Cherry Scones & Broken Bones

by Darci Hannah

  “Apparently, yes,” Gran remarked. “At least I think that’s what happened. I saw the pile of pink satin when I came in, and when I went to investigate I got the shock of my life. Silvia’s dead, her poor old mouth stuffed to bursting with a cherry scone.” Gran’s eyes softened. “Whitney, are you sure you had nothing to do with this? Because if you did, dear, I hope you understand that your secret’s safe—”

  “I’m not a liar, Gran! And I’m certainly not a murderer. How can you even jump to that conclusion?”

  Her lips pulled taut. “If you’ll recall, you seem to have jumped to that very same conclusion about me when Jeb was murdered.”

  “That’s because it was your blender!”

  “Well, that’s your scone, isn’t it?” She gestured to the splatter of crumbs on the floor.

  “I make a lot of scones. Sure, I might have daydreamed about strangling the woman. Who didn’t? But I’d hardly waste a quality cherry baked good on that.” I wiggled my hand at the rumpled heap of pink satin, white fluff and scone crumbs on the floor, my arm being too overwhelmed to work properly. “That is not my doing.”

  Grandma Jenn had an uncanny resemblance to Helen Mirren, only she was taller, livelier and not one bit English. She was a proud American of Scandinavian descent, and yet her round blue eyes held me in an icy Norwegian stare. A moment later she relented. “Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. I thought as much but figured it would be best to make sure. Also, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for some hard grilling. Everyone knows you didn’t get on with the woman, just as everyone knows you’re the queen of cherry scones around here.”

  “But … who would do such a thing … I mean, for real?” Murdering an old lady was bad enough, but the thought that someone had used one of my scones to do it seemed either desperate or diabolically evil. Whoever wanted Silvia dead had either grabbed the closest object in reach, which, knowing Silvia, really might have been a cherry scone, or the real killer was trying to frame me. Either way, the fact that a dead body was lying in the grand foyer of the inn wasn’t sitting very well with me, and it certainly wasn’t going to help the Cherry Orchard Inn brand any. I hated to admit it, but Silvia Lumiere had been good for business. Taking a step toward the body, I offered, “Maybe it was an accident.”

  “Maybe it was.” Gran hooked her arm in mine. “She was a bit unsteady on her legs,” she added, walking with me to the foot of the stairs. “She insisted on using the elevator, but maybe she got brave in the middle of the night.”

  “I don’t think so, Gran. She was arthritic. She’d never take the chance. However, if she was sleepwalking and didn’t know where she was … ?”

  “And eating a scone while doing it?” She cast me a deprecatory look. We both knew it sounded absurd.

  We stood beside the body. The petite, plump form was swaddled in an elaborate dressing gown. I’d only seen one other body before and that had been in the morgue. It was a ghastly sight that had resulted in me passing out. However, staring at Silvia’s body in so familiar a place felt surreal. “Maybe she isn’t dead at all,” I offered. “Maybe she’s just been knocked unconscious.” Before Gran could stop me, I knelt beside the body and tugged on the sleeve of Silvia’s dressing gown. The fleshy form rolled into my legs, spilling crumbs and knocking me onto my backside.

  “Dead! Dead!” I squawked, scrambling backward. There was no question in my mind: Silvia Lumiere had been murdered, and I was nearly certain I had nothing to do with it other than baking the murder weapon. But was that a crime? Hopefully not.

  Then cold, hard reality set in. The inn would be thrown into a tizzy. A lengthy murder investigation would commence. And I would be working double-time to try to put things right once again. The only upside to a calamity of this scale was that I now had a legitimate excuse to bail on the Renaissance fair excursion.

  Twelve

  “My God, this is like a bad dream,” Dad remarked, peering at the lump beneath the white sheet. Grandma Jenn had raided the linen cart, not only covering the body but roping off the crime scene with a ribbon of knotted flat sheets as well. It was quick thinking. Mom was beside Dad, crying and mumbling something about the family portrait and how a dead body was really going to throw a wrench into the inn’s complimentary breakfast routine. It definitely would, but I couldn’t think of that now. I had a more pressing problem. Because, after the shock of discovering the dead body, I began to recall details of the previous night—including the last person to pay Silvia a visit.

