Read Online By Cook or by Crook (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) by Maya Corrigan - Free Book Online

cared to answer about Nadia’s death. She walked around the eating bar, removed the pan with the baked oatmeal mixture from the oven, and set it on a trivet. “We’re having a get-together here in memory of Nadia, Thursday at six, before the team match.”
    “Yes, we should do that.” Bethany pulled a neatly folded tissue from her skirt pocket and blotted her eyelashes. “Poor Nadia. I just wish we’d been on better terms before she died. She never had a chance to say she was sorry. And I didn’t have the chance to forgive her.”
    She looked so forlorn Val wanted to comfort her. “It’s always bad when someone dies, especially if you have unresolved conflicts. Forgive her now. It’s not too late.”
    “I get your point. I have to let go of my anger.” She let go of the tissue in her clenched fist.
    “Don’t show any anger when you talk to the police. They’ll want to interview us all.”
    “I have to talk to the police?” Bethany knocked over her cranberry spritzer. “Should I tell them how Nadia treated me?”
    Val grabbed a dishcloth and mopped up the spill. “Just answer their questions with facts. You don’t have to tell them your feelings about the way she treated you.” She rinsed the counter with a clean cloth and refilled Bethany’s drink. “How did you hear about the racket burning?”
    “Chatty told me. I bet whoever set that fire murdered Nadia.”
    “It’s a foolish risk to take the day before committing a murder.” Unless something happened in the interim to turn a vandal into a killer.
    Bethany studied a beet chip. “We have to figure out who did it.”
    “The police are on it.”
    “The police here direct traffic and keep the tourists happy. What do they know about murder? Nobody ever gets murdered here. You lived in New York. They have murders there all the time.”
    Val reached for a knife to cut the oatmeal energy bars. “I never ran across a single dead body in New York.” She couldn’t say the same for Bayport.
    “We’re way ahead of the police because we knew Nadia. I wonder if Joe Westrin snapped and killed her.” Bethany snapped a beet chip in two. “She treated him like dirt. Got rid of him like she got rid of me.”
    Val suppressed a laugh. Anyone who could equate switching tennis partners with divorcing a husband took the game way too seriously. No doubt the police would question Nadia’s ex. A current or former spouse always made a good suspect in a murder . . . once the police ruled out the person who found the body. “I barely know Joe. He stopped by the café a couple of times. Seemed like a nice guy.”
    “Too nice for Nadia.” Bethany gulped her cranberry drink. “She was ruthless in her real estate dealings too.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “Common knowledge, according to Bigby.”
    Bethany spoke the last three words the way other people might say “according to Webster” or “according to Hoyle.” Who dared to doubt her brother Bigby’s real estate expertise? He could turn farmland into tract housing overnight. He also brought the personality of a bulldozer to the tennis court. Each time the ball came over the net in doubles, he bellowed “Mine!” Either his partners stayed out of his way or he mowed them down. Maybe the big man had mowed down little Nadia, his former doubles partner, and that explained the frostiness Val had noticed between them.
    Val ran her knife around the edge of the baking pan. “I heard that Bigby and Nadia used to play mixed doubles together. How come they stopped?”
    “You’re the one who said people get new tennis partners all the time.” Bethany scowled. “I hope you’re not suggesting Bigby had anything to do with Nadia’s death. He would never hurt her.”
    “I didn’t suggest anything.”
    Easy to understand Bethany’s defensive reaction. She could see Joe Westrin as a murderer, but not her brother Bigby, and Val could imagine Bigby a killer, but her cousin Monique? Never. Yet here at the club,