"What is he looking for?" Eleanor asked me as Jesse methodically examined each basket, box, and bin that had come from the shop.
"Let's go in the kitchen," I said. "I'm starving."
Though I was a long way from becoming the kind of cook my grandmother was, I was getting comfortable in the kitchen. I boiled some pasta and made a rosemary butter sauce. I followed Eleanor's recipe but threw in a few ingredients of my own.
"Not bad," Eleanor said. "It has a bit of spice to it." She leaned in. "Did you get your invitations mailed?"
"Oh, God. I left them somewhere."
"You lost them?"
"No. I didn't lose my wedding invitations. I just put them down somewhere." Eleanor rolled her eyes just slightly, but it was enough. "I did not do it on purpose."
"Am I interrupting?" Jesse stood in the doorway.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Eleanor turned to him.
"No. I didn't."
"Well, then sit and have some dinner. Some good might as well have come of the trip."
So Jesse sat and ate some pasta and had a slice of cake from one of Eleanor's regular customers. We talked about the shop and the town and everything we could think of except the murder.
"How bad is the quilt?" Eleanor asked with a serious, quiet tone. "The quilt found near poor Marc's body."
"How bad? You mean is there blood on it?" Jesse asked. She nodded. "There isn't much, actually. Marc had blood on his hand and it got on some of the fabric near the corner."
"I could probably get it out. Or I could repair it," she said. "If I can get it back soon, I probably can fix it. I've had that quilt in the shop since day one. It would feel very strange not to have it hanging there when we reopen."
"I wish I could guarantee that."
She nodded, a sadness across her face. "I'm off to bed then. You young people have yourselves more cake and coffee."
Alone in the kitchen, Jesse finished the last of his coffee and looked out at the darkened hallway beyond the kitchen. "I think it's pretty amazing that your grandmother lives here all alone. This place has to get a little spooky at night."
I smiled. "It does. Especially when you're here by yourself. The night Eleanor went into the hospital, I could have sworn someone was trying to break in. It freaked me out."
He sat up. "Why didn't you call?"
"Yeah. I was going to call the police to tell them I was scared."
"That's what we're here for."
"It was nothing. I came downstairs and looked around. There wasn't anybody here. The door was open, but it was a really windy night. And it's an old door." Jesse got up and checked the door. It was locked securely. I smiled at how protective he suddenly was, and then I looked to his left at the small shelf near the door. "The key."
"The key?" he looked at me.
"When my grandmother went into the hospital, I couldn't find the key to the car. Marc drove me to the shop. Then later that night the door is somehow open, and the next morning, I found the key. It had to be Marc."
"You think he made a duplicate?" Jesse's eyes darted around the kitchen. "What would he want to take?"
"There isn't anything here. I told him, too, but he didn't seem to believe me."
"So he's not trying to take anything."
I shook my head. "Maybe he wanted to leave something here."
Jesse looked at me as if he were taking it all in. "You think the fifteen grand is here?"
I jumped up. "Oh, God. Do you think it could be?"
"I went through all the stuff taken from the shop when I was looking for his key."
"So it wasn't hidden with that stuff. It's somewhere else."
"You don't think Eleanor would have found it?" Jesse was whispering now and I started to lower my voice in response.
"No. She can barely get around. And if she had…"
"Yeah, she would have said something."
"Okay," I said, my heart beating louder than my voice. "It can't be upstairs because I would have heard someone coming up the steps."
"It isn't in the dining room, because I've searched that." Jesse was looking around. "Plus, he didn't have that much time. You said you got up and started to come downstairs."
"I did-I listened for a minute or so, then I got up."
"So, maybe the kitchen." Jesse got up and started walking around the room. He opened cabinets and starting emptying shelves. "Look in the jars," he said.
I opened the flour and sugar canisters. I went through the tea bags, the coffee beans, the baking soda-anything that was open. There was no money.
Eventually most of the kitchen cabinets were on the counter. Jesse had spent an hour looking through the entryway and came up equally empty-handed.
"Well, it was an idea," he said as he came back to find me putting things away in the kitchen.
"You don't think he would have hid anything in the living room?"
"That would be something. Right under Eleanor's nose." He smiled. "I'll talk to her tomorrow about going through the living room."
"I can look," I said, but Jesse was already shaking his head.
"I've got all the deputies I need, thanks."
When Jesse left, I sat in the kitchen and listened to the silence. He was right. The house did feel spooky. The idea that Marc had- possibly-come into the house to hide something left me a little unnerved. But if he had, there was a bigger question. Why hide it here? Was Marc afraid of someone, someone who knew he had come into a large amount of money? That thought was comforting to me because it meant that the killer could have been one of Marc's gambling buddies. The other, more frightening, thought sat at the back of my mind. Susanne's theory that someone had killed Marc to protect a loved one. A loved one like Natalie and baby Jeremy. Or a loved one like me.