Cherry Scones & Broken Bones

by Darci Hannah

  “Officer MacLaren!” Edna cried the moment she spotted him. She and Gabby Gaines, the mayor’s wife, had been fondling a hefty piece of pottery. I thought they were in danger of dropping the darn thing the moment Jack entered the picture. In fact, thanks to Edna, all heads swiveled our way; every pair of curious eyes settling on the man behind me. Apparently, I was chopped liver. Excited whispers circulated. Nervous giggling erupted. It had never occurred to me before, but Jack—tall, ginger, handsome, and cutting a fine figure in his police blues—had quite a fan club with the older women of the cove.

  “Ladies.” Although blushing from the attention, he was trying his hardest to look professional.

  Tay spied us from the sales counter. She was ringing up a customer, but there was something wary in her silent greeting.

  Char, in a far corner helping an elderly woman try on an Irish walking cape, called to Jack and waved. She was coming to greet us when another woman, partially hidden by a glass shelf, stepped in front of us.

  “Ms. Bloom. What are you doing here?” It was Alexa Livingstone. Her taut face pulled into a look of puzzlement as she stood before us in fashionable white pants, a navy and white striped top with billowing sleeves, and a red ascot tied around her neck. The woman looked like an aging Ralph Lauren model and smelled like the perfume aisle of Neiman Marcus. She turned to Jack with a look of extreme displeasure. “Our beloved friend has been gone one day, and you think it’s a good idea to parade the murder suspect around town?”

  “Ma’am, please step aside,” Jack warned.

  Char swept in, the lovely Irish walking cape still in her hands. “Alexa, please.” Obviously the last thing she wanted was a scene in her daughter’s busy shop. “Murder in Cherry Cove is unsettling for us all. The fact that Officer MacLaren is here now with Whitney suggests the investigation isn’t over. Don’t you watch TV crime shows? Murder is never as straightforward as it seems. Isn’t that right, Officer?”

  Jack hesitated. Char was clearly trying to placate a customer but hadn’t given any thought as to why Jack would be in the shop wearing his uniform. Tay suffered no such illusions and understood, her face clouding with concern. Alexa had picked up on the meaning as well.

  “Oh,” she said, as the thought dawned on her. She brought a hand over her heart. Alexa then looked at me, her eyes shifting between remorse and suspicion. “I’m … sorry. Does this mean that Ms. Bloom is, in fact, innocent?” She looked at Jack. The thought that I wasn’t a heinous murderer had obviously never occurred to her. Jack, clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation, remained silent, prompting Alexa to add, “My dear, I’m so sorry. It was all so clear to me yesterday—all the evidence was pointing to you … but of course”—she looked at Char—“that would be too obvious.”

  Except for Tay, who remained steadfast behind the counter, everyone in the shop had pressed in, most of them hovering behind Jack. Edna peeked around his trim waist. “That’s what I’ve been telling the lot of you.” Her face, with its beady black eyes and bulldog-esque wrinkles and jowls, turned to Alexa. “She’s maybe a flighty millennial,” she said, pointing a meaty finger at me, “but she’s not a killer. Doesn’t have it in her.” She cast me a wink. We were, after all, co-Gilded Cherry trophy winners. “What she is, is a gifted baker. And from one baker to another, I know that Whitney would never degrade one of her cherry scones in such a way.”

  “I agree,” added Gabby Gaines, peeking around Jack’s other side. “We have to be kinder to our millennials. After all, they’re our future. Hi, dear.” Mrs. Gaines smiled at me. She then tilted her face up to Jack’s and coyly ran a hand up his arm.

  Jack immediately stepped away. “Everyone, please! Go about your business. Keep shopping, or I’ll be forced to close Cheery Pickers down temporarily.”

  It was a serious threat, which seemed to remind everyone how serious the matter was. Tay came around the counter and placed a hand on my arm. “Come with me.”

  “What’s going on?” Tay asked the moment she closed the door to her office. Something was bothering her. The fact that Jack and I had shown up at her shop unannounced only heightened her look of concern.

  “I’m looking for Lance Van Guilder,” Jack said. “Do you know where I might find him?”

