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   Angelica threw back her head and sighed theatrically. "Samantha quit this afternoon." Which would account for Angelica's sour mood. "She wasn't of much use, but I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow at the store."

   
Stay busy and out of my hair
, Tricia hoped.

   Bursts of light drew Tricia's attention back to Zoë, who posed, pen in hand, for Russ. Again and again the camera flashed. Printing one of the shots in the
Stoneham Weekly
News
wasn't going to bring in a horde of customers after the fact, but it wouldn't be bad for business, either.

   Another customer stepped up to the counter. Tricia took Ginny's vacated spot at the register while Angelica bagged two copies of Foreve
r Cherished
and a couple of paperback thrillers from the bargain shelf.

   "That'll be fifty-seven thirty," Tricia said and finally looked up. "Deborah!" She'd been so preoccupied she hadn't even noticed her customer was also her best friend in Stoneham, Deborah Black. "Thanks for coming."

   "Believe me, it's my pleasure. Little Davey's teething. I had him with me all day at the shop—it's his dad's turn to deal with him." Deborah ran the Happy Domestic, a boutique specializing in new and gently used products, how-to books, gifts, and home decor. Her son had been born some seven months before. Between running her shop and taking care of the baby, the poor woman had been worn to a frazzle. For the past few months, Tricia had been consulting her on redecorating—softening the industrial-looking exposedbrick walls—in her loft apartment. At least that was the excuse Deborah had given her husband for her Wednesday "girls' night out" dinner with Tricia.

   "We still on for lunch tomorrow?" Deborah asked. Unfortunately, she couldn't make dinner this week and they'd already made alternate plans.

   "I wouldn't miss it."

   "Lunch?" Angelica piped up hopefully. "Mind a straggler joining you?"

   Yes, Tricia was tempted to blurt, but instead said, "You can't go anywhere. You lost your sales force this afternoon."

   "Darn."

   "See you at the diner at noon—or as close to as possi

ble," Deborah said, picked up her purchase, and headed for the exit.

   Deborah's departure seemed to trigger a mass exodus of guests, who'd abandoned their paper plates and plastic forks on just about every flat surface, and headed for the checkout or exit, some having escaped without purchasing a book.

   The crowd had thinned by the time the rush was over, leaving just Ginny, Grace, Mr. Everett, Russ, and Angelica on hand.

   Ginny glanced at her watch. "Eight fifteen. People didn't stay as long as we thought they would."

   "No." Tricia took in the stacks of unsold books still sitting on the author's table. Zoë was nowhere in sight. "Nor did they buy as many copies of Zoë's backlist as I'd hoped."

   "I told you so," Angelica piped up. "And I haven't had a chance to talk to Zoë yet. Where is she, anyway?"

   Ginny ignored her, turning back to Tricia. "How much stock will you have her sign?"

   "All of it. Besides being a best seller she's a local author, even if she is abandoning Stoneham."

   "Let's hope you can sell them to tourists. Her handler turned off a number of the locals we'd managed to lure in here tonight."

   Tricia sighed. "What did Kimberly say to you?"

   "Nothing too insulting. Just implied my career aspirations must be pretty low to 'settle' for a job in retail. I had to bite my tongue to keep from mentioning that I didn't have to depend on nepotism to keep me employed."

   Tricia looked around the shop. "Where is Zoë? As soon as she signs that stock, I can shut the door and scrounge some dinner." She hadn't even managed to snag a piece of Nikki's cake, of which only crumbs remained—not that she was often seduced by sweets or desserts. Too hard on the figure.

"I didn't see her go," Ginny admitted.

   Mr. Everett and Grace were rounding up icing-stained forks and plates, depositing them in a big black plastic trash bag. "Did Zoë leave?" Tricia asked them.

   Mr. Everett shook his head, pointed to the coat still slung over the back of one of the signing table's chairs.

   "I think she went to the restroom," Grace said. She frowned. "Didn't that awful niece of hers say she needed to take her medication at eight o'clock?" She glanced at the diamond watch on her wrist. "Oh, my, she's been in there quite a while."

   They looked uneasily at each other. "I'll go see," Tricia said.

