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Zoe and Lauren stopped at Gary’s Burger Diner on the way home for lunch, Lauren ordering a plain meat patty for Annie.
After enjoying the smoky barbecue special, with fries and chocolate shakes, they returned to Lauren’s cottage.
“Brrt!” Annie came running to the door as soon as they opened it.
“Yes, I’ve got a burger from Gary’s for you.” Lauren held the paper bag in the air, the warm, meaty smell making her hungry all over again.
She crumbled it up and put it into Annie’s lilac bowl.
Annie’s pink tongue darted out to test it, then she munched enthusiastically. When she was finished, she jumped up on a kitchen chair and looked at them inquiringly.
“Brrt?”
“I’m going to make a sleuthing plan.” Zoe pulled out her phone.
Lauren groaned.
“Brrt!” Good!
“Let me type in what that scrap of paper said so we don’t forget the wording.”
“‘It’s knot in here.’ And knot was spelled k-n-o-t,” she said.
“Like a knot in a piece of wood.”
“Or a sailor’s knot.”
“Or a knot in your hair.” Zoe giggled.
Lauren patted her shoulder-length light brown locks. “I don’t have any at the back, do I?”
“No, I would have told you. And I don’t really get knots because my hair is so short.” Zoe touched her brunette pixie cut.
“Brrt.” I don’t have any knots.
“No, you don’t,” Lauren agreed, gently stroking her. Annie took good care of her long fur, and Lauren brushed her regularly.
“Okay, so we have to find a place in Shirley’s house that has some kind of knot. Obviously not that desk drawer.” Zoe tapped away on her device.
“And the police have the cookie jar that was used to ... you know.” Lauren shivered.
“So we have to go back to Shirley’s house and search for clues.” Zoe tapped away.
“Don’t you think that’s what the police are doing right now?”
“Call Mitch and find out,” Zoe urged.
“I don’t want to bother him while he’s working. He’s already a bit frustrated that Detective Castern will be getting the case.”
“I don’t blame him.” Zoe nodded. “You can ask him tonight when he gets home.”
“I’ll see.”
“Okay.” Zoe nodded.
“We should weigh the gold we found yesterday,” Lauren said.
“Good idea!” Zoe jumped up and headed for the door. “Back in a jiff!”
Two minutes later, she returned with the small plastic bag.
“I’ve got my digital kitchen scales.” Lauren turned them on. Zero appeared on the screen.
“Awesome.” Zoe placed the plastic bag onto the tray.
“Shouldn’t we weigh them without the plastic?” Lauren asked. “Or at least know how much the bag weighs by itself?”
“Good point.”
“Brrt!”
“I think I’ve got some bags in here.” Lauren rummaged through a kitchen drawer and pulled out a packet. “Here.”
She removed their find, and weighed a single, empty bag, that looked identical to Zoe’s.
“It doesn’t weigh much,” Zoe observed. “Now, I’ll weigh our gold again.” She removed the empty bag and put in their findings from yesterday, encased in her resealable bag.
“Minus the weight of the plastic bag, we found 0.40 grams of gold flakes.” Zoe’s eyes were wide with excitement. “Let me check how much gold is worth today.” She tapped away on her phone. “It’s worth fifteen-hundred-and fifty-six dollars per troy ounce, so if I use the calculator on here, that means we have twenty dollars.” Her face fell. “We only made twenty dollars? The panning bowl and classifier cost eighteen!”
“We’ll have to split the two dollars three ways with Martha,” Lauren reminded her.
“Brrt!” Four!
“You’re right. Sorry, Annie. I was going to give you half of my share. But it’s only fifty cents each.” Lauren stroked her fur baby. “And we have to find somewhere to sell our little bit of gold first,” Lauren reminded her.
“We can ask Howard. Didn’t he say at the senior center when he was talking to Shirley that he knew some reputable dealers?”
“Good idea.” Lauren smiled. “We can ask Denise for his phone number.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving it to us.”
“But maybe we shouldn’t tell her about our find,” Lauren cautioned, “although it’s not worth much. The less people who know right now, the better.”
“Yeah. We don’t want to end up like Shirley.”
***
WHEN MITCH ARRIVED home that night, he looked tired again. She made him sit in the kitchen while she cooked their dinner – bacon and eggs, although it was usually a breakfast dish.
“Brrt?” Annie sniffed the bacon scented air.
“Here.” She placed a couple of bits in Annie’s bowl.
“Thanks.” Mitch smiled as she placed his full plate in front of him.
They took turns cooking, and divided the other household chores as well.
“Zoe wants to know if you’ve found any more clues in Shirley’s house – specifically, scraps of paper like the one Annie found on the floor under the desk drawer yesterday.”
“Of course she does,” he mock-groaned, then forked up some bacon. After a couple of minutes he said, “No, we didn’t find anything like that. The cookie jar was empty, like you said and is now officially the murder weapon. Today was my last day on the case. Castern is taking over tomorrow morning.”
“Yuck.”
“Brrt!” Annie had finished her bacon and jumped on the chair next to Lauren, bunting her arm.
“The boss thinks Castern should be able to solve this one. Although, the neighbors I’ve spoken to said they didn’t see any strangers lurking in the area.
“I guess he’ll check around the gold dealers in Sacramento and see if anyone has come in trying to sell a gold nugget, if that’s what the killer was after.”
That reminded Lauren that she and Zoe had weighed their find, and she filled him in.
“That’s great.” He smiled.
“But it’s only fifty cents each, after the equipment cost,” she said. “And I guess the dealer would charge a fee or a small percentage of the spot price Zoe found online, so we might not even get that much each.”
“But at least you didn’t come away empty handed.”
“Brrt!”