  The foyer suddenly filled with the reflection of flashing red and blue lights. Mom stopped crying.

  “Jack’s arrived,” Dad said and went to unlock the front doors.

  The rest of the morning unfolded like a poorly acted cable TV cop drama, with me both a disjointed spectator and the most likely suspect. It was a truly nightmarish feeling, especially since the man who was currently starring in all my romantic fantasies marched through the door with an air that was all business. He was curt, professional and only looked at me when he absolutely had to. I had found it all so unnerving that I had chosen the moment he began tweezing up crumbs of the murder weapon for his evidence bag to make a bad joke.

  “She always said they were to die for.” Standing with arms crossed, I flashed him an ironic grin, knowing I’d get an impish smile if not an all-out chuckle.

  Apparently, my timing was off.

  Mom gasped.

  Grandma Jenn blanched and covered her mouth.

  Dad’s normally calm face creased with angry disapproval. “Too soon, Whitney. Too soon.”

  Jack, who’d been kneeling beside the body, looked up at me. It was odd, but I couldn’t detect a trace of humor in his unflinching gaze. “Are you confirming that you baked this scone?” he asked.

  I had always been able to make Jack smile in the past. He smiled easily. The fact that there wasn’t the slightest lift at either corner of his mouth was more than disturbing. “It’s one of mine, yes. Jack—I mean, Officer MacLaren—you’ve eaten enough yourself to know that it is.”

  “Do you know when this particular scone was baked?”

  “No. I mean, if I had to guess, I’d say yesterday morning. The scones for this morning are still in the cooler. They haven’t been baked yet. I was only trying to lighten the mood.”

  “There’s a dead woman in the lobby of your inn with one of your scones jammed so far down her throat that all I can pull out are crumbs, and all you can think to do is make a joke?”

  “Obviously, I thought wrong. So is that what killed her?” I pointed to the scone crumbs trapped in the ziplock baggie.

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous. My scones are perfectly baked, crisp on the outside, moist on the inside.”

  “True. But what the scone didn’t finish, the broken neck did. Ms. Lumiere took quite a nasty fall down the stairs.” Then, for the first time, Officer MacLaren cracked. His face softened as his voice became a mere whisper. “Whit, you do realize that I have to bring you in for questioning? At the moment you’re my prime suspect.”

  I lowered my voice too. “Oh come on, Jack. Just because I said a few negative things about the old woman doesn’t mean I’m the murderer.”

  “I hope not. But here we are, kneeling at the foot of the stairs beside a dead body with a scone sticking out of her mouth. She was pushing you toward the edge. I believe you told me you were, and I quote”—he flashed a set of air quotes—“‘going to strangle the old sack of paintbrushes myself.’”

  I frowned. “True, I did say that. But I wasn’t the only one to harbor the fantasy. And anyhow, you don’t know that she’s been murdered. She could have tripped,” I offered, trying to look as if I believed it.

  “She could have,” Jack said. “But that wouldn’t explain the scone. If she was eating it and got too close to the stairs, she would have dropped it in the fall or crushed it in her fis
t. At the very least there would be large crumbs scattered all over the steps as she fell down them. But there’s just a small trail of fine crumbs here,” he said, pointing a gloved finger up the stairs. “The impact of her head hitting the stairs did that. But most are here, at the bottom, where she landed.”

  As Jack confirmed what Gran and I had suspected, my heart began to beat with the frantic rhythm of a hyped-up techno tune.

  “Look,” Jack began, holding me in a pointed gaze. “Sometimes the fine line between fantasy and reality gets blurred. A person might not even realize what they’re doing because the act is so vivid in their mind. I’m not saying—”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, then sneered. “Don’t bother. I know perfectly well what you’re saying. And it’s highly unflattering. You think I’m a nutter!”

  “All I’m saying, Whit, is that I hope you have a rock-solid alibi, or it’s going to be a rough morning.”

