Marina has put a chair beside the archive work table before I arrive. On it is a clean tea towel for my bag, because she knows I have come straight from the kitchen and she doesn’t want flour in the files.
That consideration nearly makes me abandon the question I came to ask.
“I need to know who baked for the fundraiser.”
She looks up from a stack of invoices. “Which fundraiser?”
“The one with Agnes’s shortbread. Last spring.”
“Why?”
“I’m thinking about recipes people know. Who borrows them. How they change.”
It sounds evasive because it is. Davenport asked me not to discuss the biscuit’s identifying marks. I have spent days telling Marina everything, and withholding even this small detail feels disloyal.
“Agnes’s recipes have been circulating for decades,” she says. “You could start with the church committee. Dale does most of the purchasing.”
“Did you keep a list?”
“Somewhere.” She points to the shelves. “Nothing disappears in here. It only becomes temporarily impossible to find.”
She smiles. I smile back. My relief is out of proportion to the joke.
While she searches, I notice the blue tin on the low shelf behind the desk. The yellow tape on its lid is peeling at one corner. Beside it are a kitchen scale and a roll of white labels.
“Do you still use that for baking?”
“Sometimes. Mostly cards and receipts.” She opens a drawer. “Agnes keeps asking for it back. I should take it up.”
“She has enough tins to house a small nation.”
“She wants that one. It belonged to her mother.”
I reach for the nearest box to move it out of Marina’s way. She stops me with a hand on the cardboard.
“Not that one. Uncatalogued donations.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I have an order.”
She takes a folder from the drawer. The spring volunteer list is clipped to expense sheets from later sales, including a July event. She spreads the names and supplies sheets on the table. Flour. Butter. Sugar. Walnuts for tea cakes. Disposable plates. The handwriting changes every few lines, as if the page traveled through a succession of kitchens.
“The receipt dates run into July,” I say.
“We kept the same volunteers for the summer sales.”
“Who bought the ingredients?”
“Different people. We refunded expenses from the proceeds.”
“And everyone took their own supplies home afterward?”
“Usually. Some went to the next sale.” She taps a penciled note. “Dale stored the leftovers. Rotary, archive, church—we share a great deal here.”
I copy the event date. There is no reason a recipe printed in an old cookbook should belong to only one household. There is no reason a food processor should belong to the person whose garage holds it. I have been imagining the murder beginning in one private kitchen. The supplies sheet describes a town in which half the kitchens borrow from the other half.
Marina sits opposite me.
“You’ve found something.”
“I’m trying to understand something.”
“About the food.”
I look at the page instead of answering. She folds her arms, then unfolds them.
“Tess. I’m not a reporter.”
“I promised the detective I wouldn’t discuss a detail.”
For a moment she is completely still. Then she nods.
“Of course. You should keep your promise.”
The generosity of it makes me want to compensate. I tell her about Agnes’s dinner with Dale tomorrow, about the text arrangement, about waiting in the car. Nothing about the photograph. Nothing that seems like evidence.
Marina listens closely.
“Does Dale know you’ll be outside?”
“He’ll see me drop her off.”
“Good. And if she stops answering, call for help. Don’t go looking for her.”
“I won’t.”
“She might hear something useful. He’s likely to explain himself to Agnes before he’ll explain himself to anyone else.”
“That’s what she hopes.”
Marina looks toward the shelves. “He’s had years to practice.”
I think of the morning I watched Dale in the garden before the fatal dinner. It is not a fresh memory; it is an ordinary moment I never thought worth mentioning. I tell Marina I saw him near the conservatory before he came inside, looking at his phone.
“Checking the entrance,” she says.
“I didn’t see him touch it.”
“He knew he’d need a way in.”
“He might have been answering a message.”
She looks at me. “You’ve heard what he did to my father.”
The sentence closes the space in which I was trying to think. I have heard. I cannot forget it simply because a biscuit has different holes.
“I’m not defending him.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“Finding out which parts we can prove.”
She pushes back her chair, walks to the shelf, and takes down a box. For a second I think she is going to ask me to leave. Instead she sets it between us and lifts the lid.
Letters. Dozens of them, in envelopes softened at their edges. Some are addressed to Marina’s mother. One has a drawing on the back: a small house with a crooked chimney.
“He sent that when I was three,” she says. “My mother told him I liked houses. She never gave it to me.”
I look at the drawing. A man who built things trying to offer his daughter something he was allowed to send.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are. Everyone is sorry.” She lays one finger on the roof. “Dale gets an office. George got a funeral. I get a box.”
The unfairness is so stark that I cannot bear my own cautious questions. I want to tell her that tomorrow will change everything, that Agnes will bring home the missing proof. It would be an easy gift. It would also be a promise I cannot keep.
“May I see the other side?” I ask.
She turns the envelope. Thomas has drawn a dog beside the house. One ear is larger than the other.
“He wasn’t much of an artist,” she says.
“Lily could fix the perspective.”
“No.” Marina’s answer is immediate. She smooths the envelope. “It’s his.”
“Then leave it crooked.”
We sit with the drawing between us. For a few minutes there is no theory to defend, only a daughter who never got a letter when she was meant to receive it. When she puts the envelopes away, her hands are careful again.
“I’ll find the rest of the baking list,” she says. “You should ask Dale where the spare ingredients went.”
“I’ll give the list to Davenport. She can ask.”
“Of course.”
At the door, I remember the clerk whose account she left off the timeline.
“Did you find an address for Walters?”
“He died last winter.”
“Oh.”
“There’s an obituary. I can print it.”
“No need.”
I am almost outside before I stop.
“Actually, could you give the detective his full name? He may have left papers. Or someone at the company may remember the same thing.”
Marina looks at the supplies sheet in my hand. “You think I haven’t tried?”
“I think she can ask questions you couldn’t.”
The hurt in her face is plain enough that I nearly apologize again. Then she steps away from the door.
“I’ll send the name.”
Outside, a boy is trying to balance three books on his bicycle handlebars. I hold them while he unfastens his bag. He tells me Marina always lets him take one extra because he reads fast. He likes her. I like her. There is no reason I should feel this relieved to hear someone say something uncomplicated about her.
At home, I give Agnes the copied supplies sheet. She recognizes two of the names and crosses out a third.
“Not a baker. Transport. She drove the boxes to Dale’s.”
I put the name back and write transport beside it.
“Why keep her on the list?”
“Because she touched the boxes.”
Agnes considers that, then moves the pen toward me.
“Write mine down too,” she says. “I lent the tins.”
I do. The page becomes messier and more useful.