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  I also shut up. I figured that even though I had absolutely nothing to hide, there was no point in volunteering any information unless he asked for it.

  “So what brought you to Mr. DeVane’s house tonight?” Detective Stoltz asked.

  “Hot fudge sundaes,” I replied. But I quickly realized that a more detailed answer was required. “Mr. DeVane’s assistant, Federico, called me a couple of weeks ago and asked me to set up a hot fudge sundae station at tonight’s party. Apparently hot fudge sundaes are—I mean, were—Omar DeVane’s favorite food.”

  The detective’s laser-like gaze remained fixed on me. I had a feeling that his ability to stare at people like that was one of the main reasons the man had been qualified to become a homicide detective.

  “Had you ever met Mr. DeVane before tonight?” Detective Stoltz asked.

  “No,” I replied. “Never.” I was tempted to mention that I had once owned an Omar DeVane purse, complete with a big gold ODV insignia. That was back when I lived a fast-paced life in the city, a time of my life when accessories actually mattered. Too much information, I quickly decided.

  “So you had no relationship at all with the deceased?” he persisted.

  “None whatsoever.”

  “I thought that was the case,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted.

  “I think I have what I need,” the detective announced crisply. “Thank you for your time, Ms. McKay. You are no longer required to remain on the premises.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I stood up and headed for the door, then suddenly turned back.

  “Detective Stoltz?” I said. “I just want to say that I really hope you find out who’s behind this. I didn’t know Omar DeVane, but he seemed like a genuinely fine person.”

  “Thank you again,” the detective replied, still businesslike. “That will be all.”

  * * *

  It was past midnight by the time I pulled the truck into my driveway with Emma sitting beside me. As soon as I turned off the engine, we were shrouded by the darkness of a moonless night.

  I glanced over at my niece, who had been silent during the entire ride home. At the moment, she looked about as lively and as energetic as a rag doll. An extremely exhausted rag doll.

  It was only then that I realized that I, too, was completely worn out. Not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally. I supposed I’d been in shock throughout the evening, yet now that I was home, that feeling was wearing off fast.

  That was the thing about home. You could be your real self.

  And the three-story Victorian at 59 Sugar Maple Way was definitely home.

  I’d lived in this house since I was five years old. That was when my dad had passed away. That traumatic event had been life-changing for many reasons, one of which was that shortly afterward, my mother, my two sisters, and I moved in with Grams. My sister Julie was twelve then, and Nina was ten.

  While making a move like that could have been jarring, I had actually welcomed it. I’d been visiting my grandmother there for as long as I could remember, and I had only positive feelings about it.

  That was largely because of my grandmother, of course. But the house itself had always felt as warm and welcoming as the woman who’d thrown open the front door every time we drove up, wearing a huge smile and more often than not bearing a big plate of freshly baked cookies or a new picture book or a set of paper dolls.

  And what a house it was.

  It had been built in the late 1880s, which I’ve always considered one of America’s most romantic periods. True, women had yet to get the vote, and they were pretty much hampered by the social norms of the day, not to mention—ugh!—corsets. Still, the people who lived then must have felt they were witnessing the dawn of the modern age. After all, it was a time of great innovation, with telephones and electric light bulbs and ballpoint pens making their first appearances.

  The bright yellow house was outfitted with the most delightful features of houses built during that era. There were curved bay windows on both sides of the front door running almost to the top of the first floor. Charming gingerbread trim lined the eaves. Jutting out of the top was a turret. The cone-shaped roof had always made the turret look like a gigantic ice cream cone, at least to me.

  But my favorite feature by far was the magnificent porch that ran along the entire front. When I was growing up, that porch had been the perfect place for wiling away the lazy hours of a long summer day, reading or daydreaming or giggling with my sisters. A few months earlier, it had gotten a new addition: a wooden ramp that ran alongside the steps to make it easier for Grams to get in and out of the house.

