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serious. A second later, she decided he was serious and replaced the smile with a more appropriate expression of concern.
    Officer Dervich looked at Steve as if for permission to speak. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
    “Several people on staff at Vinifera said Nathan Osborne made frequent special requests of the kitchen,” she said. “He was in the habit of asking for things that weren’t on the menu. Do you think he could have requested a dish with morels in it on Saturday night?”
    “You’re asking the wrong person,” said Sunny. “I was only there last night. I don’t know anything about Saturday.”
    Officer Dervich looked embarrassed. “I mean, in theory.”
    Steve cleared his throat. “I think what Officer Dervich is getting at is, how unusual are morels as an ingredient?”
    “They’re neither common nor rare,” said Sunny. “I use them in sauces that I want to have a meaty flavor. I suppose, in theory,Osborne could have asked for a dish with morels in it, but if he did, somebody on the kitchen staff would certainly remember it.”
    Steve nodded. “So you don’t know if anyone served morels on Saturday.”
    Sunny was beginning to feel like she was getting the third degree, but considering the circumstances, it didn’t surprise her.
    “Like I said, I don’t know anything about Saturday. All I can say for sure is that there was a gallon jar of dried morels in the pantry at Vinifera on Sunday, and that it was tainted with several false morels. What makes you think he ate bad morels, anyway? I thought we were talking about a heart attack.”
    “We’re just checking out all angles until the coroner’s report comes back,” said Steve.
    “So he ate at Vinifera Saturday night, went home, and died sometime after that. I hate to ask this, but could you tell if he’d thrown up, or if he was in pain? Seems like poison mushrooms would have made him sick to his stomach.”
    “You would think so,” Steve said. “There didn’t seem to be any signs of his having been sick, and no signs of trauma.”
    “You mean no one hit him,” Sunny said.
    “That, or he hadn’t fallen down. He didn’t appear to have any injuries. We don’t know much for sure right now. We know the bartender drove him home from the restaurant sometime after midnight and returned to Vinifera with Osborne’s car. They expected a phone call from Osborne on Sunday, asking for someone to drive his car up to get him. When no one had heard from him by late morning on Monday, the bartender decided to drive up there himself and see if he was okay. He found him collapsed in the living room.”
    “I met the bartender last night,” said Sunny. “Nick, right?”
    “Correct,” said Harvey. He consulted the little notepad he kept in his shirt pocket. “That’s right. Nick Ambrosi.”
    “Seemed like a nice guy,” said Sunny. “Did he say anything about Nathan feeling sick when he drove him home?”
    “He said Osborne was moderately inebriated, that’s why he needed a ride. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
    Sergeant Harvey closed his notepad and put it away. He looked at Officer Dervich to see if she was satisfied and then stood up slowly.
    “Thanks for your help, McCoskey. Seems like you always land smack in the middle of these things. We’ll call you when we hear from the coroner.”

5
    They would know soon enough if poison mushrooms killed Nathan Osborne, thought Sunny, gathering her things from the truck and heading into the house. His liver was sure to tell the tale. In any case, false morels seemed an unlikely culprit. First of all, there was little chance that he had eaten any of them. They weren’t on the menu, and most of the supply had been delivered specifically for her needs just a few days prior. Second, didn’t poison mushrooms take a long, terrible time to kill? Osborne would have called someone, gone to the hospital, said something to Nick Ambrosi about feeling sick. It was funny that Steve Harvey was