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knew the “tea” was really bourbon on the rocks with a twist of lemon, but he liked to keep up appearances. He’d nurse that drink until noon, at which time he’d switch to real tea, then finish up his day with some plain hot tea, specially ordered from a shop in town.
    Seemed to me that his days were a bit upside down, and I often wondered (and was surprised I didn’t already know) if he had steak, potatoes, and gravy for breakfast, and eggs, ham, and grits for dinner.
    I frowned at him. “They’ll be around soon enough, after the coroner leaves my shop.”
    “Heard about that bad bit of bad business,” he said, leaning so far forward in his rocker he nearly tipped right off the porch and into his prized rosebushes. “What’s the full scoop, Miss Carly?”
    I wasn’t the least bit surprised he already knew what happened. It was very difficult to keep news like a murder from spreading in a town the size of Hitching Post.
    “You think ol’ Marjie got the last laugh on that boy?” Apparently amused, he rocked backward and let out a high-pitched
tee-hee-hee.
    I didn’t even bother with saying it was a warning shot. “What do you know about Nelson, Mr. Dunwoody? Did he have any enemies?”
    He raised his glass to me. “Just your aunt Marjie.”
    Now that I stopped and thought about it, I had to wonder
why
Nelson had been sniffing around Marjie’s inn. Having been born and raised in Hitching Post, he knew what to expect if he did. . . .
    “Do you know why he was at Marjie’s the day she shot at him?”
    “Can’t rightly say.” This morning Mr. Dunwoody also looked the picture of gentlemanly perfection in his Sunday best, complete with suspenders and polka-dot bow tie. He’d been an eccentric math professor at a local college until he retired ten years ago, and at seventy he still dressed as though he were going to work every day. His wife had passed away almost thirty years ago, and as long as I’d known him he’d been a bachelor with a busy social calendar, never lacking a female companion. Though he was a bit of an odd duck himself, his quirky charm and natural good looks never failed to land him a date. He always insisted his forecasts were based on statistical calculations, but I suspected something else. . . . There was an air of magic about him.
    “Most everyone else who goes snooping wants to buy her inn,” he added. “Maybe he did, too?”
    I supposed it was a possibility—Nelson was a successful lawyer who might have wanted to spread his wings as an entrepreneur. Which wasn’t all that easy in Hitching Post. Town bylaws prohibited new construction without jumping through a million hoops (in an attempt to preserve the small-town charm), so buying a preexisting building was the only real option. Aunt Marjie had a prime location and an already established inn.
    Kind of.
    I glanced down the street. Each of my aunts owned her own bed-and-breakfast inn on this road, and each place reflected the personality of each aunt. Next door to the left, I spotted Eulalie hanging her clothes on the line behind her inn, the Silly Goose, which was light and airy; across the street, the Crazy Loon, Hazel’s place, was brightly colored, with all kinds of whirligigs and lawn decorations in the front yard; across and farther down the road, the Old Buzzard was Marjie’s place, aptly named indeed, as it was painted a dull, dark brown and had little ornament, not so much as a flag or a flower box. No surprise that she’d never ever, not once, had a guest in her inn. Which was just the way she liked it, reflected by the No Vacancy sign posted on her rickety fence.
    Once when I was little, I’d asked her why she’d opened the Old Buzzard in the first place if she never intended on filling it with guests, but she’d only grunted. Later I’d learned that the triplets had a pact: What one did, they all did. When Eulalie and Hazel had opened inns, Marjie had no choice but to open one as well. Majority ruled with the