It was a cold January morning when she came stumbling into my office. The door flung upon violently enough to knock over the coatrack that stood nearby. I glanced up from my laptop screen to get a good look at her face. She was disheveled, to say the least. The mascara running down her cheeks and the ruffled mess that was her curly, blonde hair told me more about her emotional state than her blubbering words ever could. I sighed and closed my laptop, pushing my chair out to stand.

She rushed over to me and grabbed me by my coat collar, shaking me to the rhythm of her words as if it would help them sink in. Despite her valiant efforts, it only served to keep them out of my ears.

“Whoa, whoa, settle down already. I can’t hear you over your panic.” I grabbed her hands and freed myself from her grasp. “Look, take a seat and breathe for a moment. I’ll make you something to drink to calm your nerves, and we can go from there. Alright?”

The woman nodded shakily and felt her way to the leather chair across from my desk. I stepped through an arch into my office kitchen and put some water on the stove.

“What’ll you have? Coffee? Tea? Liquor?” I called to her. I heard her mumble some response similar to tea, so I pulled out the ingredients to make some chamomile and lavender tea.

Letting the water boil, I stepped back into my office and plopped into my chair. I kicked my feet up on the desk and folded my hands together. “Alright, start from the top. Tell me your name.”

“Tessa. Tessa Moncrieff,” she choked out. “Someone… someone is trying to kill me.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Has this person already attacked you?”

She shook her head. “No, but they already broke into my house. They ransacked it and left me a message. A letter, saying that they were going to kill me today.”

I pulled my feet off the desk and leaned forward, my elbows replacing my feet. “Why did you come to a private investigator like me, ma’am? If they’ve already broken in, shouldn’t you be in police protection?”

She trembled in her seat, her eyes widening. “I couldn’t-! My husband, he refused to call. I can’t explain why, really. I don’t know myself. He said they wouldn’t be able to get a lead, wouldn’t do anything. That we were better off protecting ourselves. I convinced him to let me come here to talk to you, but….” She glanced around in fear and dropped her voice to a whisper, as if there might be someone listening in on us. “I’m afraid he’s the one who’s out to kill me. Or that he hired the killer.”

The kettle began to whistle, and I rose to make our tea. “That’s awful!” I called from the kitchen. “Can you think of any motive he might have to kill you?”

“Well,” she began, “last month I found a bill for our life insurance policy that he hadn’t paid yet. Our premium had gone up, so I looked into it. It turns out, he increased our coverage by two hundred thousand dollars! I asked him about it, and he said it was a good deal that he had found, and he just wanted to be better prepared in case something did happen to one of us. So the other wouldn’t have to worry as much for a little while.”

I finished the drinks and brought them out to the desk. I pushed hers towards her and took a sip from my own. “Hrm. Life insurance fraud. It’s a tad cliché, but a valid motivator.” She took a swig from her cup, the heat either not bothering her or out of her thoughts as she clung to the hope of relaxation. I nodded in my thoughts. “Yes, I do believe you’re right. He must be the one who hired the assassin.”

“What makes you so certain, Investigator?” She cocked her head to the side. “You’ve only just thought on the theory.”

I reached into my desk and pulled out an invoice, passing it to her. “I know it must be true, you see, because he’s the one who hired me to kill you.”

Her eyes widened in terror as she looked down at her cup, the poison I had slipped her seeping into her veins.

“Relax, please,” I said, gesturing openly to the seat in which she sat as the smile grew across my face. “It will make it less painful. That’s what the chamomile is for, after all.”