   Tricia had sacrificed her utility closet to add the small washroom a couple of months before. Most of her clientele arrived via bus tours, and one of the first stops the mostly elderly ladies and gents wanted to make was a bathroom. Since the front of her store had been outfitted to look like the Victorian facade of Sherlock Holmes's beloved 221B Baker Street, Tricia had carried out the decoration of her restroom in the same manner, with an antique pedestal sink and an oak mirror overhead, a high-tank toilet, dark beaded board, and reproduction hunter green flocked wallpaper. Unfortunately, she was the one who got to clean the little room every evening after the shop closed. Not the most glamorous part of owning her own business. In lieu of the closet, she'd had a wall erected to hide the boxes of stock and dollies, and had added shaker pegs higher on the wall for herself and her staff to hang their coats. Simple, but effective.

   Tricia passed the last of the bookshelves and felt a draft. Bypassing the washroom, she hurried to the back of the shop, noticing that the rear door, which was always locked except for deliveries, was open a crack. Thank goodness her cat, Miss Marple, had been banished to her loft apartment during the signing. If she'd gotten out . . .

   Tricia quickly closed the door and threw the deadbolt. Shoplifters had used the back exit for an escape route before, but the security system should have alerted her when the door was opened during business hours. It wasn't likely Ginny or Mr. Everett had circumvented the system, but whenever Angelica was around, unusual things seemed to occur.

   Remembering why she'd come to the back of the store, Tricia stepped over to the closed washroom door. The little sign on it said occupied. She bent close and listened.

   No sound.

   She knocked.

   "Zoë? Is everything all right in there?"

   No answer.

   Tricia leaned in closer, listening harder.

   Still no sound.

   Ginny approached. "Anything wrong?"

   "I don't know," Tricia said. She rested her hand on the door handle. It turned. Since the room was tiny, the door opened out.

   Tricia's breath caught in her throat and she backed away, bumping into the wall behind her.

   Zoë Carter was seated on the lid of the commode, her dark skirt pulled primly over her knees, her mouth stuffed with paper napkins, and her face mottled a shade of purple Tricia had never seen. Scrapes marred her wattled neck, and some fingers from both hands were caught in the kelly green bungee cord that was knotted at her throat.

Sheriff Wendy
Adams glowered at Tricia. "You have a penchant for finding dead bodies, Ms. Miles." She referred, of course, to the body Tricia had found in a neighboring store some seven months before.

   Tricia looked away from the tall, bulky, uniformed woman who towered above her. Seated in one of the upholstered chairs in Haven't Got a Clue's readers' nook, she held a cardboard cup of cold coffee in one hand, a balledup, damp tissue in the other. "Believe me, Sheriff, finding a body is not on my top ten list of things to do." She closed her eyes, and found the image of Zoë's distorted face imprinted on her mind once again.

   "What is it with you, Sheriff? Do you find pleasure in badgering traumatized witnesses?" Angelica asked.

   Tricia opened her eyes to see that her angry sister had insinuated herself between Tricia and the sheriff.

   "Now, dear," Bob Kelly murmured, resting a gentle restraining hand on her arm, but Angelica shook him off. Bob had shown up—late—intending to take Angelica to dinner. Instead, he'd declined to leave once he saw the sheriff's patrol car outside and, as the head of the Chamber of Commerce and one of Stoneham's leading citizens, no one had asked him to leave.

   "Back off, Bob," Angelica ordered, unaccountably surly. To Tricia's knowledge, Angelica had never said a cross word to her "good friend," as she called him. She folded her arms across her chest, and Tricia allowed herself a twinge of sisterly pride at the sight.

   "Why don't you wait outside, Mrs. Prescott," the sheriff said, her spine stiffening. "I'll get your statement in due time."

   "Sure, I'll just go out on the sidewalk and stand in the goose poop that the Board of Selectmen hasn't been addressing," she growled. "And by the way, I am no longer Mrs. Prescott. I've taken my maiden name once again. You may call me Ms. Miles."

   Sheriff Adams jerked a thumb in the direction of the exit. "Outside. Everyone. You'll get your turn to give me your sides of the story. Placer"—she addressed the deputy—"don't let them talk about the crime. I want to hear everyone's story in their own unique way, without them contaminating each other."

