“You doubt it,” I said.
Gamma’s thin-lipped expression was all the response I needed.
She believed that a murderer had been up in the attic with Jordan. Now, we had to figure out who’d done it. The longer this investigation dragged on, the easier it would be for my ex-husband to interfere.
With the agents gone from their positions, he’d strike soon.
At least I’ll have more freedom.
Nerves built in my stomach, but I quashed them. It was time to get down to business.
5
Early the next morning, Gamma and I met in the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a good old-fashioned gossip. Technically, we were discussing the case, but that kind of talk was easily mistaken for regular chatter in Gossip.
I sipped my coffee while Gamma sat back in her chair, arms folded and heel tapping underneath her seat.
“I’ve never seen you this aggravated,” I said.
“There’s a lot at risk,” she replied. “And I liked Jordan. He was an excellent assistant, and after our initial introduction to him, he didn’t cause any trouble. I’m entirely unsure who would’ve taken issue with him in such an… aggravated fashion.”
“Same,” I said. “I don’t get it either. And I doubt Hannah would’ve done anything to him.”
Gamma sighed, shifting her cup across the table. “I agree. But who?”
We fell into an awkward silence.
“We need to know more,” I said, at last. “Who was he with last? What happened up there?”
“The crime scene. That should be our starting point.”
“But how do we get in there? Need I remind you that Grandpa removed your special equipment?”
“The old-fashioned way,” Gamma replied.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but Lauren bustled into the kitchen and stopped me from asking.
“Good morning,” she said, stifling a yawn as she grabbed her apron and put it on. “How are you this morning, Georgina, Charlie?”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Did you hear about Jordan?”
“Did I ever!” Lauren said, a slight twang in her accent. I liked it. “The poor man. I wonder what he was thinking. Why on earth would he do something like that? It just goes to show, you can never tell how people really feel. If only he’d spoken to someone before…” Lauren hung her head, shaking it. “It just makes me so sad to think how alone he must’ve felt.”
“It wasn’t suicide,” Gamma said.
Lauren’s fingers fumbled on her apron strings. “What?”
“Murder.” She rose from the table and went to the coffee machine to fix Lauren a cup of coffee. “You mark my words, dear, it was murder.”
“But that’s terrible. I mean, either way is terrible. Murder.” Lauren accepted the cup of coffee with trembling fingers. “Who would want to hurt Jordan? He was a sweetheart.”
“No idea,” I said.
“That’s terrible.” Lauren drank her coffee, leaning against the kitchen counter. “And this isn’t good for the inn, either, is it?”
“Don’t worry about it, Lauren,” Gamma said. “We’ll get through this, just like we’ve gotten through everything else.”
“But it’s twice in the same place. Remember what happened to Darling?”
Darling Gould, one of my grandmother’s good friends, had died in that library as well.
“How could I forget?” Gamma asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Georgina. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. It’s just, people are going to think that library is cursed at this point. And definitely haunted.”
“Lauren,” I said, before my grandmother dwelled too much on her friend’s death. “When last did you see Jordan yesterday?”
The inn’s chef swayed her hips from side-to-side while she considered the question. “Probably just before I left for the evening? Let me think. Yeah, yeah, I saw him in the dining area. He waved as I walked by on my way out the front doors. I think he was talking to someone.”
“What gave you that impression?”
“He kept nodding and glancing off to someone seated in the corner. I think. I can’t be sure because I couldn’t see, and, well, I didn’t think anything of it. Jordan’s been pretty nice to most of the guests. I assumed it was one of you two or that he’d met a guest who was interested in adopting a kitten.”
“Ah, that makes sense.”
“You didn’t see him after that?” Gamma asked.
“No, Georgina. Not after that. And I don’t know who he was talking to. Oh, this is just awful. Y’all don’t think he was talking to the person who… did it, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Lauren picked up the end of her apron and wrung it between her palms. “This is terrible. I can’t deal with it. I just can’t—”
Gamma clapped her hands together. “There’s no use dwelling on this. Let’s get the breakfast sorted out. We still have living guests to feed.”
Lauren responded well to a stern tone. She grabbed her recipe book and flipped through the pages. “Those chocolate cupcakes went down well, yesterday, don’t you think, Charlie? We ought to make them again.”
“Sounds good to me. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
And she did.
Lauren chose a breakfast of grits, chicken fried steak with gravy and a side of eggs over easy, with the cupcakes for a sweet treat afterward. Gamma, Lauren, and I worked tirelessly for the next two hours to ensure everything was ready for the most important meal of the day.
I brought the cupcakes out on platters and placed them on the long tables at the front of the room, then began serving the guests the set meal by asking them their preference.
All of the inn’s guests knew, by now, that trying a little—or a lot—of everything Lauren had cooked up was a good idea.
Halfway through the breakfast service, Kayla Wart, the twin with her blonde hair piled atop her head, took a seat at a table in front of the dining room window. Her severe sister was nowhere to be seen.
I approached with a coffee pot and a smile. “Morning, Miss Wart.”
“Kayla,” she said. “You can call me Kayla.” Her cheeks were red, her eyes puffy.
Why?
