Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

was starting to feel the effects of the NyQuil, or was slowly dying from a NyQuil overdose, I searched for “bomb-making.” After getting hits for about three million pages on how to make a bomb—and I’m exaggerating only slightly—I concluded that one wouldn’t necessarily have to be a munitions expert to create a car bomb that one could attach to a car engine. It wouldn’t hurt, though. I’m the kind of person who gives up on preparing a dish if I don’t recognize an ingredient listed early in the recipe; same would be true for making a bomb. While it looked like most of the things you would need to create said bomb would be found in the hardware store, some wouldn’t. And that’s where I’d be out of the bomb-making business.
    I had read enough. I was just about to turn off the computer when the phone rang. And when the phone rings at two o’clock in the morning, it can only be one person.
    The music was loud and thumping and I had to strain to hear Max, who sounded as if she were inside an amp. “Hi, Max!” I shouted, even though I was sure she could hear me.
    “Hear you have a black eye!” she hollered back into the phone. “How did that happen?” To someone in the club, she yelled, “Ketel One! Up! With three olives!”
    “I didn’t know you drank martinis,” I said.
    “I don’t. Queen does.”
    “Queen who?”
    “Queen Martinez.”
    As usual, we were off topic the minute we had gotten on one. Was it worth it to ask who Queen Martinez was? Or why Max was with this person in a club on a Saturday night? Probably not, so I returned to the subject of my black eye. I could only assume that Queen was a Hooters waitress. “So, my black eye …”
    “Yeah! I’m coming over tomorrow to see it,” she said and promptly hung up. I rolled over on my side and grabbed a pen and paper next to my bed and wrote, “Find out who Queen Martinez is. Max coming over on Sunday.” I knew that when I woke up in the morning, I would have forgotten all about this phone call and to ask about the identity of this royal friend of Max’s.
    Trixie was now wide awake and standing next to the bed. Rather than give her a complimentary middle-of-the-night walk, I pulled my comforter aside and patted the bed next to me. “Come on in,” I said. She wasn’t Crawford, but she would have to do.

Five
     
    I was right. I had no recollection of my phone call with Max until I looked at the paper next to my bed that said “Queen Martinez.” And then it all came back to me. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost nine; I had no idea what time Max was coming over, but figured it wouldn’t be before noon. I had a little time to get provisions for her, her caveman husband, and Crawford, who always showed up around two on Sundays.
    While I was showering, I reviewed the previous day’s unpleasantness. A year or so ago, I had found my ex-husband’s dead body, but I hadn’t seen him die. I decided that watching Carter Wilmott die was much more unpleasant. To see someone have life, and then lose it, was completely disconcerting, and I cried a little bit while the hot water beat down on my face. For about the hundredth time, I wondered how Crawford did what he did for a living. Although he didn’t see people die, he certainly examined his share of dead bodies. Besides being gross, it had to take its toll on you emotionally. How could it not? I wondered if that was why Fred, Max’s husband and Crawford’s partner, was as distant and crabby as he always seemed or if his personality was just a congenital birth defect. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
    Definitely a birth defect.
    One of my birth defects, discovered later in my life than most, was that I had become extremely nosy. I knew when it had started—right after I had almost been accused of murder—but it was something that I thought would go away with some introspection and self-reflection. Alas, it was still present and it revealed itself to be quite chronic. So, it was when I was sitting on my bed, drying my hair in a nice fluffy towel, that I realized that I needed to pay my respects to Mrs. Wilmott. After all, I had been there when her husband died. It was only polite.
    Truth was, I wanted to know what it looked like when a presumably happily married woman, or so proclaimed Lydia Wilmott in her blog postings on Carter’s site, lost a husband. She had looked extremely composed yesterday when she had come to Beans, Beans to identify the