“You seem tense,” Andrew Milhone said, draping his arm around Kat’s shoulders as they sat side by side on her living room couch.
Kat didn’t answer right away. Instead, she focused on petting Matty. The yellow-and-brown tortoiseshell was snoozing in her lap without a care in the world. At that moment, Kat couldn’t help but envy the lazy thing.
Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to shake Tiffany’s accusation from her head. Could Aaron Moskowitz really have been murdered?
“Hey.” Andrew squeezed Kat’s shoulder. “I forgot to ask how that newspaper interview went. Did you put in a good word for 4F?”
“Not exactly,” Kat said.
“Really? I thought that was the whole reason you were meeting with this reporter woman. What was her name again?”
“Tiffany Reed.”
Matty adjusted positions. Kat rubbed the tortoiseshell’s tummy, recalling how excited Tiffany had been after the paramedics had driven off. Was it possible she had been the one to kill Aaron? Could Tiffany have been so desperate to prove she would make a good crime reporter that she was willing to create her own story? It seemed ridiculous, and yet Kat couldn’t forget how Tiffany’s eyes had gleamed when she’d started talking about her passion.
She took a deep breath. She was letting her mind run amok. Aaron’s death had been an accident, pure and simple.
“My interview with Tiffany was cut short,” Kat told Andrew. “A man died while we were at Jessie’s.”
“I heard about it at the station, but I didn’t realize you were there when it happened. Tough break, huh?”
Tom ambled out of the kitchen. The brown-and-black feline sat down on the carpet and licked his chops, his green eyes on the humans.
“Food allergies aren’t to be messed with,” Andrew said. “Shame the guy didn’t get help in time.”
Kat ran her tongue across her teeth, debating over whether to bring up the possibility of foul play. As a detective with the Cherry Hills Police Department, Andrew might not appreciate talking about murder when he was off duty.
“But, hey.” Andrew patted his thigh, an invitation for Tom. “Tragedies happen.”
Tom hopped onto the couch and settled down next to Andrew’s leg. Andrew scratched the cat’s chin, a gesture that encouraged Tom to stretch his neck out as far as it could go.
So Matty wouldn’t feel left out, Kat ran her hand down the tortoiseshell’s back. “Aaron’s family must feel terrible.”
“Aaron’s the guy’s name?” Andrew asked.
Kat nodded. “He was a restaurant critic.”
“Strange profession for a man with food allergies.”
“He might have only been allergic to nuts. And supposedly he knew enough to carry an EpiPen around with him.”
“Wonder why he didn’t use it.”
“That’s just it.” Kat shifted sideways to face him better, causing Matty to lift her head. “We looked for the EpiPen after the EMTs left and couldn’t find it.”
“Kat.” Andrew’s hand stopped mid-pet. “What exactly are you saying? You think somebody stole this guy’s EpiPen so he would die?”
“I don’t know.” Kat smoothed out the fur between Matty’s ears. “I don’t know what to think. There are just some things about this that don’t make much sense.”
“It sounds straightforward to me.”
Kat couldn’t blame him for coming to that conclusion. If it hadn’t been for Tiffany, she would assume Aaron had died accidentally, too. But now that the idea had been planted, she couldn’t uproot it.
Tom twisted around and nudged Andrew’s limp fingers with his nose. The feline clearly didn’t appreciate his massage being cut short so the humans could talk about death.
Andrew started petting the cat again. “Okay, assuming foul play was involved, who would want to see this Aaron guy dead?”
“Tiffany Reed, for one. She wants to be a crime reporter. Badly. And what better way to prove she would make an effective crime reporter than to actually report on a crime? What if she killed Aaron for a chance to impress her editor?”
“Did you see her doing anything suspicious during your interview?”
Kat thought about it. “No, but she did make it pretty clear she didn’t like Aaron.”
“Not liking somebody generally isn’t enough motive for murder.”
“True. But I can tell you, this guy was pretty unpleasant. A stray cat got into the restaurant, and he threatened to call the Health Department on Jessie.”
“So Jessie has motive,” Andrew replied.
“What?” Kat sat up sharply, almost dumping Matty off her lap. “Jessie wouldn’t have killed Aaron.”
“What are you basing that on? The fact that you like her?”
“The fact that she has a big heart,” Kat retorted. “She gave me a job when I needed one, remember? And she made that massive food donation to the homeless shelter at Thanksgiving.”
“And both of those gestures hinged on her having a restaurant,” Andrew said. “This is the restaurant her parents opened and named after her, I might add. This is their legacy. Now what do you think she would do if somebody threatened to take that away?”
“Oh, come on, Andrew.” Kat leaned away from him, prompting Matty to slap Kat’s arm with her tail. “You know Jessie as well as I do. She wouldn’t kill anybody. It’s not in her nature.”
Andrew shrugged.
His nonchalance fueled Kat’s annoyance. “Look, I know you police detectives are trained to be skeptical, but can you really picture Jessie killing a man?”
“Anybody can kill under the right circumstances.”
