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swear! She’d simply overstayed her welcome. If you know what I mean.”
    “Go on,” he encouraged.
    Tricia sighed. “Pammy took it well. She said she had made friends here in Stoneham and assured me she’d be all right.”
    “When was that?”
    “About nine forty-five this morning.”
    “And you didn’t see her again?”
    “Yes, I did see her. But I didn’t speak to her.”
    “Where was this?”
    “At the new food pantry just out of town. They held the dedication this morning.”
    Baker waited for her to continue.
    “A lot of people were there. Apparently Pammy wanted to speak to the guest of honor. She made a rather loud fuss, and was asked to leave.”
    Baker looked very interested. “Who asked her to leave?”
    “Someone in a suit. I think he was part of Mr. Paige’s entourage.”
    “Mr. Paige?”
    “Stuart Paige. Have you ever heard of him?”
    “It would be hard to live in New Hampshire and not hear about his good works.”
    “Yes, well, apparently he gave the Food Shelf half the money they needed to open their new facility.”
    “And did you speak to the deceased following the event?”
    Tricia shook her head. “I didn’t see her again until I found her out back.”
    “And what time was that?”
    “About an hour or so ago.”
    Baker checked his watch. “Approximately three fifty?”
    Tricia nodded.
    “And other than seeing her at the dedication, you hadn’t heard from her since this morning?”
    “I heard of her—but I didn’t talk to her.”
    Baker frowned. “What does that mean?”
    “She apparently spent the morning going around town putting in job applications and listing me as her last employer.”
    “And were you?”
    “No! She hung around my store during the last couple of weeks, disrupting things—but she didn’t work for me.”
    “Did her ‘hanging around’ anger you?”
    Tricia chewed the inside of her lip, knowing where this line of questioning was going to lead. And what would he think when she told him about the forged check?
    “I wasn’t happy about it. In fact, yesterday she spilled coffee on a customer’s foot. That was kind of the last straw.”
    “But you waited until this morning to throw her out?”
    “I did not throw her out,” Tricia said, and realized her voice had risen higher than she would’ve liked. She took a breath to calm down. “I asked her to leave. We had a civil conversation, and Pammy agreed it was time to go.”
    Baker nodded, but said nothing.
    “There was one other thing . . .” She hesitated. Did she really have to tell him about the check? He—or his boss—was sure to think it was a motive for murder. No one but she knew about it—unless Pammy had gone around blabbing about it, which she doubted. Angelica hadn’t mentioned it.
    “You were saying?” he prompted.
    “Her carelessness in spilling coffee on one of my customers really annoyed me,” Tricia blurted. “I could’ve been sued.”
    Baker eyed her, waiting for more.
    She could still say something about the check. She ought to say something about the check.
    Why didn’t she say something about the damn check?
    Maybe because she knew she hadn’t killed Pammy. It wasn’t pertinent to her death. Baker might follow in his boss’s footsteps and waste a lot of time trying to pin the crime on her—letting Pammy’s killer get away with murder.
    “Look, I was in my store, with witnesses, all day. That is, until I came across the street to eat my lunch and talk to my sister.”
    “Sister?” Baker asked.
    Tricia glanced in Angelica’s direction. “Yes, she owns this café. She hired Pammy today.”
    “Why?”
    Tricia sighed. Probably to bug me . “You’ll have to ask her.”
    Baker looked over at Angelica, then shifted his gaze back to Tricia—assessing them? “Tell me what you saw when you found the body.”
    “Pammy. Headfirst in the garbage cart. I suspected she might be dead because she wasn’t moving. I had to force myself to touch her. I found her wrist,