Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

coffee, stopping on the way to kiss the top of my head. He stood at the coffee-maker and turned to look out the kitchen window. “Hey,” he said, addressing Kevin. “Can you still do weddings?”
    I gave him a look that telegraphed my reluctance to talk about the topic in front of Kevin, if at all.
    “What?” he asked. “Just an innocent question. Hypothetical, really.”
    “We’ll talk about this later,” I said as pleasantly as I could. I thought the big, fake smile on my face should have given him some indication of the tone, but apparently, it didn’t. He went sullen.
    “Just wanted to know.”
    Kevin watched the two of us discuss whether or not it was appropriate to talk about the topic of our possibly impending nuptials in front of him, his head whipping back and forth depending on who was speaking. Kevin knew about the marriage talk; he had been with us when Crawford had popped the question in his straightforward way. When all was said and done, though, Crawford and I still needed to “close the deal” officially, and Kevin hadn’t let us know if he could perform a Catholic wedding ceremony. My guess was no.
    I had thought that since Crawford now knew the source of my reluctance, the conversation would have been toned down until at least after Labor Day. But homicide detectives ask the same question over and over and over again until they get the answer they want. Crawford, apparently, thought the same tactic would work in this situation.
    “Hey, what’s this?” he asked, picking up the arsenic rock that I had assumed Ginny had taken with her the other night but which was sitting on my kitchen counter. He picked it up and examined it.
    “Put that down!” I exclaimed. “It’s poison.”
    He dropped it on the counter and stepped back.
    “That’s the arsenic,” I said. “I didn’t realize it was still here. I should bring that over to Detective Madden.”
    Neither of the men debated me on that point, so it was just a mere forty minutes later that I was sitting in the same room where I had been the week before, toying with the rock—now in a plastic bag—and awaiting her entrance. She walked in a few minutes later, notebook in hand, and regarded me warily.
    “You have some information for me?” She was crabbier than usual. It hadn’t occurred to me until this very moment that she, like Mac the Knife, would be none too happy with the idea that the man she had arrested was not guilty of the crime and that she might look a wee bit vulnerable to her colleagues as a result.
    I pushed the arsenic rock forward. She raised an eyebrow at me. “It’s arsenic,” I explained.
    She picked up the bag. “Great. Thanks.”
    “It’s probably the rock that Ginny Miller used to poison Carter Wilmott.”
    “Probably.” Her expression was stony.
    “Are you mad that it wasn’t George Miller?”
    She leaned on the table, her knuckles supporting her weight. “Listen. I’m happy when justice is served. I did not want an innocent man to go to jail, who may or may not be innocent of everything,” she said, reminding me that we still had the issue of the explosive device on the engine to contend with. “But this,” she said, pushing the plastic bag toward me, “is going to cause a whole lot of trouble for the department and the ME’s office. Is that what you intended?”
    I sputtered a little, caught off guard by her outburst. “Well, no. But yes. “ I took a deep breath and composed myself. “I hope you’re not insinuating that I should have kept this a secret.”
    “I’m not insinuating that at all.”
    “And are you completely sure that Ginny Miller was the one who was poisoning Carter Wilmott?”
    Her look told me that that was a question I shouldn’t have asked, but I wanted to know how they knew. It was my assumption that Ginny’s suicide implied her guilt, but who knew? Carter’s death had opened a Pandora’s box of suspects from George to any one of the people he had maligned on the blog, including Tony and Lucia, not to mention Coffee Lover, who seemed really incensed that Wilmott didn’t like Beans, Beans. Madden didn’t want to answer but she did anyway. “Yes, I’m sure.” She stood up straight and picked up the bag. “Good day, Ms. Bergeron.” She walked toward the door and put her hand on the knob. “Make that ‘good-bye,’ Ms. Bergeron.”
    Sometimes I know when to take a hint and today was one of those times. I hightailed it out of there and made my way to