Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

that man could do to annoy me or get on my nerves would be a welcome change of pace.”
    I chewed on that for a minute. “Yeah, but what if you do get married and then you decide that you made a mistake? That it wasn’t the right decision?”
    “Aren’t you divorced?”
    “Well, I was before he ended up dead. I’m not entirely sure what that makes me.”
    There was no question in her mind. “That makes you divorced.”
    I nodded. “I guess you’re right.” She didn’t respond. “So what are you saying?”
    “If you made a mistake, you divorce his ass. But if you love him, nothing he does will annoy you enough to make you think you made a mistake.”
    I went back into my office no closer to a decision. But I did know that things had taken a very weird turn if I was using Dottie as my barometer for good decision making.
    I left my office around five with the intention of driving straight to the restaurant where I was to meet Jane, an ice-cold martini in my immediate future. I arrived at Chez Madeleine with twenty minutes to spare and took a seat at the small, granite-topped bar. Two tables in the restaurant were filled with early birds, but the bar was empty, much to my relief. I didn’t feel like making small talk with anyone, let alone the bartender, a young guy who really took his role as liquor-serving therapist seriously.
    “You look like a lady who could use a drink,” he said with a sad smile, placing a napkin in front of me. “Let me guess. Chardonnay? Something oaky with a hint of blackberries?”
    “Ketel One martini, three olives. Up.”
    He gave me a winning smile. “That was my second guess.” Before turning to mix my drink, he looked up at the television placed over the bar, tuned to our local Westchester news station. They were doing a story on Carter Wilmott. “Hey, did you hear about that poor guy who dropped dead in Beans, Beans?”
    “No,” I said, playing dumb for the second time in as many days. “I’ve been out of town. What happened?” I always love to hear other people’s take on a story in which I’ve been involved. It’s a weird combination of rubbernecking and gossipmongering, but interesting nonetheless.
    He leaned in conspiratorially. “Got into a fight with the head of the DPW and was killed.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.” He pulled a martini glass off a rack above him and filled it with ice. “Apparently, the DPW guy really knocked the stuffing out of poor Wilmott. Killed him.”
    “Wow,” I said. “How awful. Were there any witnesses?”
    “Well, apparently, there was the guy who owns Beans, Beans. You know. The big hippie guy?” he asked, shaking the cocktail shaker within an inch of its stainless steel life. “And some college professor who lives in town but nobody seems to know anything about except that her ex-husband was murdered last year.”
    I shrugged. “Can’t imagine who that might be.”
    He looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember something. “Bertelsman? Bergerson?” He put the cocktail shaker down and leaned his hands on the counter. “Oh, it will come to me.” My mouth was watering, waiting for my drink. Open the damn shaker! I wanted to scream at him. “Anyway, nobody’s seen her since it happened.”
    “Sounds like she doesn’t want to be seen.”
    He finally poured my drink into the martini glass and placed it in front of me. Despite being extremely chatty, he clearly knew what he was doing in the drink department. The first sip went down very easily and helped take the edge off just slightly. The bartender watched me with interest, holding out his hand after I had put the drink back on the napkin. “My name is Jamie.”
    I took his hand. “Maxine.” If ever there was a time to channel Max, now was it.
    “Hi, Maxine,” he said warmly, resting his elbows on the bar. “So, having a bad day, Maxine?”
    “The worst.”
    “Does it have something to do with the black eye?” he asked. “Or is it man trouble?”
    “You could say that.” As a matter of fact, you could. I saw a guy get dead, my priest has gone missing, and my boyfriend thinks I’m a commitmentphobe. If that wasn’t man trouble, I didn’t know what was.
    “Well, Maxine, I might be able to help in that department.”
    I took in the bartender’s young, handsome face, glossy black hair, and long eyelashes and decided that there might not be anything wrong with being single again. But then when I noticed just how much he resembled a younger and