"It's your aunt’s mix," she said. "I think if you would sell it, you could make a fortune."
"If people would still trust her," I said glumly.
Harper scoffed. "It'll blow over. Believe me, there's already quite a few people saying that all this is nonsense."
"Including Jake being murdered?"
"Well, including that, probably."
She took a ruler and a pencil and made a couple of neat lines. "Leave this baby to me," she said.
"Ok."
Reina peered over her shoulder. "A mystery person?" she asked.
"Yeah." I nodded. "I thought that interesting when I overheard someone talk about it."
"Who was it?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. I haven't spent enough time here to meet everyone, and the place has grown since our youth."
"That is very true," Harper chuckled. "And yet, somehow, it feels like nothing has changed. It's the same old busybodies who stick their noses into anybody else's business."
"Yeah. I can assume I can count myself lucky that I haven't been suspected yet?" I faked a smile.
"Oh, you were," Ange said. "After all, you're the heiress. Except then you would have done in your aunt and not her neighbor."
"Unless he knew something," Harper said.
"No. Then Bex would have bumped off her aunt first and then Jake."
"Very funny," I said. "This isn't a murder mystery game, and it wasn’t Professor Plumb with the candlestick in the sitting room."
"It makes it easier to think of it as one," Harper admitted. "Because the alternative is really freaking me out."
She reached for Reina's hand.
We peered at the list she'd made.
"I think we need to start with motive. We have no idea when the poison came into Jake's possession or how he was poisoned."
I stopped to glance at Ange.
"Nick's best guess is that somebody put it into his pill bottle," she said. "Only that would mean the person knew exactly what it would have to look like.”
“How can you fiddle with that?" I wondered.
"It's quite simple," she said. "Most capsules are filled with a kind of powder or a gel, so it's easy to inject something else inside or empty the powder and replace it."
"Because those capsules are not filled to the brim?" I asked.
"Yes."
"OK." Harper made a note. "That would give us the means. Now back to the motive."
"I wonder..." I stopped. What had Cosmo said? I'd feel... something when?
We inched closer.
