Simmer Down

night’s murder to Owen, Ade, and Snacker, all of whom had had the good luck not to attend the ill-fated Food for Thought. I’d already given Adrianna some of the details, but my family loved narrating their own versions.
    “And then this young woman began shrieking...”
    “I did my best to recall where everyone was...”
    “Naomi was droning on and on...”
    “I spoke to one officer who wanted to know...”
    “Damn, I should’ve driven faster!” said Snacker. “Look what I missed! Could I have some more of those potatoes? This dinner is incredible.”
    “Well, thank you.” Mom passed him the dish. “Although we can’t take all the credit. We had to consult with Josh, who was kind enough to tell us in excruciating detail how to put the pork loin together.” She smiled at him. Cute! I didn’t know Josh had done that. At least my parents approved of Josh. Who cared what Heather thought?
    “Do we know what happens to the Full Moon Group now that Oliver’s dead?” my father asked the table.
    “Presumably Barry Fields takes over everything, right?” I guessed.
    “They probably had an insurance policy to cover this situation,” Owen said. Owen has tried out many jobs, including his most recent stint working on a blimp, and a few years ago worked for about six months at an insurance company. “It’s called a key man policy. You use it when you’ve got a relatively small business and you want to cover yourselves in case you lose a ‘key man,’ a crucial person without whom the business could collapse. They probably had key man insurance to cover the owners. You can use the insurance money to hire a replacement for the person who died, or you could buy out the shares of a business that were left to a family member. In some ways, it’s a pretty general policy, but it’s separate from regular life insurance.” Blah, blah, blah, boring, boring, boring. Thank God Owen didn’t work in insurance any longer. He did tend to change jobs faster than I could polish off a plate of Josh’s risotto, but at least most of his jobs were in fields more scintillating than insurance.
    “Speaking of jobs I’ve worked,” Owen added, “I wanted to announce that I accepted an offer today. I interviewed today to be a puppeteer’s assistant. Doesn’t that sound interesting?” Ade nearly choked on her food and looked at Owen as though he had utterly lost his mind. “Anyhow,” she said pointedly, obviously not wanting to discuss Owen’s latest radical change of career in front of everyone, “this Full Moon Group can keep everything going, and we can still go out for bad food and expensive drinks at the clubs.”
    “Unless Oliver was killed for this key man insurance money,” Josh added, “and Barry gets caught. Hard to run a bunch of clubs from a jail cell.”
    The idea of Barry as the murderer was an extremely disappointing one because it left Hannah completely out of the prison picture. But at least she wouldn’t have a job in Boston anymore and would move far, far away, not, as I envisioned it, back to New York, but to Tahiti, maybe, or South Africa or, ideally, Antarctica, where she might freeze to death. Yes, Hannah in Antarctica. I could live with that.
    But there was no reason to think that any of us at the table would be able to solve Oliver’s murder or that any of us had even seen his killer last night. The gallery had been crowded. Most of the people there had been strangers to all of us. Besides, anyone could have snuck into the back of the gallery through the back door that had been left open. The murderer might have slipped in and out without being seen by anyone at all.
    I finally returned Lucy to my sister and we wrapped up dinner. My hazelnut tart, which was topped with fresh whipped cream, got glowing reviews from the two chefs at the table. Obviously, I did not reveal that this was the second of two tarts I’d baked that day.
    We said our good-byes, and I reminded Adrianna that our visit to the shelter was tomorrow at one. In the morning— since “harassment doesn’t break for the holidays”—I’d have to face Naomi and hotline calls, but after lunch, I’d meet Adrianna at the shelter.
    Josh drove us back to my apartment, and although I was thrilled about his new job, I was still pretty worried that the fifteen minutes it took to drive from my parents’ house in Newton to my condo in Brighton would be the last time we’d be alone together until... well, until I didn’t know