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didn’t take a genius to know that the events today could easily be skewed toward painting me as a murderer. I didn’t doubt some people would find it heroic, but they weren’t people I cared to associate with. It was likely that either Sandra or Laura had already mentioned my presence at the crime scene, and I was pretty sure the telephone lines were already heating up.
    I had to stop the rumors before they had a chance to grow and spread.
    If nothing else, I could start getting the word out myself that I’d had nothing to do with Joanne Clayton’s murder.
    I just hoped the people of Parson’s Valley believed me.

Chapter 4

    “I CAN’T BELIEVE JOANNE CLAYTON IS DEAD,” BARBARA Brewster said the second I walked into Brewster’s Brews, her coffee shop on 2nd Street and Main in downtown Parson’s Valley. “Savannah Stone, what have you done?” Her voice was loud and brash, and several heads in the coffee shop turned toward me. Perhaps I would have been better off going straight home after all.
    “I didn’t kill her,” I said, matching Barbara’s volume so no one would miss my denial. “Believe me when I tell you that I’m not the only one from town who saw her today.”
    Barbara, a petite woman in her fifties with brown hair and sharp blue eyes, stared at me a few seconds before she answered. She wasn’t about to let go of it just yet. “That’s not the way I heard it.”
    “Who have you been listening to?” I asked. “Whoever it was, believe me, they got it wrong.”
    “So, you weren’t having lunch today with Joanne just before she was murdered?”
    “We had tea,” I said, and then realized how that must sound, since the herbal nightmare she’d been drinking was probably what had killed her. “But she was fine when I left her.”
    Barbara and I had always gotten along, but we wouldn’t be considered best friends by anyone’s standards. She had her finger on the pulse of Parson’s Valley, though, and if I was going to have any luck finding out who killed Joanne, I would need Barbara’s help.
    She stared at me again, and then to her credit, she announced loudly, “You know what? I believe you, Savannah. I have a hard time seeing you poisoning anyone.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “Now, if she’d been hit over the head with a chair, I might think that was more your style.”
    I’d had about enough of that. “I didn’t do that, either.” I lowered my voice as I added, “I just came in for a cup of coffee, and I was hoping for the chance to have a quiet conversation with you.”
    If there was anything Barbara liked more than playing the role of public accuser, it was being on the inside of anything. “Lucky for you, I can do both today,” she said. “What can I get you to drink?”
    “Let’s start with a cup of plain coffee.”
    “That’s easy enough to do,” Barbara said as she drew a coffee and handed it to me.
    I slid my money across the counter to her, and said softly, “I really do need to speak with you. I’m not asking forhelp out of idle curiosity. I don’t want folks around here thinking I’m capable of murder.”
    Barbara frowned, and then said, “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it might be a little late for that, Savannah.”
    “You’re kidding,” I said, not wanting to believe that the rumors had spread already. “Sandra Oliver was there with Joanne and me, and so was Laura Moon. I didn’t see Harry Pike, but Joanne herself told me that she just saw him. Why couldn’t it have been one of them?”
    “It could have been, I’ll grant you that, but you’ve only lived in town for a few years, and they all grew up around here.”
    “That doesn’t make me guilty of murder.”
    “Of course it doesn’t,” Barbara said, “but it doesn’t make you innocent, either. If you ask me, people want to believe that no one who’s lived here all their lives is capable of killing someone. It makes things too uncomfortable, if you know what I mean.”
    I’d