by CJ Love
She nodded. “Lock the back door on your way out, please.” Finding her Pink Drink, Delia took a gulp of the caffeinated stuff and pulled out a piece of paper from her purse. She handed it to Becca, who’d followed her. “Will you start on these loaves of bread? I’m going to sit over at the worktable and figure out what else we should make.” Her heart had barely returned to a normal rhythm and her ribs hurt from all the heavy breathing she’d done.
Setting the drink aside, she pulled out a small notebook.
The view distracted Delia. The sun was up, throwing beams across the front of Bloomfield Hatch. The beams laced into the old tree and shot pink sunshine onto the courtyard.
I believe in my dreams; I believe in myself.
Delia relaxed her shoulders and let out a long soothing breath…
Until a high-pitched, spine-chilling scream let loose from behind her.
Chapter 5
“And worse I may be yet: the worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst.”
Jumping off her stool, Delia spun around, expecting Mate to be standing there.
No one was there.
She stared into the kitchen area. The refrigerator door was open, and she took a couple of steps forward.
Becca came to the entrance of the walk-in. Her face was as pale as the white wire shelving behind her. “Delia! It’s Jeanette.”
“What about her?” she asked, hurrying forward. “What’s wrong?”
Becca turned around and stared inside the refrigerator. “I think she’s dead.”
Everything seemed to slow down to Delia. She got to the door of the walk-in and stared inside.
Jeanette was lying in the middle of the concrete floor, still in her uniform from yesterday. The gingham shirt was half untucked out of a pair of high-waist jeans, and one of her sparkly tennis shoes had come off and was up near her knee. Her ponytail splayed out behind her head. But, oh, her features…
Jeanette had died with her eyes open and staring. Her mouth formed a grimace, and her pink lipstick faded in spots. Inside her mouth were mashed blueberries. The juice ran out of her blue lips and down her frozen face.
Beside her was the bowl of blueberries that Becca had placed on the shelf yesterday.
Delia didn’t scream. But, she did let out a low and sickening moan. “Call the police … we have to call the police!”
* * *
Delia and Becca remained at the worktable while the policemen studied the kitchen and walk-in refrigerator. They’d parked their cruisers in the alley. The whirring lights shone through the open door, making blue and red flashes on the stainless steel appliances.
Suddenly the officers turned toward the back door. Someone had arrived, and they pointed toward the refrigerator and read off notes to the person.
Delia leaned sideways on her stool to see around the curve in the wall.
Montague!
He stepped past one workbench and stood outside the walk-in’s door. He wasn’t in a uniform but wore jeans and a blue sweater that matched the color of his eyes.
Not that I can see his eyes, but I do remember the color: French blue.
“Wow,” Becca whispered. “Who is that?”
“Nicolo Montague,” she answered, just as quietly.
Becca turned her wide eyes on Delia. “You know him?”
Her stomach tingled a little, nervous to talk to the detective again. What would he think, that she was somehow involved in another murder? Would he suspect her again? “He and another guy saved my life over the summer when a man tried to stab me.”
“Oh, wow.” Her brown eyes grew even wider. “I want to be saved by him.”
“It’s not as great as you think. You actually need to have a murderer nearby so Nicolo can jump in and save you.”
Becca turned her face toward the kitchen again. “I’ll risk it.”
Ten minutes later, Montague turned his attention to Delia and Becca, and moved toward them with his little notebook in hand. He nodded to Becca and then turned his blue eyes on Delia.
“I didn’t do it,” she said quickly and then closed her mouth tight.
That’s what every killer says, isn’t it?
He narrowed his eyes a fraction. “I hope you’re smart enough to move the body.”
She leaned to the side and stared into the kitchen. Two men with a stretcher between them moved toward the door of the walk-in. “I don’t think I could move her if I wanted to do it.”
Nicolo tilted his head just a smidge. “Is that a confession?”
“No … No!”
He glanced at Becca. “How about you? Did you kill her?”
Becca’s eyes grew twice their size.
“She didn’t do it,” Delia said, patting the girl’s arm.
“How do you know?”
She sat straighter. “Because she screamed when she saw the body.”
Nicolo flipped open his little notebook. “I guess that’s all the evidence I need.”
“Really?” Delia asked in a slow and questioning tone.
“No,” he said, with a slight shake of his head. “Okay, who are you?” he asked, gazing at Becca.
“Rebecca Langston,” she told him, watching Nicolo write it down. “It means tall man’s town in old English.”
Delia frowned at her.
Becca lifted her shoulders and grimaced.
Nicolo never looked up but commented, “Save the details for the important questions, Rebecca.”
Becca’s face went red.
Delia took the girl’s hand. “She found Jeanette, and it scared her. It scared me, too. We, Bogart and I, had already scared Becca by how much noise we made when she came in. Bogart dropped the marble rolling pin … don’t look at me as if this isn’t important, Nicolo; it is important.”
Goodness, this was the second time she’d spoken up to the detective.
So unlike me!
