they told their village neighbor what had happened as Jaymie unloaded the groceries. He exclaimed at the awful event and regarded Jaymie with great seriousness for a few moments over his glasses. “Are you all right? Really?”
    “Yeah, I am. I’m just fine,” she said, wondering at his expression. Becca was watching him with raised eyebrows.
    “And I’m okay too, in case you’re concerned,” she said, after a moment’s silence.
    “Right. Good. Hey, can I see the Hoosier cabinet?”
    Jaymie led him back to the summer porch and pointed it out, and watched while he looked it over.
    “A real Hoosier, right?” he said. “What are you going to do with it? You putting it in the kitchen?”
    “Eventually,” she said, “but not until it’s cleaned up some.” She shuddered and turned away, not able to look at it without thinking of the man dead beside it, or the grinder that had been the murder weapon.
    “Oh, I’m sorry!” Daniel said. “It was . . . it was right here that it happened, wasn’t it?”
    She nodded and went back to the kitchen table; the police hadn’t warned her against it, but she was not about to reveal to anyone else what they suspected about the grinder.
    Daniel then told them his plans for the next while. He and Zell—and his friend Trevor, if he showed up in the next few hours—could handle getting the tables down from the attic. His lawn service was mowing that very moment, pruning the forsythia that lined the south side of the house and trimming the spirea on the other side. Tables would be set out the next morning, and he and Zell and Trevor would be available to move them into place. Becca, naturally bossy, said she would be there to organize them.
    There was silence for a moment, and then Daniel slapped his open palms on the trestle table and stood. “I guess I’d better get going. Zell wants to see the sights, and I said we’d go across the river into Canada for dinner.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as it buzzed. “Damn!” he said, reading the tiny screen with a frown. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Looks like Trev’s going to be late.”
    “Your other friend?”
    “Yeah, Trevor Standish. He’s the one who organized me and Zell and him getting together, and now he’s going to be late.” Collins swiftly texted an answer and slid the device back into his pocket. “How late, he didn’t say. Typical Trevor. I’ll let you both get back to . . . to whatever you were doing,” he said, with a shy look at Becca.
    And he was gone.
    Jaymie and Becca had some lunch and then, to relax a bit from the horrors of the night, Jaymie began her Queen Elizabeth cake, turning the sticky dates into a newer glass bowl, boiling the kettle and pouring one cup over the dates and baking soda, which fizzed up. She would never pour boiling water into a vintage bowl; an unseen hairline crack could cause it to shatter. Nor did she ever use her vintage bowls in the microwave. That would be like putting her grandmother in a rocket ship to the moon.
    “What is
that
all about, boiling water and baking soda?” Becca asked, looking over her shoulder.
    “I think you do this to soften the dates, so they blend well with the moist cake batter,” Jaymie said, lifting down her favorite Pyrex bowls, a vintage “Primary Colors” set, from the open shelf over the sink. She set the oven to preheat while Becca sat down at the kitchen table to make a list of things to do before the next day.
    There was silence for a moment, other than the sounds of Jaymie mixing and Becca scratching items on her list.
    “I can’t stop thinking about that poor guy . . . the dead man,” Becca said, tapping her pen against her pad of paper.
    “I know,” Jaymie said. She worked the moist ingredients