By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) by Maya Corrigan Page A

one.”
    She raised her index finger like a student with a question. “Where’s the new tool now? I bet you didn’t find it at Monique’s place.”
    “Would you keep a tool you used to make a murder weapon?”
    “You can’t have it both ways. If Monique realized the new hatchet could connect her to the murder weapon, she must have known the old hatchet could connect her to the burning racket. Why would she chuck one and keep the other?”
    He pulled the pipe from his mouth. “Her husband might notice a new hatchet and wonder why she bought it. And he’d notice if the old hatchet was gone.”
    “So what if it was gone? Tools are always disappearing. Like socks.”
    “A hatchet isn’t the only thing that leaves a mark. The person wielding it does too. Suppose I give a wood racket and a hatchet to ten different people and tell them to taper the handle. One person might whack it from the throat down to the butt in a single stroke.” He demonstrated the technique on the stem of his pipe. “Another might chip away at the last two inches of the handle. I guarantee no two rackets would look the same at the end.”
    “But what if you show your carvers a tapered racket before they start working and tell them their task is to duplicate it? Or suppose you describe the results you want? You wouldn’t see a lot of variations.”
    “I’ll concede that someone who saw that racket could have carved another one the same way, but not based just on a description.”
    “We could run an experiment.” Val caught the chief scowling at her. “I mean, you could run it.”
    “I run with the facts. I don’t need experiments.”
    “Luckily, I have a few facts. Monique’s husband, who heard about the burned racket from Nadia, was cagey about where he was the night of the murder. He led Monique to believe he stayed in Philadelphia Monday night, but I know he left earlier that day. Grandma Mott told me.” Val tried to make it sound as if she knew Monique’s mother-in-law well.
    The chief glowered. “Checking on alibis is our job, not yours.”
    “I can’t help it if people tell me things. I discovered something else. Nadia was on the phone with a real estate client on Monday night around nine-thirty when another call came in. Nadia put her client on hold.”
    The pipe moved up and down in the chief’s mouth. “How did you find that out?”
    Val described the note she’d seen next to Nadia’s phone and the reasoning that led her to visit Mrs. Z. “When Nadia came back on the line after taking another call, she told Mrs. Z she was expecting someone. That other call could have been the murderer setting up a meeting with Nadia. If you could trace that call . . .”
    “We did. It came from a prepaid burner phone. No way to find out who made the call.” The chief peered inside the bowl of his pipe. “I like the way you pick up on details and look at all the angles. You could teach my rookies a thing or two. But they could teach you the first rule of investigation—the simplest solution is usually the right one.”
    And Monique fit the bill, with her motive, her history of intimidating the victim, and no alibi. After years of watching Law & Order reruns, Val could guess what the police would do next—try to place the suspect at the crime scene. “If you find Monique’s DNA at Nadia’s house, it won’t prove anything. Nadia threw a party on Memorial Day. She invited the racket club crowd and her neighbors. We all have strands of hair caught in her rugs.”
    “That DNA stuff takes time and costs money.” He tapped his pipe against his heel. “Shoe leather does the job faster. The sheriff’s deputies and every officer I can spare are out interviewing. Someone must have seen something that night.”
    Val breathed in the pipe smoke that hung like a haze in the still air, an entrancing woodsy scent with traces of almond and vanilla. She’d said what she could to convince the chief of Monique’s innocence. Now for another