Flipped For Murder by Maddie Day Page B

returned to my personal kitchen. Birdy ran to his food bowl and gazed up at me with hopeful eyes. Looked like it was his dinnertime, too. I scooped out a cupful of dry food, but he bumped my hand as I poured it into the dish and half of it scattered on the floor.
    â€œSilly cat,” I said, kneeling to gather up the food and get it back into the bowl, where it belonged. I heated up the rest of the orzo for my own supper, then I grabbed the grater and added Parmesan on top. That and a glass of red was plenty. I brought the crossword I was working on to the table, but it didn’t feel right to do it without Mom’s pen. I should have asked Buck if I’d ever get the pen back.
    I took a bite of the orzo. Even though the basil in the pesto was still fragrant and the mouthfeel of the slippery little pasta shapes was usually something I loved, I barely tasted it. Despite the delicious ending to last night’s dinner with Jim, the about-to-sprout romance looked like it’d dried up and withered away. I shook my head. I’d lived without love in my life for more than three years. I knew how, whether I liked it or not.
    As I ate, I stared at the grid of squares on my clipboard. Some empty, some black, some I’d filled in. I looked at the clues, 110 of them in the Across list, and 114 in the Down.
    Clues. What about the Stella Murder puzzle? What would that one look like? I snapped my fingers and rose to dig a pad of graph paper out of my desk drawer. I’d bought it when I was designing the layout for the restaurant and store. I brought the paper back to the table, along with a sharp number two pencil and a clear blue ruler. I supposed there was an interactive puzzle design website out there somewhere. Wasn’t there an app for everything? But for me, using my hands with something more tactile than a keyboard engaged my brain in a different way than using my eyes on a screen.
    I drew a grid. I started jotting down what I knew under the clues section. Corrine disliked Stella intensely. Don hated Corrine for beating him in the mayoral race and, by extension, hated Stella. Ed’s restaurant now faced competition from mine. Someone either had access to Stella’s house, or was a local she knew well enough to let in. Roy Rogers was an odd bird.
    Then I added what I didn’t know: Who did Stella blackmail? Was Ed sexually harassing his female employees? Who stole my pen? Who killed Stella?
    By the time I ran out of facts and questions, my plate was empty and my glass was, too. No answers were apparent, but my mind was more at ease for laying it out in a format that was as familiar to me as my own name. I stood and headed back into the store to do prep for tomorrow. I had tables to set, biscuit dough to prep, gravy to make, and my alarm was going to ring loud and early. At least now I thought I’d be able to sleep.
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    I unlocked the front door of the store at a few minutes before seven, turning the CLOSED sign to OPEN . Danna had arrived promptly again, and we’d been working together for half an hour. I pushed the door open wide and took a deep breath of the fresh morning air. The storm had blown through, leaving a chilly but sparkling clean fall morning. The trees looked cleaner, too, since last night’s wind had blown off half their leaves. We might have just slid past peak leaf-peeking. Adele’s old Ford Explorer rattled up, the sides streaked with mud. She climbed out of one side, while Vera emerged from the other.
    Adele and I exchanged a hug. “Couldn’t stay away?” I smiled at her and greeted Vera.
    â€œWe’re hungry,” Adele said. “We’ve been out birding already. Thought we’d better fill up the tanks before we head back out.”
    They both wore sturdy outdoor boots and warm coats. Vera’s neck was wrapped in a brilliant purple scarf and I spied a field guide stuffed in her coat pocket.
    â€œSee anything good?” I