“One more thing, Ms. Merriweather.”
“Yes?”
“When you tell your friends, ask them to keep the story to themselves.”
“We’re not tattle-tales.”
“Good. Then we’re onthe same page.”
“We are.”
Cosmo, who’d spent the conversation snoozing, startled the detective with a shrill meow.
“What an excitable cat,” Trey Stone said. “Beautiful too.”
“I agree.”
When the door closed behind the detective, Cosmo said, “You’ve tamed him.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“He informed you first, didn’t he? And he gave you the implicit permission to tell the coven.”
“Candice would have told me the same. I guess.”
“Makes you wonder why she hasn’t been in touch yet, now that you saved her.”
That thought hadn’t crossed my mind, until this very moment.
The answer came an hour later. Detective Stone had visited me before his Cannon Hill counterparts bothered to inform Candice that they had a murder suspect in custody, and she was free to leave.
I didn’t see her before she fled back home, to her fiancé. Fine with me. I was busy enough, with my day job, my friends, and finishing the promised restoration. I’d convinced her to keep the chest and take it back home to Rick. It was sure to find its way into the perfect hands, even if was a collector of gruesome items.
The day I sent off the chest and Candice’s other furniture pieces, I received a picnic hamper the size of a baby bath, filled with an assortment of cheeses, three types of crackers, pear butter, fig butter, cookies, Jamaican Blue coffee, and three bottles of wine.
A plaid picnic blanket bolstered the bottom of the hamper. Slipped into it was a plain card.“I hope every day of your life will be a feast.Candice x”
“Do you have a lash in your eye? Its watery.” Cosmo said with a touching hint of concern in his voice.
I read him the card.
“That’s very thoughtful,” Cosmo said.
“You have no idea. These are all my favorites. How could she have known?”
“Maybe your ex-husband told her?”
“Rick?” I snorted. “When Alex was born, I asked him to bring me cookies and crackers to the maternity ward. Instead, I got flowers. Beautiful to look at, useless if you’re starving in the middle of the night. He’s clueless.”
Cosmo sniffed around the hamper. “That’s a lot of food.”
“Enough for a coven meeting.”
“You could invite Sam as well. He did assist you with the case too.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I snapped a photo and sent it to my friends, with a short text.“Picnic, anyone?”
