“She did?” I turned and looked at the door through which Ophelia had disappeared.

“Yes, did you notice how pleasant she was? She’s such a dear, really.” Pepper leaned across the counter and whispered. “I think my tea really helped her.”

“Maybe.” I was still suspicious of Ophelia, and to tell the truth, not too confident in Pepper’s teas either. Pepper was beaming like a lighthouse, though, and I didn’t want to crush her, so I plastered a smile on my face and tried to act enthusiastic. “That’s great.”

Pepper turned around and plucked various herbs out of jars she had sitting open on the counter behind her. She took a pinch of this and a twig of that, placing them all into a silver ball infuser.

“Sorry I can’t go to Lavinia’s service with you. Camilla can’t come in today and I have no one to watch the shop,” she said in between pinching and plucking.

“Oh, that’s okay; I need to talk to Augusta anyway about you-know-who.” I jerked my head toward the door Ophelia had just exited. “So I couldn’t hang around with you anyway.”

Pepper poured water into a teacup and then dunked the infuser in. “Oh, you still don’t think Ophelia did it, do you?”

“Well, the evidence does point to her …”

Pepper’s lips were pressed in a thin line as she bobbed the infuser up and down, turning the water in the teacup from clear to a rich mahogany. “What about the other clues?”

I tapped my finger on the counter as I thought about the other clues. The bronzes hadn’t been stolen, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t been trying to steal them that morning. Ophelia mentioned she’d seen a big black car, but she could be trying to cast suspicion away from her. The blue fabric on the embosser might help provide physical evidence, but I knew from my crime reporting days I’d need something else to make that stick.

“I’m trying to figure out the best way to follow up on those,” I said.

Pepper slid the tea across the counter to me and I picked it up, sipping it absently, my mind on the clues. Maybe Lavinia was right and I had been too focused on Ophelia. The truth was, I couldn’t come up with a motive for her to be in the library or to want Lavinia dead … unless it had something to do with the lies they had both told about the church.

My mind went back to my conversation with Emma at the church—she’d seemed secretive, too … and what had she been holding behind her back? I made a mental note to investigate the church further.

“Don’t you have to get going?” Pepper nodded at the green 1930s kitchen clock on the wall and I realized Lavinia’s service was going to start in ten minutes.