Once Upon a Lie by Maggie Barbieri

customers who couldn’t make up their own minds because of her incessant chatter.
    “And have you ever had her brownies? Scrumptious!” she said, her face taking on the look of someone in the rapture.
    Maeve pulled a box of cupcakes out of the case and pushed them across the counter to Marcy; the order she had called in was ready and waiting for her. “Fourteen fifty, Marcy.”
    Marcy was still doing her best to convince the handsome African American man that the red velvet cupcakes were the way to go. Don’t bother, Maeve thought. He’s not here for the cupcakes.
    Marcy turned back to the counter. “How much do I owe you?”
    “Fourteen fifty,” Maeve repeated.
    Marcy pressed fifteen dollars into Maeve’s outstretched hand. “Keep the change,” she said, winking. She left the store, giving the man a last glance as she sashayed past, leaving a cloud of musky perfume in her wake.
    The man looked at her. “A whole fifty cents. Whatever will you do with such largesse?”
    “I could buy you a half a cup of coffee, Detective,” Maeve said, putting the money in the register and dropping fifty cents into the tip jar that she left out for Jo.
    The man did his best to look impassive, but Maeve could tell that he wasn’t used to being “made” so quickly even this second time.
    “Daughter of a cop, Detective. You guys don’t exactly blend. Know what I mean?”
    “Is there somewhere we could talk?” he asked, gesturing toward the kitchen. There was the cop thing, but he also had a college professor thing going on, what with the tweedy sport coat, pressed slacks, and loafers. The thinking man’s detective. She should have been wary, but his posture—a little slumped, slightly morose—didn’t engender that feeling in her.
    Maeve didn’t think that it would do any good to protest, so she put a sign in the door that indicated she would be back in fifteen minutes, locked it, and led the detective around the counter and into the kitchen. Once behind the swinging doors, he pulled his badge out of his pocket.
    “Detective Poole. NYPD Homicide.” He smiled slightly. “But you already knew that.”
    Maeve’s face gave nothing away; it was as if a visit from a detective were an everyday occurrence in the bakery. She’d known he was a cop almost as soon as she had seen him at the speed-dating event. She saw him studying her expression before deciding to reveal the reason he was there. “Why were you speed dating?” she asked, cutting to the chase.
    “Believe it or not, it’s germane to the case,” he said.
    She appreciated his honesty, even though there wasn’t a lot of detail there. “How so?”
    He smiled in a way that told her she wasn’t going to get an answer.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she spied her purse and resisted the inclination to reach across and shove it down toward the end of the counter. The better course of action, she decided, was to pretend it wasn’t there. In it was Jack’s service revolver, the one that she had taken possession of years ago when it was obvious that no good could have come from him having it. She had planned on putting it in a safe-deposit box at the bank, its age now rendering it a law enforcement relic, but that meant she had to go to the bank and rent one. She didn’t have that kind of time. As sympathetically as Rodney Poole looked at her, Maeve didn’t think that he’d take kindly to her having a weapon in her bag.
    “Sean Donovan was your first cousin?” he asked, pulling a small notebook out of his pocket. He dug deeper into the inside pocket of his jacket, rooting around for something clearly not there before going to his pants pockets and then the pockets on the outside of his sport coat.
    Maeve let him go through the entire search. “Pen?” she asked, taking one out of the pocket of her apron. She motioned to a wooden stool on his side of the gleaming stainless-steel countertop. “Have a seat.”
    He perched on the edge of the stool and opened his