Camilla T. Crespi - The Breakfast Club Murder by Camilla T. Crespi Page A

hugging the needlepoint pillow Lori had stitched for her twelfth birthday, which read, “You Are My Sweetheart.” It was enough to make Lori blubber again. Something she wasn’t about to do in front of these detectives.
    “I’ll answer questions while I get the soup started,” Lori said when they reached the kitchen. She opened cabinets until she found a brand new All-Clad pot and sauté pan, placed them on the stove, poured a little olive oil in both. She then dug out the onion from her bag and began peeling it. “Cooking helps me concentrate.” Gave her confidence was more the truth.
    “We were waiting for you,” Scardini said.
    Lori stared, wide-eyed. “How did you know I was coming?”
    Mitchell grinned, his eyes scrunching up. “Your mother called. She said to warn Jessica you were coming over. She didn’t ask who I was.”
    Lori’s knife slashed into an onion and quickly reduced it to paper thin slices.
    Mitchell stepped back from the counter. “Aren’t those going to make you cry?”
    “You bet,” Lori said. And her mother was going to make her scream.
    Scardini took the lead in the interrogation. Why did she hit Dr. Fenwick just hours before she was killed? Because Valerie had hurt her daughter, Lori explained, as she turned on one burner and dropped the onions in the pot.
    Where was she last night between the hours of ten thirty and midnight? Lori grated two carrots, added them to the sautéing onions along with a spoonful of tomato paste, and repeated what she had told her mother.
    Scardini picked up the wooden spoon Lori had brought and stirred the contents of the pot.
    “He’s Italian,” Mitchell said as an excuse.
    “It was about to burn,” Detective Scardini said in his defense. “Anyone to verify that fact?”
    “That it was about to burn?” Lori asked. She was annoyed at him for taking over. And just a little bit scared. “My daughter called me when she got to Margot Dixon’s house.”
    “She made no mention of a phone call to you.”
    “Why should she?” Lori stopped rolling a meatball to look up at Mitchell’s nice face. “You don’t really think I shot Valerie? I don’t want my husband back and he doesn’t want me back, so what would be the point?”
    “ ‘Hell hath no fury,’ ” Mitchell quoted.
    Lori cut him off. “If that’s true I would have shot Rob.” She caught the two detectives exchanging glances. “Listen, I didn’t shoot anyone.”
    “No one is saying you did,” Mitchell said. “We have to ask.”
    “Okay,” Scardini said. “You just made an interesting statement. ‘I would have shot Rob.’ Now this is one possible scenario. Operative word is ‘possible,’ so you don’t have to get all hot under the collar. Here goes.” He settled back against the counter while Lori rolled meatball after meatball. She was making far too many, but the motion soothed her.
    “Husband of sixteen years leaves you and your kid for another woman,” Scardini continued. “A very rich woman. He lets you keep the house and throws in child support, but no alimony. None of the above is going to sit well with most wives.”
    “I didn’t want any alimony.” She turned on the flame under the sauté pan. “And I’m not most wives.”
    Scardini raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Do you own a gun?” He took the meatballs she had rolled and settled them gently in the pan.
    “No and stop interfering!”
    “You sound like my wife. How about your ex, while you were still married to him, did he own a gun?”
    “No!”
    “That’s settled, then. Last night your ex takes his daughter and her friend to a fancy restaurant in Manhattan without getting your permission first, which could only add to your bad feelings. You know that he’s going to drive them back to the Dixon lady. You say your daughter called when she got back, but if she did, I bet she didn’t tell you the new wife drove her back instead of her father because she’s a sweet girl and didn’t want to upset