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muffin?”  She held out one of the chocolate, oversized muffins delicately from the paper cup. 
    “Oh, I shouldn’t…”  Nick shook his head, moving over to the seating group.
    “You do like chocolate don’t you?  Besides, if you have one then I don’t have to feel so bad about sabotaging my lunch and having one myself,” she smiled engagingly.
    “Well… maybe just one.”  Nick accepted the muffin, it did look appetizing and chocolate, chocolate chip muffins were definitely his favorite.  “Thank you, Ma’am.”
    “Oh please, call me Ellie, everyone does.”
    Peeling back the crinkled paper cup, he hesitated with the muffin halfway up to his lips.  Should he really be accepting food from someone he was interrogating in connection to a murder case?
    “You’re not worried I’m trying to fatten you up like Hansel and Gretel are you?” Ellie chuckled.  “Don’t worry, there’s nothing sinister about my muffins; in fact, they’re from Costco.”
    Flushing at being caught, Nick gave her a self conscious smile.  “I was thinking about what you said about sabotaging my diet.” 
    “Oh posh, you don’t look like you need to diet.”  She waved away the concern.  “But we could go halfsies if you’d rather?”  Ellie picked up a butter knife from the tray and deftly sliced a muffin into two pieces, setting each on a napkin and leaving it for him to choose if he was going to take a piece.  “Now then, what’s all this about Skye?” she asked, pouring out a cup of fragrant tea. 
    Nick set down the muffin he’d been unpeeling and picked up the half muffin on the napkin, holding it on his lap for the moment.  “When was the last time you heard from Miss Mackenzie?”
    “Oh… let me think now…”  Ellie stirred a blot of honey into her tea as she considered the question.  “I think it was a little over a week ago, we had a… picnic of sorts over at Highland Park.”
    “A picnic?  Was that with your… pagan circle friends?”  He wasn’t quite sure what to call them.
    “Yes, that’s right; we usually meet once a month come rain or shine.  We had shine this time, that was nice,” she smiled, taking a sip of the hot tea.  
    “What sort of things do you normally do at your monthly gatherings?” 
    “Oh I couldn’t tell you that; if I did I’d have to kill you,” she replied with a gleam in her eyes that he wasn’t quite sure how to interpret, but she smiled a moment later. 
    “Of course,” he laughed weakly.  Definitely not going to eat the muffin…
    “I’m just funnin’ you, dear,” Ellie chuckled again, reaching over to pat his arm lightly.  “But we normally don’t discuss those things with outsiders.”
    “Fair enough,” he nodded, moving on for the moment.  “When you last saw Miss Mackenzie, how did she seem to you?”
    “She seemed fine to me, only she forgot to bring the spoons; we had to eat the macaroni salad with forks.”
    “How… unfortunate.”  Not quite what he was going for, but Nick was quick to redirect.  “So she didn’t mention any problems she was having at all?  Boyfriend trouble?”
    “I don’t think so, but then again most of the girls don’t talk about that sort of thing with me, they think I’m too old to remember what it’s like to date anymore.  They’re wrong of course.”  She gave him an almost coquettish smile, lightly touching his arm once more. 
    Good lord… was the old bird flirting with him?  Deciding to ignore it, he pressed on.  “Did she have any enemies?”  So far this wasn’t proving to be terribly enlightening and Nick was starting to feel himself at another dead end.
    “Land sakes… of course not!” Ellie gasped, hand going to her breast.  “Oh honey, you said did she have any enemies… has something happened to poor Skye?” she asked with visible distress. 
    “I’m afraid so, Ma’am, she passed on last night,” he said as gently as he could.
    Her eyes quickly became watery and