Myrtle refrained from fussing on the quick trip back to her house. Instead, they spoke about safer topics—the unrelenting heat and Ezra's family and how they were doing. Ezra helped her bring her groceries in and then took off, likely with relief, into the night.

Myrtle now wanted to sit and think about all the things she'd learned about the case. Unfortunately, she felt she needed to go ahead and move forward with the pizza cookie. Or cookie pizza. She was never one to wait until the last minute to complete tasks and hated the thought of baking first thing in the morning when the tournament was that same day.

She started combining ingredients, still thinking about what she'd heard and seen. Dinah had seemed very flustered when Myrtle brought up dating. Was she already dating? And had she been even before Luther died?

Then she thought about Marshall and his argument with Luther. Why did Marshall care so much how Luther treated Dinah or how he spoke to her? Marshall certainly didn't strike Myrtle as that much of a gentleman. She was sure she'd seen him be curt with his wife, Lucinda. That made her think about Ezra covering up for Marshall, for Lucinda's sake since she was apparently still very much in love with her husband.

Myrtle looked down at the dough. It seemed like it was ready to go on the pizza pan. She brightened. Red and Elaine had given her a pizza pan for Christmas to help cook the various frozen pizzas she made. It was a fancy one, too, with holes in the bottom to evenly distribute the heat and keep the bottom from being soggy.

Myrtle smushed the dough with a spatula into the bottom of the pizza pan. Then she slid it into the preheated oven and set the timer for twenty-five minutes.

It had decidedly not been twenty-five minutes when the smoke detector started going off. Myrtle rushed into the kitchen to find that the cookie dough had melted, become runny, and dripped through the holes, splattering onto the bottom of the oven. Myrtle muttered imprecations under her breath as she opened the window and tried to shoo some of the clouds of smoke out of her house. The smoke detectors continued berating her for the mishap. She opened some windows on the front of the house, too. Then she set about removing the tray from the oven and throwing it into the sink.

There was a pounding on her front door. Myrtle sighed and walked over to answer it. Elaine was there, clutching Jack. You could tell by Jack's face that he'd very recently been ferocious but was now stunned to silence by the cacophony of smoke detectors.

"Myrtle!" gasped Elaine. "I thought I was picking you up at the store. And . . . is there a fire here?"

"False alarm," said Myrtle with a shrug.

"But there's smoke inside."

"Yes, but it's the kind of smoke that doesn't mean there's necessarily a fire."

Elaine's brow crinkled. "I thought the adage was 'where there's smoke, there's fire'."

"Only sometimes," said Myrtle. "In this instance, it was just a case of cookie dough disagreeing with the fancy pizza pan."

"How did you get home?"

"Oh, Ezra drove me home from the store. I ran into him while I was out." Myrtle neglected to mention the fact that it was more of a seeking out than a run-in. She was never sure what information might find its way back to Red's ears.

Miles peered in Myrtle's front door with alarm. "Is everything all right here?" he shouted over the smoke detectors.

"Everything is lovely," said Myrtle dryly. "You're going to be so excited over the snack I've prepared for the chess tournament."

Miles visibly winced at the mention of chess.

Sure enough, Elaine quickly said, "Are we still on for tonight, Miles? Chess? After the day I've had, I can't wait to do something completely different from wrangling preschoolers. And I just can't figure out where I'm going wrong with these games."

Miles gave her a stricken smile.

The opened windows finally reduced the amount of smoke enough for the smoke detectors to shut off.

Elaine added with a laugh, "I won't be over too late. I can't stay up as late as you two do because I have to be up with the chickens with Jack."

Jack rubbed his eyes, already looking sleepy.

"As soon as Red gets back home, I'll run over for a little while."

Miles quickly said, "I'm not really sure exactly where I'll be."

"Oh, I can track you down. No worries."

On the contrary, however, Miles appeared to have quite a few worries.

Elaine left right as Jack set up howling again.

"Poor Jack," said Myrtle as she gently closed the door behind them.

"Poor Elaine," muttered Miles.

There was another tap on the door and Myrtle pulled it open again. "Forget something, Elaine?"

But it wasn't Elaine standing there. It was Erma grinning at her. Myrtle cursed herself for not looking through the window before opening the door.

"Isn't it so cozy here?" asked Erma unpleasantly, leering at Myrtle and Miles. "Sorry to interrupt you both. I thought I heard fire alarms going off." Her large nose sniffed the air. "And I definitely smell smoke."

"Everything is completely under control," said Myrtle coldly. "Although I thank you for your concern." She started to firmly close the door.

Erma, however, stuck her foot in the door to hold it open. "You know, it's important to replace the batteries in your smoke detectors."

"I think it's evident that my batteries are working."

Erma wagged her finger at her. "But now they've been running for a while. Might've worn the batteries down."

"She has a point," offered Miles.

Erma beamed at him. "Exactly. So you'll wanna replace them. Plus, Myrtle, I wanted to tell you something else I've found out. Since you're the hotshot detective, I thought you'd like a tip. But you better call me a sidekick!"