   The deputy stepped forward to usher everyone outside. Dutifully they filed out, sans coats, which were hung on pegs at the back of the store, next to where the body was still located. Once the door closed, the sheriff turned her attention back to Tricia. "Well?"

   Tricia heaved a sigh. "I found her. Just like—" She risked a glance over her shoulder. "Like she is."

   "And you didn't kill her."

   Tricia's jaw dropped. "Of course not. She was my guest."

   "Did she argue with anyone tonight?"

   "No." She thought about it. "Although she had a little tiff with her niece, Kimberly Peters. And Kimberly did leave in a rush. I suppose she could've come back, snuck in through the open back door and . . ." The thought was too terrible to contemplate. A family member killing for— what? Money, revenge? Weren't they the usual motives?

   "Kimberly also let it slip that her aunt was being blackmailed."

   The sheriff raised an eyebrow, and Tricia explained.

   "Was she teasing or serious?"

   "That I couldn't say."

   Wendy Adams grunted. "I'll need a list of everyone who was at the signing tonight."

   "I can't give you one. I mean, I don't know everyone who came. I sent press releases to the
Stoneham Weekly
News
and the Nashua newspaper, and advertising circulars. We had a good crowd. Maybe twenty-five people in all."

   "Give me a few for instances."

   Tricia exhaled again. "My sister, Ginny Wilson, Mr. Everett, Russ Smith, and Grace Harris, of course. Then there were Deborah Black, Nikki Brimfield, Frannie Armstrong, Julia Overline—" She thought about the faces . . . but no other names came to mind. "That's all I can think of. Ginny or Mr. Everett might be more helpful. They've lived in the area longer and are more familiar with the locals."

   The sheriff's expression said
not helpful enough.
"Had you noticed anything out of the ordinary with the victim?"

   "Her niece said Zoë had to take her medication at precisely eight o'clock. I thought that was a little odd, but apparently that's about the time she disappeared. I think I was on the register at the time. I sort of lost track."

   "The victim didn't disappear. She died. In your bathroom, and not from taking any medication." It sounded like an accusation.

   "I assure you, I had nothing to do with her death. And I don't know why anyone else would want to kill her, either."

   "Do you recognize the murder weapon?"

   Tricia blinked. She'd never thought of a bungee cord as a weapon before. Her insides twisted. "I . . . think . . . it could be one of the shop's. I don't know. I bought a bunch of them at the dollar store in Nashua some time ago. There were three or four in the package."

   "Where would you keep them?"

   "On one of the dollies in back."

   Sheriff Adams bent down, grasped Tricia's elbow, and hauled her up. "Let's go have a look."

   One of the deputies stood outside the washroom, taking digital photographs of the room and the victim from every angle. Tricia averted her gaze, feeling every muscle in her body tighten as they passed the tiny room and its deceased occupant.

   The dollies were lined up along the wall near the back exit, two piled with boxes of books, one empty. Another deputy was crouched before the door, dusting for fingerprints, but straightened as his boss approached. "Only one or two clear prints." He eyed Tricia. "She said she touched it—they're probably hers."

   Tricia swallowed her annoyance. Getting angry or protesting in her own defense would only cause them to think she could be guilty. But there was no way. This time she had witnesses.

   "Where do you keep these bungee cords?" Sheriff Adams asked.

   Tricia pointed to a rack of shaker pegs on the wall where a red and a yellow pair of bungee cords hung, along with an old umbrella, one of her zippered sweat jackets, and Ginny's, Angelica's, and Mr. Everett's coats.

   "And you think there may have been a green one among them?"

   She nodded. "Mr. Everett or Ginny might know for sure."

   The sheriff's sour expression and general attitude relayed her unspoken belief that Tricia was clueless about her own property. But honestly, was she supposed to account for every pushpin, paper clip, and bungee cord on the premises?

   "Just to be clear, because Ms. Carter was a famous person, Stoneham is likely to be inundated with press from Nashua, Manchester, and probably even Boston as soon as this breaks. I don't want you talking to anyone about what you saw in that bathroom."