  Although they’d been friends since high school, that statement from Jack sent a visible shiver of fear running through Tay. She tried to wave it off as nothing, but she wasn’t good at pretending. “Um, sure. He’s out back taking a nap in the hammock. What’s this all about, Jack?”

  “Tay.” I took hold of her hand and squeezed. “You and I will stay here. We need to talk.”

  The moment Jack left Tay’s office, heading for the back door, she turned to me. “What … what have you found?” Her voice was deceptively light. Last night at dinner she’d been upset, not fearful like she was now. Something told me that she knew about Lance and had been waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  I took a chance and asked, “Did Lance tell you that he used to work for Silvia?”

  She plopped down in the leather desk chair and let out a long sigh. “He did. I thought this might be about that.”

  As I sat down opposite her, a loud meow echoed from under the desk. A moment later her plus-size, wine-loving cat, Izzy, appeared in her lap. Tay, grateful for the distraction, stroked his long, silky gray fur.

  “Last night, after we left the inn,” she began, “I knew he was keeping a terrible secret. It’s not like him, you know, to be so sullen and glum all the time, or to allow his competitors at the fair to beat him to a pulp. These last couple of weeks have been particularly hard for him, and he refused to tell me why. He really takes his chivalric knightly code to heart.” A half smile appeared on her lips as she said this. “Anyhow, he made it quite clear that he didn’t want to bother me with his problems. It was as if he was protecting me from some great evil. Then, last night, he heard the name Silvia Lumiere and learned of her death.” Her troubled brown eyes shot to mine. “After that, Whit, it was like the flood gates opened. We came home and he began telling me everything.”

  Tay paused to pull a half-eaten box of Double Stuf Oreo cookies from a drawer in her desk. She took one and offered the box to me. The crisp chocolate cookie with an extra helping of sweet cream filling in every bite had always been our favorite nerve balm. Apparently, it was Izzy’s as well. Tay, working on autopilot, twisted her cookie and mindlessly scrapped a nugget of creamy filling on her desk. Izzy pounced. With the hefty cat happily attacking the Oreo cream, Tay explained how Lance had been working as squire at Medieval Times in Schaumburg, Illinois, when he and Silvia had met.

  “It’s virtually, like, medieval dinner theater with a menu straight from the dark ages,” she explained with an ironic twist of her lips. She twisted another top off yet another Oreo and shoved it in her mouth. “But folks don’t really go there for the food,” she said, still chewing. “It’s the entertainment that draws them in. That’s where Lance got his start as a knight. He was attending art school during the day and performed in the jousting ring at Medieval Times at night or on the weekends. It was after one of his shows that Silvia approached him. Her offer to pay for art school was too good to be true. Lance, of course, had heard of her. He was enchanted by her paintings and her reputation. It hadn’t taken much to persuade him to hang up his sword and go to work for her. Once he did, however, he virtually became her slave. He worked in her studio for two years, and she gave him nothing above room and board. She owed him a lot of money,” Tay added, focusing all her attention on Izzy. “Silvia was the person who mailed him that check, the one that bounced.”

  “I know,” I said gently. “I assumed as much.”

  A helpless look seized her eyes. “He didn’t even know she was in Cherry Cove. When the check bounced he called the bank that issued it, but they had no idea how to reach her. All her accounts had been drained. It plagued him, he said. It was almost
as bad as when he worked for her. Then, last Thursday, when he was coming home from the fair, he saw her drive by. He had to do a double-take, he was so shocked. But there she was, sitting in the passenger seat of that big white Cadillac of hers. According to him, she had stared straight at him. Lance followed her. That’s when he learned she was staying at the Cherry Orchard Inn.”

  I thought of that humiliating painting Silvia had coerced him into sitting for. I found it more than a little ironic that it had been stowed in the trailer behind the SUV when Silvia had driven past him.

  “He came home, showered, changed, ate dinner with me, and then left to run an errand, or so he told me. He was really paying Silvia a visit.”

  “Grandma Jenn saw him,” I explained. “I was unaware Lance had ever set foot in the inn before last night.”