  Of course, a house that old had its downside. Every square inch of character meant another square inch of an aging building that needed more and more upkeep with each year that passed. And with Grams able to do less and less, not to mention the high cost of repairs, the house looked a little—well, rough around the edges.

  The entire front porch sagged. It also creaked so loudly that we were never surprised when someone knocked on the front door or rang the bell since the aging floorboards had already told us that someone had arrived. The whole house was sorely in need of a paint job, since the yellow paint was chipping off in spots. The wood of the window frames was laced with cracks. Replacing them was another big job that would have to get done at some point.

  Now that it was summer, stubby crabgrass covered the front yard. At least it created the appearance of a solid mass of green, close enough to a lawn that I could live with it.

  The house definitely needed a facelift. Yet the disrepair wasn’t what I focused on. Instead, I noticed all the personal touches that Grams and the rest of us who lived there had added over the years.

  With summer at its height, the flowerpots that Grams had lined up along the banister were filled with a profusion of brightly colored annuals. Even in the darkness, I could make out their vibrant petals, wonderful reds and pinks and purples.

  Behind the raucous display of flowers sat three rocking chairs. From my perspective, the fact that they didn’t match only increased their charm. One was white wicker, one was covered with peeling blue paint, and one was natural wood. Each of them sported a needlepoint pillow that Grams had made. The pillow on the wooden rocker, the one with the sunflowers on it, was my favorite. The splash of yellow was the first thing my eye went to every time I walked up the front steps.

  Whenever I looked at that house, what I saw was all the love that had always resided there, and still did.

  As I unlocked the front door, I automatically wiped my feet on the welcome mat that was another one of Grams’s personal touches. It was adorned with the black silhouette of a cat and the words “Wipe Your Paws.” My niece was right behind me, teetering like an extra in a zombie movie.

  We had barely stepped into the house before Digger launched into such a warm greeting you’d have thought we’d been gone for months. His tail was swinging back and forth at full speed, and he leaped up and down as if he was spring-loaded, as usual totally unable to control his ecstasy over our return. The furry ball of energy has a lot of terrier in him, which means he has the face of a teddy bear and the personality of a Tasmanian devil.

  “Hey, Digger!” I whispered, crouching down to give him a hug and a serious ear-scratching. “How’s my favorite doggie?”

  Chloe also drifted into the front hallway, looking a bit dazed, as if she’d just woken up. The feline counterpart to our resident canine wasn’t about to let a mere dog get all the attention.

  As Emma reached down to pet her, she nearly fell over from fatigue.

  “Why don’t you go straight to bed?” I suggested, concerned that my niece had gone through such a terrible experience.

  “Good idea,” she mumbled, already heading straight for her room. “G’night, Kate.”

  I tiptoed farther inside the house. A light was on in the living room, but I knew that even if Grams had gone to bed, she would
have left it on for Emma and me.

  “Hello?” I called softly.

  “I’m in here, Katydid,” Grams called back.

  So she was awake. I was tired enough that the idea of going straight to bed the way Emma did sounded pretty appealing. But I wanted to fills Grams in on what had happened that evening.

  I stepped into the living room, with Digger and Chloe still underfoot. To me, this was the homiest, most welcoming room in the house. I loved everything about it: the stone fireplace, the dark red velvet couch with gold carved feet, the two incredibly comfortable armchairs. True, the furnishings were old-fashioned and somewhat threadbare. But that only made them fit into the house itself, reflecting its character and its feeling that it had been providing shelter for a long, long time.

  Grams sat nestled amidst the row of throw cushions that lined the back of the couch. She had crafted each and every one of them during an intense needlepoint phase. Draped behind them was an afghan that she had crocheted back in the nineteen-seventies, using a color combination that was apparently quite popular then: orange, lime green, and gold. Those colors made me kind of glad that I’d missed that decade entirely.