Kat snorted, remembering how he had treated her as a suspect when she had discovered her murdered neighbor’s body back in the summer. No, Kat corrected herself, he had treated her as a ‘person of interest,’ not a suspect. She still wasn’t completely clear on the difference.
“This argument is premature, anyway,” Andrew said. “There’s no proof this Aaron guy was murdered. It’s all speculation at this point.”
Kat searched his face. “I take it CHPD isn’t going to be opening an investigation into Aaron’s death.”
“That’s not up to me. But an autopsy is standard procedure when a person dies unexpectedly. Depending on what’s found, it’s possible I could get the case.”
“If there is a case.”
“If there is a case,” Andrew confirmed.
They lapsed into silence. Even if Aaron’s death was ruled a homicide, Kat couldn’t help but think that still left them no closer to answering the question of who had killed him.
Andrew drummed his fingers on Tom’s back. Although Kat didn’t think the gesture was for the feline’s benefit, Tom seemed to like it. He closed his eyes and started purring.
After a minute, Andrew stopped and stood up. Tom glanced up at him, his whiskers drooping in disappointment.
“Where are you going?” Kat said, straightening up herself.
“To do some research.” He crossed the room and turned on Kat’s computer. “If I know you, you won’t be able to rest until you find out more about this Aaron guy.”
Kat watched him drag a second chair over from the dining room. Although she was still somewhat peeved by his comments about Jessie, she had calmed down enough to realize it wasn’t personal. He was merely doing what all good detectives did, and that was look at every possible motive and suspect.
Lifting Matty off her lap and hugging the cat to her chest, Kat joined Andrew by the computer.
“You do the honors,” Andrew said, gesturing toward the desk chair.
Kat accepted the seat, situating Matty in her lap. As though to remind her human that she was the one in charge, the tortoiseshell stood up, circled around once, then laid back down in the exact same position.
Andrew turned the dining chair backward and straddled it, resting his arms along the back. “You know this guy’s last name?” he asked.
“Moskowitz.”
She pulled up a browser window and typed it in. Dozens of hits returned. But before she could click on any of them, Tom jumped onto the desk, blocking her view of the monitor. He sat down on the keyboard and released a petulant meow.
Kat stroked his back. “You didn’t appreciate us leaving you alone on the couch, huh?”
Andrew stood up long enough to flip his chair around and sit down properly. Then he relocated Tom to his lap. “That better, big guy?”
Tom head-bumped his hand in response.
Refocusing on the computer, Kat clicked on a link that took her to Aaron’s Courant review from two Sundays ago. It was for an Italian restaurant that had opened for business only a few months earlier.
“Listen to this,” she said. “Aaron gave this new Taste of Tuscany place two out of five stars, then went on to say the second star was—and I quote—‘a grand-opening gift to account for growing pains. Had this sorry excuse of an eatery been a more established restaurant, it would have begrudgingly earned a single star simply because zero stars is not an option the newspaper will entertain, no matter how appropriate.’”
Andrew winced. “Ouch.”
“Tiffany said the guy was brutal. I just didn’t realize how brutal.” Kat scrolled down the page and kept reading. “‘It’s hard to believe any reputable culinary school would have graduated Taste of Tuscany’s Chef D’Angelo. Between the unpalatable eggplant parmigiana that triggered my gag reflex, garlic bread more suitable for use as a door stopper, and pasta Florentine that looks and tastes like something a pigeon might leave on the sidewalk, whoever trained this so-called chef would be doing the rest of us a favor if he would find himself another day job posthaste.’”
Andrew snorted. “This Aaron sounds like he’d make a great diplomat, huh?”
“Yeah.” Kat could only imagine what Chef D’Angelo’s reaction had been to such vitriol.
Her skin tingled. What had Chef D’Angelo’s reaction been? Could he have been angry enough to go after the man who had published such hateful comments about his food? Assuming Aaron had disclosed his nut allergy to the Taste of Tuscany staff before ordering, Chef D’Angelo would have been aware of it. He might have decided to use that knowledge against the man at his first opportunity.
“You’re getting that look on your face,” Andrew said.
Kat blinked. “What look?”
“That look that says you have something on your mind.”
Kat tried to blank out her expression, but she knew Andrew wasn’t buying it. “Okay, so I’m wondering if this Chef D’Angelo might have had something to do with Aaron’s death.”
“You’re assuming he would have had access to whatever the guy ate today. And it sounds like Aaron would have rather chugged sewer water than dine at Taste of Tuscany again.”
Although Andrew had a point, Kat hesitated to dismiss Chef D’Angelo as a suspect without knowing exactly how bothered he was by Aaron’s review. People could be fairly resourceful when they were determined enough to exact revenge.
She trailed one finger down Matty’s back, an idea germinating. “Andrew,” she said, “you don’t happen to be free for lunch tomorrow, do you?”
Still petting Tom, Andrew leaned back in his chair. “Let me guess. You’re in the mood for Italian.”
Kat couldn’t determine if he looked more amused or resigned.