  Jack wasn’t kidding. The morning descended from there. The Cherry Orchard Inn was declared a crime scene and all guests were ordered to stay in their rooms until further notice, which proved a near Herculean task. There’s something about a dead body that piques curiosity, especially for the gentleman staying in the Swan Suite, who was caught gawking over the railing at the lumpy sheet on the floor no less than seven times. Jack was losing his patience. The inn resembled more of a prison lockdown than the beautiful Victorian bed-and-breakfast it was.

  More squad cars arrived. Sergeant Stamper and Officer Jensen from Sturgeon Bay appeared and joined the growing number of police officers working under Jack. Grandma Jenn’s cordon of clean linen was taken down and replaced by proper yellow crime scene tape. Truthfully, I preferred the linen. It wasn’t nearly as jolting.

  Bags of evidence were removed from Silvia’s room before it was taped off as part of the crime scene. More evidence was gathered, and pictures were taken, until finally the ambulance arrived. The body was then removed from the indignity of the marble floor only to be transported to the indignity of the morgue at Door County General, a place I vowed never to visit again. There Doc Fisker, the county coroner, would conduct the required autopsy for suspicious death. Was it too much to hope that Jack was wrong? An accidental death due to a gluttonous midnight binge of cherry scones and a trip down the stairs would look better for me, as well as for the Cherry Orchard Inn.

  Even more upsetting than being Jack’s prime suspect was the fact that Dad had rolled up his sleeves and took control of the inn. This caused Mom to trip into hyper-hostess mode. She and Grandma Jenn called in a skeleton staff and proceeded to organize a mass effort to deliver coffee, sweet rolls, and fresh fruit to every room while doing their best to make sure every guest was comfortable, under the circumstances. Mom had even suggested that I make sure all the personnel working the crime scene had access to hot beverages and cherry baked goods as well, but she’d given strict instructions not to bake any cherry scones.

  “And no more jokes, Whitney,” she’d gently admonished me. “You’re a suspect, dear. This isn’t a laughing matter.”

  As if I needed reminding.

  Once the body had been removed and all the guests had given their names, addresses and preliminary statements to the police, they were free to leave their rooms, minding that they stayed clear of the crime scene. Jack was ready to take me to the station for his version of “interrogation” (which likely wouldn’t look at all like my fantasy version—dear heavens, what was wrong with me?) when another thought popped into his head. He spoke the name Peter McClellan, as if everything I’d been telling him had fallen on deaf ears.

  “I haven’t seen him this morning,” I told him, half expecting him to throw me in handcuffs.

  “He wasn’t here to make a statement,” Jack said. “What room is he in?”

  I told him Peter was staying in the Pine Suite, a small room tucked away at the far end of the second floor. A moment later Dad produced the master key and the three of us went to check on him. When no one answered, Jack took the key and unlocked the door. We were instantly hit with a wave of stench that nearly knocked us over. To be honest, I’d seen messier rooms, but the smell was impressive, a potent combination of sweaty male, stale pot, cheap incense, and old paint. The man in question, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  “Oh, for the love of Pete! That smell!” Dad covered his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “It’s like a skunk sprayed up a locker room. Why didn’t housekeeping report this?”

  Dad was staring at me, waiting for an answer. The stern, unbending look undid me. “They couldn’t report it, because they haven’t been here since last Monday.”

  Clearly this wasn’t what my father had wanted to hear. If Jack hadn’t been standing next to me Dad would have given me an earful on proper inn management and why it was so important to keep tabs on housekeeping. Thankfully, he refrained.

  “Sorry, Dad, but Silvia finagled this room from us at no cost,” I explained. “Since she wasn’t paying for the room, or much else, I made the executive decision to cut back on maid service to only once a week. I had no idea the guy was smoking pot in here.” This wasn’t entirely a lie. I knew the guy smoked pot. Friday night I had caught him on the beach pushing it as a cleansing herb to Erik and Hannah. I had no idea he’d be stupid enough to smoke it in his non-smoking room.

  “McClellan’s not here,” Jack said, ushering us back to the threshold. “We can’t legally enter or search this room without his permission or a search warrant. He’s Silvia’s assistant,” Jack continued. “I was told that he worked very closely with her. We’re going to need to talk with him. Whitney, do you have any idea where he might be?”