“Kayla,” I corrected myself. “Can I get you anything to eat? We’ve cooked up a great breakfast for everybody.” Man, I was getting good at this communicating with people thing, if I said so myself. Well, it wasn’t so much the communicating as it was the small talk that I didn’t enjoy.
Gossip changed a person.
I was that person.
“Yes, that’s fine,” she whispered.
“What would you like?” I rattled off the list of food we’d made.
“Uh, some grits, please, with maple syrup.”
“Sure! Coffee?” I gestured with the pot.
She nodded and slid her mug forward to accept it black.
I poured, trying not to be obvious about my scrutiny of her. She wouldn’t have noticed if I’d done a tap dance—she stared at her lap, twisting her fingers together.
“Are you all right, Kayla?”
“Fine.”
“OK…” That wasn’t the truth. “Will your sister be joining you for breakfast this morning?”
“No!” Kayla snapped.
I raised an eyebrow but resumed my simpering expression right afterward. “All right. Well, just call me if you need anything, OK?”
Kayla didn’t answer, and I drifted off, puzzling over her appearance and behavior. Both the Wart sisters had been acting strangely last night. Could they be involved in the murder? Surely not. They were guests. Unconnected with Jordan. They’d been here a few days, right?
The slamming of doors broke through my thoughts, and a figure charged into the dining room.
Jessie Belle-Blue, my grandmother’s mortal enemy, stopped just inside the room, holding a newspaper aloft, her tartan pashmina so bright it made the eyes water.
“Georgina!” she cried, triumph in her tone.
The kitchen doors, with their porthole windows, swung open and my grandmother emerged, her cheeks already flushed. “Belle-Blue! What have I told you about coming around here?”
The guests’ heads swiveled, though they didn’t seem upset by the interruption in their breakfast. Everybody liked a meal and a show.
“As if I care what you want,” Jessie replied acidly, waggling the newspaper in front of my grandmother’s nose. “Read it and weep, Franklin!” Franklin was the false last name my grandmother had taken.
“What is this garbage?” My grandmother didn’t take the newspaper.
I joined them and took the newspaper from Jessie Belle-Blue. It was a copy of the local paper, The Gossip Rag. Not a good thing, since the editor of the paper hated my grandmother.
The headline jumped out at me.
The Curse of the Murder Inn Strikes Again!
“Uh oh,” I murmured.
“Uh oh is right.” Jessie’s smile was insufferable. She fluffed her short, dark hair and cast an imperious gaze around the room. “You know, it’s only a matter of time until you lose all your business, Georgina. Every last bit of it.”
“Only in your fantasies, Belle-Blue. The people who stay at the Gossip Inn know better than to read trash like that.” Gamma flicked the newspaper.
“You realize that it’s only a matter of time until your inn shuts down. How many murders has it been now? Two? Three? I’ve lost count.” Jessie puffed out her chest. “I’m sure it makes your guests uncomfortable, but they don’t need to fear. I’ve opened my own inn. The Stop ‘n Go is just down the road from here and is brand new. We’re offering discounts to the first five people who book with us.”
“Out!” Gamma took a step forward, her voice cold as ice. I’d seen that cold look before, and if Jessie didn’t get out of here soon, my grandmother would force her.
“Georgina,” I murmured, trying to calm her down.
“Get out before I throw you out, you vile, treacherous woman!”
Jessie Belle-Blue let out a witchy cackle before sweeping toward the exit. “Enjoy your last few days of business, Georgina.” She called that over her shoulder, waving fingers at us. “Oh, and you can keep that copy of the paper. I’ve got plenty more. I might even frame a copy.”
6
Later that morning…
Time at the Gossip Inn was usually spent cleaning, preparing for meals, checking in on the kittens in the kitten foster center, and gossiping about the latest news with Lauren and my grandmother. Today was no different, except for an increase in rage at Jessie Belle-Blue, and my grandmother’s decision to retire to her room to calm down.
I’d never seen her this worked up before. Jessie was my grandmother’s Kryptonite, and that was saying something since Gamma had faced off against war criminals in her time.
I lingered on the front porch, Cocoa Puff seated next to me on the porch swing, my fingers in his chocolate brown fur, and my gaze running wild over the landscape.
Who had killed Jordan?
Where was my ex-husband?
And how much longer would it be until he appeared? If the case wasn’t solved soon, we wouldn’t have the NSIB’s full protection.
I checked my watch and sighed. “Time for me to get back to work,” I said to Cocoa.
He offered me a cute meow in response. Trust Cocoa to make me feel better. He was a ride or die type of cat.
I left him to sun himself on the porch and headed into the kitchen. Lauren was already poring over her recipe book, prepping for the lunch service.
“There you are, Charlie,” she said, turning to me, her eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?”
“You haven’t heard the news?” Lauren asked, licking her lips.
“What, about the headlines in the newspaper? I wouldn’t worry about those. Georgina’s pretty good at smoothing over PR disasters.”
“No, not that.” Lauren was breathless. “Mindy Rorke, at the doctor’s practice, called me. She heard from Genie Baker, the receptionist at the medical examiner’s office, that Jordan’s body has been…” Her bottom lip trembled, like she couldn’t complete the sentence.
