“Again, I don’t know. I don’t care. They were willing to pay handsomely and their checks cleared. That’s good enough for me.”

“Were you working with Maureen?”

“Not exactly. I mean, I’d heard of her from her deluded posts on the internet where she pretended to understand our talent,” Lara said, rolling her eyes. “And I lured her here, offered her money for private research on the rift, but told her to pretend to be with the League in order to fly under the radar around town. I told her there would be fewer questions that way.”

“For plausible deniability?” Dani guessed.

Lara’s smile was downright evil in its glee. “It never hurts to have a scapegoat. I get to do my work behind the scenes as she flings her half-assed work around accomplishing nothing. And if anything went wrong, I’d pretend not to know who she was and call League security on her. We never met in person after all. She couldn’t prove I was the one corresponding with her.”

“I’m assuming something went wrong? What with her being dead and all?” Dani suggested.

“The pompous bitch wanted an appointment with Jillian,” Lara said, all indignity. “Just strolled into my office and demanded to see Jillian, because she was sure that Dr. Ramsay would want to know all about her breakthroughs with the rift. She wouldn’t take no for an answer! She told me she was going to report me to the League for ‘impeding the progress of science!’ She tried to approach Jillian away from the office!”

“The nerve,” Dani muttered.

“So I did the only thing I could do. I went to that grubby little house she was renting and offered a slice of your apple crumble as an ‘apology.’ Jillian has been hoarding it in her mini-fridge for a week. Maureen swore she never ate sweets, but she wolfed it down quick enough. She didn’t even ask about the secret ingredient I’d sprinkled on top. A little powdered foxglove, right out of that awful Clarissa Berend’s garden. Just enough to set off that nasty heart condition of hers. All I had to do was keep her meds out of reach and the digitalis did all the work.” Lara reached into her shirt pocket and removed a tiny glass vial filled with a fine gray powder.

Dani gasped. “You used my Gramma’s crumble recipe to murder someone? That’s it, stop the wheelbarrow, I’m kicking your ass.”