Jemma frowned with disappointment. “Darn.”
“Why are you talking about booze?” Livy asked as she skipped and hopped over our way.
“No reason, sweetie.” I undid and refastened the loose hair tie at the end of one of her braids.
“I have umbrellas.” She looked at us in turn with blue eyes thatwere so much like her dad’s. “You know, for fancy drinks. You can all have one, if you want.”
Jemma put her arm around my niece and gave her a squeeze. “Thank you, sweet pea.”
Livy bounced up and down. “Can I go out in the courtyard?”
“Okay,” I said, “but only for a few minutes.”
She slid her arms free of her backpack and let it fall to the floor at my feet. Then she took off at a run.
I wished I had even half of her energy.
It didn’t seem like I was getting my drink, and I wasn’t getting rid of Wyatt until I shared what information I had, so I gave him the condensed version of what had happened at the pawnshop.
“So, Freddie took one bottle to his meeting with Vinny,” Wyatt said once I’d finished the tale and he’d had a chance to shake his head over the antics of my older partners in crime.
“And he had one in his apartment,” I added. “Partially empty. And another in his office that ended up broken.”
“Sampling some of the wares himself,” Jemma said with a nod. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Wyatt tucked his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “That accounts for three of the missing bottles.”
I thought back to what we’d observed in the speakeasy. “But, judging by the clear circles in the dust, there were six bottles missing.”
“So maybe Hoffman found out about the speakeasy and fought with Freddie,” Jemma theorized. “A bottle broke during the tussle. Then, after killing Freddie with the croquet mallet that was sitting in the office, Hoffman took some bottles from the speakeasy.”
“But then why would he have taken the label off the broken bottle?” I asked, unconvinced.
She reconsidered her theory. “Okay. Maybe he took the label, did some research, and then came back and took some bottles from the speakeasy on another day?”
“I don’t know. We should ask Theo if she can find him on thesecurity footage any time after the murder.” I looked around. “Where is Theo, anyway?”
Jemma shrugged. “She doesn’t actually live here, right? Maybe she’s at home.”
I tapped out a quick text message to the teen.Where u @?
Not that I needed Theo around to run my life.
Okay, maybe I did.
I tried to stay focused. “For now, I’m going to see if Hoffman’s been up to anything fishy, like trying to sell old bottles of booze. Can I use your car for a stakeout, Jemma?”
“You could, but it’s at home, remember?”
Wyatt spoke up: “I’ve got my car right here.”
“There! That’s the perfect solution,” Jemma declared.
“No, it’s not!” I shot her a glare before forcing a smile for Wyatt. “Thank you, but I don’t need your car.”
“But I’d like to be part of the stakeout,” he said, “so why not go in my car?”
“And I’ll help out by babysitting Livy,” Jemma offered, as if it were the best idea ever.