  She gave Izzy a big hug and pushed him off the desk. The cat landed softly for his big size. He then pranced across the floor and disappeared into a closet. “Well, nothing came of their confrontation, just more humiliation. Silvia has quite the posse surrounding her. They’re all fiercely loyal. Anyhow, Lance realized that he was never going to get any money from her. He was also really contemplating hanging up his lance.” The silly pun made her smile. “But now he’s reconsidering his options. Look,” she said, “I should have told you the moment I learned, but I just couldn’t. It was inconsequential, really, and very private. However, the instant I saw you and Jack walk in the shop, I knew you had found out.” She closed the pack of Oreos, folded her hands, and leaned on the desk. “So,” she began, curiosity igniting her eyes, “how exactly did you find out? How did you connect Lance to Silvia?”

  “The painting.”

  Tay sat a moment, her pert little nose scrunched in contemplation. “What painting?”

  “You know, the painting ? The one that’s not supposed to exist? Well, it does. Giff and I found it last night in her trailer.”

  Tay was a sharp cookie. She wasn’t easily confounded by things, but the mention of the painting threw her for a loop. I suddenly realized that Lance hadn’t told her everything. I took a deep breath and was about to explain the sensitive nature of the painting when the knight in question barged through the office door. Jack was fast on his heels.

  Although bruised and still a bit wobbly from the beating he’d taken the day before, it was instantly apparent that Lance was back in fighting form. “Babe!” he cried. “Your friends have found something, and you’re not going to like it. But I need you to tell them that I didn’t kill Silvia Lumiere.”

  Thirty-One

  “Oh, my gentle Jesus,” Lance breathed, staring at the painting Jack had brought in. The gilded frame had been propped against the wall. The knight’s expression fluctuated between pain and relief as he studied his younger, naked self.

  Tay, standing beside him for moral support, gawked with jaw dangling. A breathy sigh escaped her lips and was swiftly covered by a sudden clearing of her throat. “It’s so wrong,” she remarked. “And yet the artistry is undeniable.”

  Lance, ignoring everything but the erotic portrait, suddenly looked up, his eyes locking with Jack’s. “I can’t tell you how much sleep I’ve lost over this stupid painting. I thought the old witch had burned it. How … where did you find it?”

  Jack, with a deferential nod to me, explained. “I didn’t. Whitney did. She brought it to the station this morning. It wasn’t in Silvia’s room, if that’s what you were wondering.”

  All eyes shifted to me. “We found it in that big white trailer she’s been towing around. Peter calls it the white beast. He keeps the keys. Look,” I said, staring at Lance’s bruised face, now two shades darker with consternation. “When I was named as the prime suspect in her murder I called my friend Giff and asked him to do a little poking around on the internet for me. He came across the sexual harassment lawsuit and learned of the painting that had never materialized.”

  “What?” Tay looked at Lance. “You never told me about a lawsuit.”

  The poor man blushed. “Babe, I never told you about the painting either, and I’m sorry. I told you how miserable I was working for Silvia. But this”—he gestured to his naked likeness—“this was too humiliating to even mention.”

  Jack, taking that as his cue, walked over to the large frame and replaced the black cloth. Everybody, with perhaps the exception of Tay, had had enough of it.

  I continued. “After knowing Silvia for a few weeks, and learning from Tate how she’d tried to talk him into posing nude for her last year, we figured that if there was a lawsuit against her the painting had to exist. What we didn’t know was the identity of the young man she’d coerced into posing for it. Last night, however, when we were poking around in Silvia’s trailer and came across this, you can imagine our surprise. We were just as shocked as you are now.”

  “Lance,” Jack began, looking at the man near his own age who’d definitely been made to suffer for knowing the painter, “you do understand that the discovery of this portrait links you to the murder victim? What this means is that I’m going to have to bring you to the station for questioning. I’m also going to need to get your fingerprints.”