Myrtle's head began to throb between Erma's obnoxious voice and the former shrieking of the smoke detectors.

Erma continued, a smug look on her donkey-like features. "I know something about Marshall and Dinah."

It clicked together in Myrtle's head. To her horror, she realized Erma was right. Everything fell into place—Dinah's shyness when dating was mentioned. Marshall being so angry with Luther for his treatment of Dinah. But there was something more, too.

Before Myrtle could mull any further on it, Erma spat out, "Marshall and Dinah have been having an affair. I think it's been going on for ages. It's shocking, isn't it?"

It was, actually, a bit shocking. But there was part of Myrtle that felt Erma's big reveal was just confirming what she already knew on some level. "How do you know this?" asked Myrtle.

Erma said complacently, "I've now spotted them together two different times. The first time was before Luther died. I thought maybe Marshall had some sort of business with Luther, but Luther's car wasn't there at the time. He was probably at one of his many doctor appointments. Anyway, now I've seen them together again and they definitely looked like they were having a romantic interlude. They were very cozy." She gave them a hideous gaping grin.

Miles looked over at Myrtle and raised an eyebrow. She wanted to confer with her sidekick. Her real sidekick. To do so meant getting rid of Erma as quickly as possible.

Fortunately, it was right at that moment when Pasha came prancing in past Erma from the darkness outside into Myrtle's living room. The feral cat gave Erma a calculating look and then proceeded to use Erma as an impromptu scratching post.

Erma gave a bloodcurdling shriek and left Myrtle's house, slamming the front door shut behind her.

"Brilliant Pasha!" said Myrtle. "Somehow you always know exactly what to do."

Pasha purred up at Myrtle and lovingly brushed against her legs.

Miles carefully moved his legs out of the way in case Pasha wanted to use him as a scratching post.

Myrtle rubbed Pasha for a few minutes, cooing at her. Then she opened up a can of tuna—a generous treat for Pasha that she tried to reserve for special occasions since it was on the pricey side. Then she turned to Miles. "I think I'm having an epiphany."

"Aren't you supposed to scream 'eureka?'"

"Only if it's a scientific epiphany. This one doesn't qualify. I was just thinking about my conversation with Dinah and then Ezra. And even awful Erma's statement about Marshall and Dinah."

Miles tilted his head to one side. "Are you sure that's an epiphany? It sounds like a mess to me."

Myrtle said, "It makes absolute sense." She started to give him the rundown and then looked at the oven out of the corner of her eye. "This thing is a disaster."

It was indeed. There was burnt cookie pizza on the bottom of the oven in various degrees of ash. The air was still full of smoke. And the pizza pan was still caked with dough and in the sink. Myrtle put her hands on her hips and glared at the mess.

"A job for Puddin?" suggested Miles.

"I'm not sure even the new-and-improved Puddin will accept a mess of this magnitude." She scowled even more. "And the monstrosity will be made exponentially worse tomorrow if I don't clean it up because the dough will harden. I'd better just get this done now."

Miles said, "I'll give you a hand."

Myrtle picked the caked pan and Miles picked the oven. Myrtle said, "It's a pity this pizza pan is defective."

"Defective? I don't think I've ever heard of a defective pizza pan. I think a pot could be defective—maybe its handle isn't soldered on correctly. But a flat pan?"

Myrtle pursed her lips. "Then it's lucky you were an architect and not an engineer."

"I was an engineer," said Miles coldly.

"Well, the pizza pan has holes in it. Apparently, the dough gets greasy and slips right through the little holes to the oven floor."

"Myrtle, cookie dough is different from pizza dough. You can't expect the two things to behave the same way." He paused and then said, "I suppose this puts the kiss of death on your snack for the tournament tomorrow."

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you came in here and sabotaged my cookie pizza. You were always determined for me to bring party mix. And now I suppose I'm going to have to. I don't think I have enough of all of the ingredients to make another pizza." She gave the pan a particularly vicious scrubbing with her steel wool.

Miles gave a relieved sigh. Then he said, "What were you talking about? About your epiphany?"

"Yes. It was like a brainstorm, really. It all makes so much sense now."

Miles said, "You sound like one of those really annoying television detectives who knows the solution to the puzzle but doesn't give it away."

"I'm not trying to be enigmatic. I've just been very caught up with cleaning. The point of the whole thing is that no one was trying to kill Luther. Dinah was the target."

"What?" asked Miles. "But the police decided she wasn't."

The doorbell rang.

Miles started heading off into the back of Myrtle's house. "No more Erma for me," he muttered.

Myrtle knew from experience that it was fruitless to just not answer the door when Erma was outside, not when she knew you were at home. She would continue knocking at the door and ringing the bell. Then, she would simply assume that you'd suffered from some horrid medical malady (since Erma so often had them herself) and would call Red for a wellness check.

When she opened the door, though, it was Lucinda.