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words and a tear trickled down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Jack Lancer. That’s his real name. He’s on TV. Channel WKFJ. Just like Kim Kline. He’s a real celebrity. A star. You know, one of those investigative reporters.”
    This, I did not know. But then, I’d only just arrived in Hubbard and had yet to have the pleasure of checking out the local news. It did explain the crowd outside.
    “So he was a reporter. What was he doing in the restaurant?” I asked Sophie.
    She pressed a hand to her heaving chest. “I . . . I can’t imagine. I . . . I don’t know. I . . . I have no idea.”
    “Especially since the restaurant was closed.”
    She nodded. “It has been. Since Saturday after the late lunch crowd left and I locked up. And now it’s . . .”
    I couldn’t hold it against her for not remembering instantly. It’s not every day you find a body in your restaurant with your grandfather’s receipt spike sticking out of the back of its neck.
    “Monday,” I reminded her. “It’s Monday.”
    “That means he could have been here . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut, no doubt trying to banish the same image of the Lance of Justice that flitted through my mind. Eyes wide open. Staring. Cold.
    Or maybe she was just trying to work out the math. “Do you think he could have been here that long?”
    Something told me this wasn’t the time to mention that if he had been, the Lance of Justice wouldn’t have been in nearly as good shape as he was when we found him. It’s not like I’m a forensic expert or anything. Far from it. But Meghan had once starred in a thriller that included espionage and murder and I’d been on the set every day to make sure the food she was served was locally grown and 100 percent organic. I couldn’t help but pick up on what the writers went through over and over in regards to the minutiae of the script. Even if I hadn’t, I’d seen enough of the crime scene shows on TV. I knew the basics. The Lance of Justice couldn’t have been dead all that long. He was well preserved, not swollen, and he didn’t smell.
    The murder had been recent.
    “So how did he get in the restaurant?” I asked no one in particular.
    But of course, Sophie was the only one there, and she assumed the question was meant for her. She shrugged. “The police will find out. He must have . . .” She swallowed her tears. “He must have broken in.”
    “The front door wasn’t messed with.”
    Sophie’s gaze darted that way. “It wasn’t.”
    “But we never checked on the back.”
    “We didn’t have time.”
    “So, for all we know, this Lance character could have broken in.” It made sense, at least until I took the thought to the next level. “Why break into an empty restaurant on a Monday night? That seems a little weird.”
    “Well, he is on TV.” This, apparently, was enough of an explanation for Sophie.
    It did little to satisfy me.
    Before I had a chance to think about it, Detective Oberlin stepped into the waiting area and crooked a finger in mydirection. “We need to know which lights were on,” he told me. “And if the door was locked when you got here.”
    Automatically, I nodded. “It was. Sophie unlocked it. And the lights . . .” I thought back to what had happened just an hour earlier. It seemed a lifetime ago. “No lights.” I knew this for sure because I had a clear image in my mind of Declan Fury coming in the front door to the waiting area, then peeking into the main room of the restaurant where it was dark. “No lights,” I told the detective. “Not until we walked in there and turned them on.”
    He nodded, but I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Something told me he wouldn’t have bothered to explain even if he’d had the time. The way it was, before he could say another word, a fresh-faced cop poked his head out from the restaurant.
    “Hey, Sarge,” the cop said, “Lantana says you should come back in here right