  “Jack!” Tay cried, her inner mama bear released. She rounded on him, her soft brown eyes hardening like onyx-tipped daggers. “That won’t be necessary. There’s no way Lance could have killed Silvia, and I’ll tell you why.” Jack was all ears. Tay pressed on. “As you well know, that portrait is proof the woman was a Class A creeper. Yes, she had talent, but her cloying ways and faux assistantships were little better than a Hollywood casting couch. If anyone has reason to want her dead, Lance would be at the top of that list. But he didn’t do it. He couldn’t have. Whit told me that Silvia was murdered sometime between midnight and five on Sunday morning.”

  That had been the case yesterday. Thanks to Erik, however, we now knew that it was sometime after two in the morning. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “Do you want to know what Lance Van Guilder was doing at that time?” she cried, her voice escalating with anger. “I’ll tell you what he was doing! He was sleeping and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. And I should know. I was right there next to him. That’s what happens after a long day at the Renaissance fair,” she spat, not wanting to break the flow of her tirade by taking a full breath. “Jousting, sparring, blocking blows with your body, and mucking about in a full suit of armor under the hot sun—all for the enjoyment of curious families, fantasy junkies, gamers, larpers, and the odd medieval historian. Lance is, quite frankly, too exhausted to even contemplate murder let alone finish a full episode of The Office without nodding off in the middle of it.”

  “What?” Jack, who’d been trying to write Tay’s whole tirade down in his notepad, suddenly looked up. He tilted his head and stared at the man in question. “Dude, are you really sleeping through The Office? That’s almost sacrilegious.”

  “I know,” Tay interjected. “Right? We started streaming it at the beginning of June and we’re still only in the middle of the first season!”

  “Damn,” he uttered. “I’ve never heard of anyone falling asleep in the middle of an Office episode.” Jack flipped the page he’d been scribbling on and wrote two more lines. “Lance, is this true?”

  The knight, looking utterly dejected, nodded. “It is. I’m so tired after a day at the fair that I can barely make it through dinner. Tay’s being too kind.” He looked at her and covered her hand with his own. “She deserves better than a beat-to-hell boyfriend who can’t even stay awake through one episode of The Office. I was so poor working for Silvia that I didn’t even own a TV. I’m trying to catch up on all the pop culture I missed, and Tay’s been helping me, but the moment I come through that door, I’m pooped. You can imagine what it’s doing to our sex life. That painting there …” He flipped an accusing hand at the black cloth. “That’s the most excitement she’s gotten all summer.”

  Jack, whose
eyes were too damnably expressive for his own good, shot me a look after this last remark. I interpreted the look and nearly burst into giggles. But I refrained. Clearly, to Tay and Lance this was no laughing matter.

  Jack cleared his throat. Looking utterly professional, he addressed Lance. “For the record, did you, Lance Van Guilder, murder Silvia Lumiere?”

  “No,” Lance said with utter conviction. Although I had wanted to shift the blame for the horrible crime to anyone else but myself, I had to admit that I was relieved. Jack, I could see, also believed him. Lance, however, was still miffed about the painting. “I didn’t kill her, Mac­Laren, but after looking at that painting, and being made to relive the humiliation and violation I suffered at the hand of that woman, I really wish that I had.”

  Jack nodded. “I’m going to need both you and Tay to come to the station with me and sign a statement stating as much, omitting, of course, that last part.”

  Lance agreed. “And what about the painting? I’ve been sweating over it for all these years. What’s going to happen to it?”

  “I’m going to need to keep it for a while longer, just until we can find the person responsible for Ms. Lumiere’s untimely death.”

  I could see that both Tay and Lance were uncomfortable with this. The painting was of a sensitive nature, and there was another fact to consider: since the death of the painter, it was likely worth a fortune. “Jack,” I said, touching his arm. My touch startled him, but not in a bad way. His honey-colored gaze softened. “By stumbling upon that painting, I thought I had made a connection to Silvia’s murder. But once again, it’s just another red herring.” I pointed to the black cloth trapped within the gilded edges. “There are so many people who had cause to want Silvia dead, but clearly Lance, like Peter and the Gordons, couldn’t have done it. They all have alibis. Do you really need to keep the painting and record it as evidence? Up until a few hours ago, no one knew it existed. What harm would there be in keeping it that way?”