Simmer Down

morning romp.
    “Of course she is. God forbid she hang around too long, right? Tell her to move it now, or I’ll have her towed to Quincy.” I got to my back door and fumbled for my key. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I yelled down at him.
    “Day off,” he called back.
    So I’d had a crappy night and crappy morning. Big deal, right? I’d spend the rest of the day in domestic bliss, baking away and listening to music.
    I walked into my living room to catch my cat, Gato, peeing in my yucca plant. “Get out of there, you freak!” I shouted at him. He finished his business, stared grumpily at me, and hopped off to find other mischief. Ah, domestic bliss.
    I turned on the oven and dumped the hazelnuts onto a baking sheet. First, you roast them, and then you peel off the skins. I set out the rest of my ingredients and put the store-bought piecrust into the oven to brown. I couldn’t be bothered to make my own piecrust, and the ready-made was always better than my homemade, anyhow. I changed into comfortable sweats and big fuzzy socks and pretended it was a cold New England winter day. I was grateful there wasn’t a bitter ice storm raging outside, but a gentle snowfall would’ve felt more festive than this unseasonable warmth.
    I mixed up the filling for the tart and tried to think about something other than that pain in the ass, Hannah, who was clearly going to keep running after Josh. He just wasn’t mean enough to tell her to buzz off and stay out of his life. In fact, he wasn’t mean at all. I, on the other hand, could tell her to go to hell, but I couldn’t exactly spend twenty-four hours a day driving her away from my boyfriend. And as long as she was caught up in Oliver’s murder, she’d take advantage of Josh’s kindness to try to lure him back into her life. Not that he’d fall for it, I assured myself. But I didn’t need the aggravation.
    Stupid Hannah, I thought. I measured out a third of a cup of corn syrup and whisked it in with the eggs. Was she officially a suspect? I hadn’t even asked if she’d been fingerprinted, and I’d been too busy launching produce into her cart to notice whether her hands were covered in ink. Anyway, she’d probably washed her hands. Had anyone else been taken to the police station along with Hannah? Gavin hadn’t spent much time in the gallery last night, but he still struck me as a good suspect. Although he had outbid the Full Moon Group for Simmer’s location, maybe he’d wanted to make sure that the group wouldn’t remain a threat; with one partner dead, the Full Moon Group’s ability to compete with him was weakened, wasn’t it? On the other hand, when Oliver was alive, Gavin had already had what he wanted: the ideal Newbury Street location for a restaurant that was about to open.
    I pulled the browned piecrust and the hazelnuts out of the oven, spread the nuts between two dishcloths, and rubbed them around to peel off the skins. These were exceptionally big hazelnuts, and, as I realized when I peeked under the top dish towel, they’d already been skinned. Dummy, I said to myself. I threw half of them into the blender and pulsed the machine to chop them coarsely. The chopping created quite a racket, and I worried that the blender would overheat and start emitting smoke signals. I didn’t remember such a violent noise erupting the last time I’d used it, but if this blender was on the fritz, I’d have a good excuse to buy a new, fancier one! I transferred the hazelnuts to the bowl with the other ingredients, mixed everything, poured the whole mess into the pie shell, put it onto a baking sheet, and gently carried the wobbly tart to the oven. I set the timer and started to clean the kitchen. Josh always cleaned as he cooked, whereas I usually made a disaster of the kitchen and ended up having to scrub every surface. This time, I was trying to follow his lead.
    Has Hannah called a lawyer? I wondered, as I loaded my tiny dishwasher. Maybe a lawyer could solve all my problems with her. He could advise her not to discuss the case with anyone—especially ex-boyfriends. Why were the police so interested in her, anyhow? And what had she been doing at the back of the gallery last night? Why had she even been near Eliot’s office? Had she been demanding even more expensive living accommodations from Oliver? And when he refused, she’d clunked him over the head with a Robocoupe?
    I curled up on the couch and tried to distract myself with DVD