Myrna wrote down the order, ripped the paper off the pad and clipped it onto a round metal holder, then twirled it so the order was facing Bud, the guy who made the sandwiches in the back.

Her steely gaze assessed the crowd, then she nodded at me and shouted to one of her employees, “Alice, can you watch the front?”

Myrna pulled me to the side, out of earshot of the workers and customers. “What’s up?”

“Well, you probably heard Lavinia was found dead this morning,” I said tentatively. There was no love lost between Myrna and Lavinia and I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be.

“Darned old fool fell down the steps, I hear.”

“Maybe…”

She looked over her blue framed cats-eye glasses at me, her brow wrinkling in confusion. “What are you saying—she didn’t fall?”

“It’s possible she had some help.”

Myrna snorted. “Well, I know a few people that would have liked to help, but I thought the police were ruling it an accident.”

“They are. It probably was. But I was just wondering if you saw anyone around this morning. I know you open up early, and it looks like Lavinia went in early for some reason, so I was wondering if someone else was in there.”

Myrna crossed her arms over her ample breasts, scrunched up her face and tapped the pencil on her lips. “Let me think … I came in to set things up early—you know we get an early morning coffee crowd—so I spent most of my time out back.”

“Oh, so you didn’t see anyone or anything out of the ordinary?”

“Well, now come to think of it, I did. I took the trash out to the dumpster in the alley. The church is right at the end of the alley and I happened to glance down and saw that woman that runs the new real estate business.”

“Ophelia Withington?” I asked. Ophelia had come to town about ten years ago and opened a real estate business. She was hardly ‘new’, but these Yankee old-timers considered anyone not born here to be ‘new’. Ophelia had married auctioneer Pete Withington, who had passed away a couple of years ago.

“Yeah, that’s her. I thought it was strange that she’d be out that early in the morning and even stranger what she was wearing,” Myrna said.

“Why? What was she wearing?”

Myrna looked at me with a funny look on her face. “She was wearing one of them big old raincoats … a trench coat, I think they’re called. I can’t imagine why she’d want to traipse around in that thing. Heck, they weren’t even forecasting rain.”

Chapter Four

Chapter Four