After the rescue workers recovered the bodies, there wasn’t much else to do. So they closed down the mine and went home. A couple of days later, Finn showed me a business article in the Ashland Trumpet that said Owen Grayson had bought Tobias Dawson’s company for a song—lock, stock, and barrel. No plans had been announced about what would happen to the collapsed mine, and Grayson was quoted as saying he wasn’t in a rush to make a decision. Either way, I’d destroyed the diamonds in the cavern, so no one would be sniffing around there anytime soon. Which meant Warren T. Fox, his granddaughter, Violet, and their store, land, and house were safe for now and the foreseeable future.

I was glad I’d been able to help the Foxes, glad I’d been able to do something for someone who had once meant so much to Fletcher Lane. I thought the old man would have approved of me helping Warren, even if the two of them had parted on bad terms all those years ago.

As for me, I lapsed gracefully back into retirement. Auditing classes at Ashland Community College. Reading.

Cooking. Running the Pork Pit.

That last one was easier now, since Jake McAllister was out of the picture. The incident at the mine shaft had dominated the news, of course, but there was a small mention about Jake and the fact he’d been found dead at his father’s home. The coroner blamed it on natural causes caused by an undetected heart defect—or some such nonsense. There was no mention of Jake being at the party at Mab Monroe’s house, and no mention of him being found stabbed to death in one of the bathrooms.

But with Jake dead, his father, Jonah McAllister, had no real reason to squeeze me anymore. At least, not about the robbery and pressing charges again his son. Oh, I imagined Jonah was still angry at me over what had happened the day he had come to the restaurant and that he’d get back around to harassing me sooner or later, if only because he enjoyed that sort of thing. But for now, the Pork Pit was back up to its regular flow of customers. Still, I kept an eye out for trouble. If Jonah McAllister ever connected me with the blond hooker who’d been at Mab’s party, he’d get his giants, come to the Pork Pit, and raze the restaurant to the ground—with me inside it.