Clearing her throat, she began again. “The door was unlocked when I came in. Bogart came in right after I did, and we thought someone was inside. That’s because Eddie, you remember Eddie? He said he saw Mate yesterday with Isaac.” She squinted at Nicolo because he’d stopped writing. “Do you remember Isaac? He was the one Mate left for dead. Well, Eddie said he saw them together, and, of course, that freaked me out too. So when I came here, I thought Mate was inside. Oh, no. Do you think Mate came here to kill me and murdered Jeanette instead?”
“What I think is that you need to slow down.” He wrote something. “The door was unlocked? Who has keys?”
“All of us.” She waved her hand between herself and Becca. “Jeanette and Bogart do, too.”
“But no one was in here?”
“We never checked upstairs,” she said, taking long and quiet breaths so that she wouldn’t talk too much. “Bogart left, and then Becca found Jeanette.”
Nicolo glanced at her again with an expression of confusion on his brow. “Who is Bogart?”
“Bogart is Humphrey Katz. So we nicknamed him Bogart.”
“He was here when you came to work?”
“No, he came in right after me. Have you found Mate yet?”
He gave it a second and then admitted, “No.”
“Mate could’ve killed Jeanette then. Plus, she might have spent the night here.”
“Why do you say that?”
Anyone would think that Nicolo would ask that question, but it had come from Becca.
Delia turned in her direction. “Remember, Jeanette said she’s getting divorced. She said she didn’t know what she was going to do, so I suggested Jeanette stay with her sister, whom she hates, or Eddie.”
Becca shook her head. “I don’t know any of these people.”
“Don’t you see though,” Delia said, warming up, “that her sister, Sanya, would tell her to get lost, and Eddie might’ve done the same? So Jeanette wound up here and dead because Mate was in here waiting.”
Nicolo pointed the end of his pencil at Delia. “You promised me. You swore that yo
u’d never get involved in another murder case.” He kept wagging the pencil at her.
Delia turned her mouth down hard. “But this one is about me.”
“You don’t know that, Delia. We’ll follow the clues until we get the killer.” He folded the notebook and stuck it in the back pocket of his pants. “Just like I did last time, by the way, and stopped Mate from killing you.”
“But…”
“You were wrong last time.” He sank in with the pronouncement like his shoulders couldn’t take the weight of her investigating again. “You thought someone else killed Reg Ashbury and Alfie Clemmons, and you put yourself in danger.”
“I still think someone else killed Alfie.”
“Delia,” he said in a firm voice.
“Alright, alright. I’ll stay out of it.”
* * *
Detective Montague allowed Becca to leave the shop once she’d answered all of his questions. Delia waited until the police had taped everything off to close and lock the door. Nicolo said he’d let her know when King Lears could reopen. From her experience over the summer, it took the forensic people at least a day to sweep an area. Well, her apartment had taken a day. King Lears was a bit larger, so she might not reopen until Tuesday or Wednesday.
The thought made her heart sink. I’ve just opened! And what will customers in Bloomfield Hatch think about visiting a bakery where there’d been a murder?
Walking toward the car park, Delia called the DaVinci house. They needed to know the situation.
Their estate manager answered the phone, and Delia breathed a sigh of relief when Anthony Yeager told her that Santos DaVinci was not at the house. Juliet wasn’t there either.
“I’ll tell you, then,” she said. She’d liked Anthony the few times she’d met him. He was self-assured and assertive. Delia liked that in a man. And, he wasn’t bad on the eyes, either, with his square jaw and dimpled chin. “There’s been a murder at King Lears Bakery.”
“Oh great,” he said in a flat tone. “I’m not telling Juliet. She’s about to marry Paris, and we don’t need her doing another Mata Hari right now.”
“Mata Hari?”
“Over-rated spy,” he explained. “I’ll tell Santos. When do you expect to reopen?”
Delia opened Sweaty Freddy’s door and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Whenever the police tell me I can. Probably Wednesday.”
“Alright, keep me abreast.”
See, that’s why she liked Anthony. He could drop the word abreast, and it didn’t sound pretentious at all.
Lovely man.
She drove the short distance home, thinking about Jeanette. The entire situation caused Delia to feel a little sick to her stomach. When it had first happened, when she’d first seen Jeanette lying there in the blueberries, it was all too shocking to think it through.
But now, as she pulled into the gravel area of Boroughbridge House, it all sort of sank in on her.
Jeanette is dead.
Mate?
It felt strange to have spoken to Jeanette yesterday afternoon and not realized it was the last time. Sure, the woman wasn’t the happiest clown in the circus, but it was still sad that she’d died on a cold refrigerator floor.
What if Mate thought she was me? No … there’s a big difference between Jeanette and me. Mainly in the posterior. He’d know it wasn’t me.
Out of the SUV, Delia went inside and climbed the stairs, watching the shadowy areas of the building. There weren’t many obscure places to hide, and it was noon. Even with anxiety, Delia thought she’d be able to pinpoint if Mate was ready to jump at her from somewhere.
Poor Jeanette. Was she facing the blueberries when Mate snuck up from behind?
Delia had never liked Jeanette and had been distressed when she’d learned that the woman wanted to transfer to King Lears from Ganozza’s Bakery. Jeanette had a bad attitude and was snarky as any teenager, but she’d never called in sick and was always on time for work. She was even reasonably nice to customers. So, there was no good reason to fire her.