  It was the intensity of the honey-colored gaze that prompted me to reply, “Um, maybe.” That same intense look coaxed me into pulling out my iPhone and dialing Hannah’s number. My open frustration with Silvia had caused Jack to consider me a prime suspect in her murder. While the fact that she’d been choked with one of my scones hadn’t helped any, it could be argued that Peter McClellan had a stronger motive to see her dead than I did. And yet I silently prayed, as I dialed my friend’s number, that he wouldn’t be there. After the incident on the beach, which I’d never mentioned to Jack, I’d warned Hannah to keep her distance from Peter. But Hannah was obsessed with the guy and, unfortunately, my well-meaning advice had fallen on deaf ears.

  The moment the phone was answered an over-caffeinated voice cried, “I’m so excited! We’re just getting dressed for the Renaissance fair now. I’m going as a medieval nun and Peter’s dressing as a hermit. Isn’t that just perfect? He’s wearing a long robe made of hemp and his sexy Jesus sandals. We’ve been dallying,” she said, and burst into giggles. “We’ll be ready in twenty minutes. You can pick us up then.”

  “Actually,” I began, staring back at the two men staring at me, “there’s been a change of plans. Can you meet us at the police station instead? Jack has something he’d like to ask Peter.”

  “Yeah. Sure. No problem. See ya there.”

  Jack, standing on the threshold of the room, began massaging his forehead in frustration. “You didn’t tell her about Silvia. She still thinks we’re going to the fair. You do know that we can’t go now, not with an open murder investigation at the inn?”

  Why did I feel nothing but relief at the thought? I looked up at Jack. “Of course. And I’m your prime suspect. Even if I wanted to go to the fair today I hardly think you’d let me.”

  “Sorry, Whit. I was really looking forward to our outing today too.” He cast me a pointed look, continuing, “But murder changes things.”

  “Oh, fer cripes’ sake, MacLaren! You don’t seriously think Whitney had anything to do with that woman’s death? The old witch had more enemies than teeth. Besides, my daughter’s worked too hard trying to rebuild the inn’s reputation after that last incident in the orchard. She’d hardly throw it all away again. Lord knows that painter tried
her patience, but my daughter’s no murderer!”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I looked at him with all the adoration I felt.

  “Mr. Bloom, sir, regardless of my feelings for your daughter, I hope you’ll appreciate that this is first and foremost a professional matter.”

  Dad looked at Jack as if for the first time. “Feelings?” he questioned. “And how exactly do you feel about my daughter, MacLaren?” Obviously, the thought that there might be something more than friendship between Jack and me had never entered his mind … until now.

  Unfortunately, what I felt for Jack was a little harder to disguise than my relief for our canceled outing. My cheeks burned under Dad’s inquisitive gaze. Jack, under the same silent parental interrogation, was also in danger of combusting. Thankfully, he was more adept at handling such situations than I was. He chose to ignore Dad’s inquisitive stare in favor of focusing on the problem at hand.

  “You sent Hannah and Peter to the police station. Why didn’t you tell her what’s really going on?”

  “Look. I’m a suspect, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have suspicions of my own. I’m conducting a little experiment.”

  Jack, bemused, crossed his arms and cocked his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That I’m not the only one who had issues with Ms. Lumiere. She tormented Peter to such an extent that he actually believed she was a vampire.” I was waiting for them to be shocked. Instead both men held me in a look of pity.

  “Whit.” Jack spoke first. “Vampires aren’t real.”

  I shrugged. “Sure, you and I know that, but Peter doesn’t. It’s a long story,” I said to his questioning gaze. “I’ll tell you all about it in my interview, right after I tell you that I didn’t kill Silvia Lumiere. For now, let’s just see if Peter shows up at the police station. If he had anything to do with Silvia’s death he would know by now that her body had been found. Pushing an elderly lady down the main flight of stairs in a hotel lobby is hardly a private murder. If she was murdered, it was meant to be a public display. Silvia never went near those stairs. Also, everyone knew that she loved my cherry scones. Have you considered that the murderer could be framing me? There isn’t a person in all of Cherry Cove who isn’t aware of how Silvia tormented me, or how much she loved my scones. But if I was really going to kill her, why would I be stupid enough to use one of my scones to do it?”