They all settled down to watch TV – it was Annie’s turn to pick and she chose a movie about a horse who had to find its way home, and befriended animals along the way.
“That was a lovely choice,” Lauren told her fur baby when the movie ended.
“Just what I needed to take my mind off work,” Mitch agreed, gently stroking the silver-gray tabby. “See you tomorrow, Annie.”
Lauren gave her fur baby a cuddle, before retiring with Mitch. “See you tomorrow,” she murmured.
***
MITCH KISSED LAUREN goodbye thoroughly in the kitchen the next morning, just as Zoe burst in through the back door.
“So, what are we going to do today after breakfast – oops!”
“There is a thing called knocking,” Mitch pointed out, his arms still around Lauren.
Lauren felt her cheeks heat a little.
“Sorry, I didn’t think,” Zoe apologized. “Chris has already gone to work and I thought I’d see if Lauren had some toast I could cadge. I gave the last three slices to Chris this morning with his eggs, and I’m starving!”
“You don’t have any food in the house?” Mitch frowned.
“Of course we do. Lots of salad and veggies, meat, milk, ice-cream, fruit. But I usually have toast at breakfast. Whole-wheat with plenty of butter. I’ve got butter, but no bread.”
“Zoe and I usually go to the supermarket on Mondays,” she reminded him.
“And today I’ll buy two loaves so we don’t run out.”
Mitch kissed her swiftly on the lips, and departed. “I’ll cook tonight,” he called over his shoulder.
“Great.” She smiled after him.
“Sorry about that,” Zoe said again once they were alone in the kitchen. “I just love living next door to you – it’s like we’re roomies again.”
“Except Mitch wasn’t living with me when we were roomies,” Lauren couldn’t help pointing out.
“True.”
“Brrt!” Annie scampered into the kitchen and greeted Zoe.
Lauren got the toast out of the pantry. “Two slices?”
“Please. And butter. I can go and get mine if you’re out.”
“I’ve got plenty.” Lauren opened the refrigerator.
“So, after we go grocery shopping, we can start sleuthing.”
Lauren confirmed that Castern was taking over the case.
“We’ll visit Shirley’s house and look for clues. Castern won’t catch us,” Zoe said.
“Shirley’s house is a crime scene.”
“But it mightn’t be now,” Zoe argued. “If Mitch and his crew have gone through the whole house and didn’t find anything, they might have got rid of the tape, which means anyone can enter.”
“Anyone with a key and a right to be there.”
“Okay.” Zoe sighed after a minute. “I guess.”
“I’m sure Castern wouldn’t hesitate to arrest us.”
“Brrt,” Annie agreed sadly. She’d tried to make friends with the detective a while ago, but he hadn’t been interested at all.
“So we’ll have to find another way,” Zoe said.
Lauren toasted the whole-wheat bread and when it popped up, she presented it to her cousin.
“Thanks.” Zoe grinned, and slathered butter onto each slice. “You’re the best.”
After Zoe finished her breakfast, they visited the supermarket in the small town, then returned to their respective houses to put their groceries away.
“Now what are we going to do?” Zoe asked after rejoining Lauren in her cottage.
“Have lunch, and then I was going to decide which cupcakes to bake tomorrow.”
“Gold Rush, and salted caramel, because you haven’t made that for a while, and what about blueberry creams?” Zoe proposed.
“Brrt!”
“Okay,” Lauren agreed.
“Now we’ve got that out of the way, how are we going to discover who stole Shirley’s gold nugget?”
“We don’t know it was actually stolen,” she pointed out.
“Brrt,” Annie agreed.
“But who killed Shirley? Didn’t Joyce say she had adult kids?”
“Who don’t live with her.”
“Maybe one of them did it!”
“Why?” Lauren stared at her. “We don’t even know who they are.”
“Okay, scratch that.” Zoe dug her phone out of her jeans’ pocket and made a note. “By the way, what’s for lunch?”
“I have no idea.”
“Brrt.” Annie trotted to the open pantry door, hooked her paw around a small can, and made it fall to the floor. Then she pushed it over to her bowl.
“I can see what Annie’s going to have.” Zoe giggled.
“I think she wants hers now.” Lauren smiled at her fur baby. “Chicken in gravy, one of her favorites.”
“I guess we could have tuna and salad and be healthy.” Zoe sounded like that was the worst idea in the world.
“Yeah.” She didn’t sound any more enthusiastic.
They ended up going to Zoe’s house for chicken wings and salad.
“I don’t mind having salad if I can have yummy wings as well,” Zoe mumbled around a mouthful.
“I hear you.” Lauren glanced appreciatively at the golden-brown wings Zoe had fried with a touch of teriyaki sauce.
“Brrt?” Annie sat next to Lauren at the Formica kitchen table.
“You’ve had your lunch already.”
“Brrp.” Annie stuck her lower lip out a bit.
“I don’t think teriyaki is good for cats,” she apologized.
Annie sighed and settled down in her chair.
“You should definitely get an air fryer,” Zoe advised when they’d finished their meal. “It’s so easy to cook things in.”
“But I have an oven, stove, and microwave already,” she pointed out. “And I don’t know if I have room on the counter for an air fryer as well.”
“You’d make room.” Zoe winked.
“Why don’t we contact Denise for Howard’s details?” Lauren proposed.
“Okay.” Zoe grabbed her phone.
After a short conversation, she gestured to Lauren for a pen, and wrote on the back of her hand. She ended the call by thanking Denise.
“Got it.” She waved her hand in the air. “I’ll call him now.”
But there was no answer.
“Pooh. I had to leave a voicemail.”
“I hope he gets back to you.”
“Or maybe he’ll visit the café this week and we can ask him then.”
“Brrt!”