And now she’s in the morgue, waiting for the next of kin to release her body.
On the third floor, Delia glanced around the corner first before stepping onto the landing.
No Mate here…
She gazed at Sanya’s apartment door. Does she know the fate of her sister yet? And, how will she deal with another death in the family so close to losing her husband?
Or, does Sanya already know Jeanette died —because she’s the one who killed her? The last time Delia overheard a conversation between the two women, Sanya threatened to hit Jeanette in the face with a brick.
Yeah, there was that.
I’m not getting involved. I promised Detective Hot-ague I wouldn’t get involved.
Delia snuck a peek up the short staircase to her front door.
Mate-less.
Squaring her shoulders, she took the steps and stuck her key into her apartment doorknob. Delia opened the door. “Behold, Clawdius.”
* * *
It was early the following day that Delia received a phone call from the assisted living facility where her father lived. “Nothing urgent,” the nurse said on the phone. “The doctor would like to discuss your father’s medication with you. When will you be in next, Miss Leary?”
Delia pulled the phone from her ear and gazed at the clock. It was nine-thirty a.m. “I was going to visit Dad today,” she told the man, putting the phone to her ear again. She was still in bed and now peering at the bookcase with all of her murder cozies lined up nicely. “I can be there in about an hour and a half.”
“Tell the receptionist when you’re here, and we’ll have the doctor meet you.”
Delia rolled out of bed like a stone, her feet barely catching her, and moved toward the bathroom. That’s when Clawdius darted out of the bathtub and scrambled over her naked toes.
Her heart jarred against her ribs. “Schizzy-kitty!” she called after him.
It was when she pulled the shower curtain closed that she saw something in the litter box that was too large to be Clawdius’ anything. “What is that?” Bending, she found the pooper-scooper and lifted out a … chicken breast?
Oh no, I left the chicken out overnight!
Clawdius had partially buried it, and now it looked like breaded meat ready for a skillet.
“Ugh, Clawdius!” she said, making her way to the kitchen and finding a plastic bag under the kitchen sink. Spying the package on the counter, she saw that the cat had gnawed it open and pulled out only one piece. “Ugh, Clawdius!”
An hour later, Delia took out the trash bag before leaving for Buffalo. She’d dressed in a cute pink skirt and black leotard top. Her heels crunched in the gravel, and it sounded loud because no one else was around. Thomi’s car was gone, as was Olivia’s agave cactus truck.
Why does a cactus in a Jeep bother me? I should be able to let it go. But, why doesn’t she pot it? It can’t be good for the cactus to have the wind blowing through it all the time, and it’s certainly not good for me. I keep having thoughts about it!
The noise from the highway came at her from the other side of the narrow woods to the west. She watched the trees while she moved. If Mate came running out at her, she had a weapon: a bag of litter and chicken. It’d stop anybody in their tracks.
Dumping the bag through the little door on the side of the dumpster, Delia spun back around and headed for Freddy. “Wow, it is nippy,” she said, feeling the cold on her bare legs. Once she climbed into Freddy’s front seat, she blasted the heat.
It took a half-hour to reach the exit for the Mountain Ash Nursing Facility. She stopped Freddy next to the call box at the iron gates and hit a button.
A closed-circuit lens on top of the box retracted and then zoomed in on Delia.
“I’m Delia Leary, here to see Geoffrey Leary’s physician,” she said. She’d hated putting her dad in this place —though it was handsomely landscaped and the buildings were well maintained. With the bars, gates,
and cameras, it was nothing more than a maximum-security wing at Sing-Sing.
A buzzer sounded, and the gate opened.
Delia pulled the SUV forward, drove around a pine tree stand, and then parked in the first row. There were four buildings on the compound, five and six stories each, all joined together with walkways. In the front was the admissions office and sign-in.
Grabbing a box of red velvet cookies she’d packaged for her father, she got out and headed for the office. Once inside, the smell of bactericides hit her. It reminded her of Clawdius’ litter box again.
“The doctor will meet you in your father’s room,” the admin-lady said. She was one of those ladies who’d let her gray hair grow out, and it looked beautiful with her olive coloring.
I hope I’m a pretty old lady someday.
First, you need to be a pretty young lady.
Delia came to an abrupt stop. Where had that thought come from? Closing her eyes for a quick moment, she gave herself a mental high-five. You are just killing it, Delia!
She made her way to the sixth floor via the elevator. Once out, Delia found her father’s room … and came to another abrupt stop. Not because her father’s doctor stood there already, but because her sister, Lily, was also in the room.
Chapter 6
“I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond; no more no less.”
Delia felt herself stiffen, and the muscles in her face formed a grimace.
Stop grimacing. You’ll mess up your pretty face. Here’s another high-five for Delia.
Apparently, Lily had no such thought in her head because she went ahead and curled her top lip. “Delia.”
“Lily,” she greeted. “What a surprise.”
“The doctor called and wanted to discuss Dad’s medication.” Lily raised her dark brows and nodded at the doctor.