  She was resting her feet on another one of her handcrafted masterpieces, a footstool with a picture of a house surrounded by a kelly green lawn. She’d made it during her rug-hooking phase, during which she never tired of putting on a big grin and announcing, “Guess what! I’m a hooker!”

  Even though it was late, she was working away on her current project, a quilt for Emma’s bed. She was bent over it, her face half-hidden by her gray hair, which she wore in a neat, sharply cut pageboy. The cheerful patchwork, the Ohio Star pattern in the bright reds and purples Emma had requested, lay across her lap.

  She stopped working as I walked into the room and looked up at me expectantly.

  “How did it go?” she asked, her eyes bright. “I couldn’t go to sleep without hearing how the evening went!”

  She read the expression on my face before I had a chance to answer. “My goodness!” she cried. “What happened, Katydid?”

  I sank into one of the comfortable overstuffed chairs. With my hands lying limply in my lap and my shoulders slumped, I told her about the events of the evening.

  “Oh, my!” she cried when I was finished. “What a terrible thing! I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now.”

  And then another thought occurred to her. “Where’s Emma?” she asked. “How is she coping with this?”

  “She went off to bed,” I said.

  “And you should do the same,” Grams said. “You must be exhausted. Go get some sleep.”

  She was right; I was exhausted. As for whether or not I’d actually be able to sleep, that was another matter entirely.

  Chapter 4

  The Good Humor company started in 1920 in Youngstown, Ohio, when confectioner Harry Burt created a chocolate coating compatible with ice cream. His daughter was the first to try it. Her verdict? It tasted great but was too messy to eat. Burt’s son suggested freezing the sticks used for their Jolly Boy Suckers (Burt’s earlier invention) into the ice cream to make a handle, and things took off from there.

  —http://www.goodhumor.com/article

  It was nearly three a.m. by the time I dozed off. Even then, my sleep was fitful and plagued by nightmares.

  So it was no surprise that when I jerked awake on Sunday morning, I felt dazed. It was as if some supernatural being had snuck into my room in the middle of the night and coated my brain in cobwebs.

  Even so, I dragged myself out of bed. After all, I had a business to run.

  Yet it wasn’t only my sense of duty that got me out of bed, tiptoeing past Grams and Emma’s closed doors as I headed to the kitchen. I figured that throwing myself into my work was the best thing I could do to distract myself from the unsettled feelings that continued to haunt me.

  I filled a mug with freshly brewed coffee, as grateful as I was every morning for the miracle of caffeine. Clutching it, I stepped outside onto the front porch. I could already see that it was turning out to be the perfect day for day-trippers: low to mid eighties, low humidity, not a cloud in the sky aside from a few puffy white ones that looked as if they were there solely to break up the monotony of the endless pale blue. It was such a gorgeous day that I decided to leave my truck home and walk into town.

  A half hour later, I was strolling along quiet residential streets lined with towering, leaf-laden trees. I found myself looking forward to my usual low-key Sunday morning. While tourists from New York City and every other place imaginable swarm into town on both days of the weekend, they generally don’t become much of a presence until close to noon.

  In fact, on Sundays, most of the shops in town don’t open until eleven, even those that cater to the visitors rather than the locals. The restaurants are closed until lunchtime, aside from the Hudson Roasters Coffee Company and Toastie’s (which is the absolute best place around to get amazing breakfast food like banana and Nutella pancakes sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts or bacon, cheese, avocado, and tomato omelets that are so light and fluffy they practically float off the plate).

  All in all, Sunday morning is one of my favorite times. There’s something uniquely peaceful about it. The air wafting off the Hudson River is remarkably fresh and clear, and the whole world feels silent and still.

  As I strolled toward town, I was already lost in a world of heavy cream and sugar. I was busily plotting which flavor-of-the-day to conjure up. Lately I’d been playing around with the concept of combining favorite snack foods to make a groundbreaking new flavor. One idea was caramel ice cream dotted with pieces of pretzel, popcorn, and potato chips. The salt that was in the three add-ins, I figured, would be a fabulous complement to the caramel. I was thinking of calling it something along the lines of Frat Party—or maybe Couch Potato’s Dream.