“What? What is it? What happened to his body?”
“It’s been stolen!”
“What?” I blinked repeatedly. “What? How? Why?”
“Genie said she doesn’t know, but that Detective Crowley was there this morning, and he had a huge argument with Dr. Briggs. She said she heard them screaming through the closed office door.”
“That’s… that’s crazy. How does that even happen?” Stolen by whom? And how could somebody have pulled that off? It wasn’t like you could just walk into the office, pull open one of those horrible silver morgue tray things and heft a body over your shoulder. The logistics had me stumped.
“I don’t know.” Lauren rubbed her arms. “It’s almost like he—what if he’s a—a zombie or something?”
“Come on, that’s just ridiculous.”
“You never know. Maybe he didn’t die of like… hanging. Maybe he died of a disease. Or he got infected with a disease in the kitten foster center, and he wanted to solve the problem before he became the undead. You know, by—” She cut off, apparently too horrified by the prospect to continue.
“That’s a plot to a movie, Lauren. Let’s try to stick to reality.”
“But what if it is reality? I mean, stranger things have happened.”
“I doubt that.”
“The inn was haunted not so long ago,” Lauren replied sagely. Or in an attempt to be sage. Her red eyebrows had risen nearly to her hairline.
“No, it wasn’t. That was Jordan, remember?”
“Exactly! He’s been the undead all along. Oh my heavens, what if the zombie virus is in the kitten foster center? What if—?”
I walked over to her, took her by the arm, and sat her down at the kitchen table. “How much sleep did you get last night?”
The chef grimaced. “Not much,” she admitted, then continued in a mutter, “maybe the zombie thing is a little farfetched.”
“A little?” I fixed a pot of coffee. “Like I said, let’s stick to reality. Corpses don’t get up and walk out of morgues. Someone took the body. Most likely, it was the killer, or an associate of the killer. It would take at least two people to pull off something like that.”
“Yeah.”
Lauren accepted the cup of coffee from me once it had been brewed. “Sorry I overreacted.”
“You’ve got an active imagination. That’s not a bad thing.” I patted her on the shoulder. “Any idea what we’re having for lunch today?”
“Oh!” Lauren took a sip of her coffee, then got up and bustled over to her recipe book, the zombie dilemma already forgotten. She paged through the book, tilting her head this way and that as she considered her options. “Ah,” she said. “This looks great. Stuffed mushrooms for the start, and then we’ll do something hearty to comfort he soul. A lasagna.” She removed the key to the Shroom Shed—her pride and joy that had only just started recovering from a serious case of theft—and handed it over. “Brown mushrooms, please, Charlie. A dozen.”
“Sure.” Anything to get away from the zombie theories and settle my thoughts about what had happened.
I left the kitchen and moved down the quaint gravel pathway that encircled the inn. The greenhouse to my right drew the eye, as well as the shape of Brian moving around inside it. Thankfully, Lauren didn’t need any fresh ingredients from there today. I didn’t want to face Brian and here his disapproval about our interest in the case.
Things had been strained lately. I blamed it on having to be around each other nonstop for thirty days straight.
Still, that’s not a good sign.
I shook my head, pushing worries about my relationship to the back of my mind.
Someone, it had to be the murderer, had stolen Jordan’s corpse from the medical examiner’s office. It had to be someone who was skilled and understood the investigative process. A di
rty cop? Or, simply, my ex-husband?
But why would he kill Jordan? He had no reason to, and if he’d been able to get into the inn to attack Jordan, why not just come straight to me and finish the job he’d started?
I found the basement doors set against the side of the inn and smiled at the luminous pictures of mushrooms painted across it. I unlocked the thick lock, swung the doors open, and descended into the space underneath the inn.
The Shroom Shed was off to my right, but my thoughts went to my grandmother’s secret armory, which was hidden behind an obstacle course of furniture and a thick door at the back of this section of the basement.
If only we could use her equipment.
I dismissed the rueful thought and gathered the allotted number of mushrooms in the dark, moist interior of the shed.
Afterward, I locked up after myself and started down the side path around the inn.
The cold barrel of a gun pressed against the side of my neck.
My training kicked in, and I dropped into a crouch, swinging my leg out to connect with the backs of my attacker’s legs. They side-stepped my attempt with ease, crunching the gravel under neat, cream high heels.
“Just checking you’re still limber, Charlotte.” My grandmother smiled down at me, holding a hairbrush that had a cylindrical metal handle. “Though, I’d expect you to know the difference between a gun and brush.”
“Better to be safe than sorry.” My pulse had clipped upward, but I forced myself to breathe and straightened. I’d kept my hold on the basket of mushrooms in the altercation. “Did Jessie bother you so much that you need to take your temper out on me? It’s the first time you’ve ever tested my reflexes, Georgina.”
“It’s the first time I’ve had to.” Because we’d been protected before.
“I’ve got news,” I said, choosing not to take offense to her test.
I told her about the theft of Jordan’s corpse from the medical examiner’s office.
Chocolate Chills (A Mission Inn-possible Cozy Mystery Book 6) Page 3