  Then again, I didn’t have any pretzels, popcorn, or potato chips on hand. As I turned the corner at the main intersection in town, I was racking my brain, trying to figure out how I could find high-quality versions so early on a Sunday morning.

  As I turned the corner of the downtown area’s main intersection, onto Hudson Street, I let out a yelp.

  “What on earth—?” I cried.

  Rather than the deserted downtown I’d been expecting, Hudson Street was abuzz.

  Cars and trucks had already filled all the good parking spaces, and dozens of people were crowding the sidewalks. But they weren’t just strolling around. They were setting up cameras or scribbling in notebooks or talking on cell phones. Two or three of them were stopping the few pedestrians who strolled by, trying to engage them in conversation.

  Five seconds later, I noticed that some of the trucks bore the logos of TV and radio stations. Not only local stations, either.

  There were stations from New York City that I recognized. WCBS, WNBC, WABC. But there were cable stations, as well, including CNN and several others. There were even some from cities as far away as Philadelphia and Boston.

  It took me about two seconds to figure out that they weren’t here in Wolfert’s Roost because word had traveled about the sensational ice cream at Lickety Splits. They were here because of Omar DeVane’s murder.

  It took me another two seconds to realize that I shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. In fact, I was amazed I hadn’t expected something like this. After all, Omar was world-famous and ridiculously wealthy, someone who had a presence in the closets of a large percentage of the world’s women.

  I wove through the crowd, taking care not to knock over any cameras. Or reporters. I had just turned on the lights in my shop and was putting on my black-and-white-checked apron when Willow dashed in. As was typical, she was dressed in an outfit completely befitting of a yoga instructor. Comfy pants, knit shirt that showed off her slim silhouette, and sneakers. She looked ready to drop to a Downward-Facing Dog position at a moment’s notice.

  It was still early, but Willow was an early riser by nature. She
didn’t even mind teaching a couple of classes at Heart, Mind & Soul on Sunday mornings, starting at 7:30. Somehow, people who are into healthy living seem to enjoy getting up with the birds and the sun and the trash-haulers.

  “How were your classes?” I asked, tying a loopy bow at my back.

  “Fine, I guess,” she replied. “At least I hope so. I’m so distracted that I’m not even sure.” She frowned, meanwhile running her hand through her short, pale blond hair. “What about you? How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. “I was about to make a batch of ice cream. I wanted to experiment with the sweet-salty thing—seeing if I could keep pretzels and potato chips and popcorn from getting too soggy—but I don’t know if I can get good-quality junk food on a Sunday morning. So instead I’m thinking of going with a new flavor I’d call Chocolate Explosion. I’m thinking dark chocolate ice cream with three kinds of chocolate chunks: white, milk, and semisweet . . .”

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Kate?” Willow persisted. “I mean, what happened last night was kind of a big deal.”

  I realized then that she was probably right: that I was undoubtedly more upset than I was aware of. But I wasn’t feeling it. Maybe I was still in shock.

  “I could hardly sleep last night,” she said. “And today I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “I do,” I replied. “You can help me make ice cream.”

  Most of the time, I was crazed and Willow was calm. But today I was the one who took charge. I led her into the back of the shop, handed her an apron and a sharp knife, and said, “Start cutting up these bars of chocolate.”

  An hour and a half later, as I was lowering a huge tub of my freshly made Chocolate Explosion ice cream into the display case, Ethan and Emma burst into the shop. Emma’s eyes were shining, and her cheeks were flushed the bright pink of a strawberry ice cream cone. As usual, I could barely see Ethan’s eyes at all.

  “This town is positively crawling with reporters!” Emma said, glued to the window. “Have you looked outside, Kate? Wolfert’s Roost is going to be famous!”