“No,” Bee put in. “That was Gillian. The day before she… passed.”
Sara crossed herself again. “Well, it’s a lie. There is no permit to sell baked goods. My best guess is that the mayor’s wife didn’t want you setting up a bakery right down the street from her restaurant. And she lied about the permit to make sure you wouldn’t do exactly that.”
“Wow,” I managed.
“Yeah, Gillian was a piece of work. She really did make people feel uncomfortable around here, even her husband. The poor man was a wreck because he had to live with her.” Sara shook her head. “But I suppose I’ve said too much already.”
“It’s good to know that we don’t need a permit,” I said. “We were worried we wouldn’t get the chance to sell—”
A whooping cry came from the road, and a black SUV drove by, a tinted window rolled down on our side. A gloved hand emerged and loosed a white stone. It struck the side of the food truck and splattered.
Not a stone. An egg!
One after the other, eggs rained from the SUV and splatted against the food truck, covering it in dripping yolk.
Sara let out a battle cry and ran forward, shaking her fist, but the SUV sped off and skidded around a corner, out of sight.
“Good heavens.” I turned to the truck. It wasn’t trashed as it had been in the past, but this would take a good afternoon of cleaning to get off. And just when we’d been so close to opening the truck again.
“Did you see the plates?” Bee asked.
“No. But I saw the eggs!”
“They were blacked out. That’s illegal.”
Sara strode back to join us, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry about that. People in this town are insular at the best of times. And with Gillian dead, these aren’t the best of times. I suspect everyone’s more paranoid than usual.”
Which meant they were ultra-paranoid.
“They’re not going to let this go, are they?” I asked.
“Not until Snodgrass arrests the person responsible,” Sara said.
Then we had no choice. Bee and I would have to clear our names if we wanted to get our lives back to normal. It was that or leave, but we couldn’t. Snodgrass had told us to stay put.
Bee caught my eye and nodded. The investigation was on.
6
The mayor’s house was in a well-to-do suburb on the North side of town. It was a grand, double story abode with a wraparound porch, a high fence, and a Maple tree in the garden, its leaves fluttering on branches bowed by age.
We’d looked up his address in the phonebook of all things—who even used those anymore?—and I peeked out the driver’s side window of the food truck, my heart creeping into my throat.
“I’m too nervous,” I whispered.
“For once, I’m nervous too,” Bee said, brushing her fingers through her gray hair. It was cut into a neat bob. “There’s something strange about this town. Are we sure it’s not some kind of Vermont Bermuda triangle?”
“We’re not sure of anything. Except for the fact that we’re the prime suspects and that Snodgrass woman isn’t going to let it go.”
Bee opened her door. “Let’s get this over with.”
We left the food truck parked in the street—egg-free after a hose down and scrubbing at the carwash—and made for the mayor’s front porch. He’d decorated it in Jack-o’-lanterns and painted spooky bats onto his front windows, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the folks here took Halloween as seriously as the Carmel Springs’ residents had.
A quick knock and a minute later the door opened.
The mayor had dark circles under his eyes, was tall and skinny, and wore a shirt that looked a size too big for him. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Yes? May I help you?”
“Mayor McKene?” I asked.
“That’s correct.”
“We came to offer our condolences.”
He nodded, slowly. “Thanks.”
Bee inched forward. “We’ve got some Sprinkle Cakes in the truck, but we weren’t sure if you needed food or not. You know, people usually bring a lot of food…” she trailed off, fluttering her eyelashes at him.
I did a doubletake. Was Bee interested in the man? Or was this a tactic to get information? In the time we’d traveled together on the truck, I’d never known her to be overly nice to anyone.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got plenty to eat,” the mayor said, with a soft smile. “Who are you, by the way? Don’t mean to be rude, but I haven’t seen you ladies around town before.”
“We’re new,” I said.
“I’m Bee, and this is Ruby.” Bee extended a hand, and the mayor took it. They held onto each other for a few seconds longer than necessary. “We own the food truck that came to town.”
“Oh!” The mayor released her. “Oh. Well, you’d better come inside then.” He stepped back, opening the door all the way.
We entered his front hall—wooden floors, tall ceilings, pictures of him and Gillian on the walls—and followed him into his living room. He offered us tea or coffee and we accepted, taking a seat on a comfy leather sofa.
The place was immaculate. There wasn’t a speck of dirt. Not even the magazines on the chic glass coffee table were out of place.
Mayor McKene came back with our drinks and sat down across from us, hitching up his pants. “I hope this is OK,” he said, gesturing to the perfectly prepared coffees in their fancy glass cups. “Things are a bit of a mess at the moment.”
“This is perfect, mayor,” Bee said, with another eyelash flutter.
“Call me Arthur, please.”
“Arthur,” Bee breathed.
“Why did you ask us to come in after we mentioned the food truck?” I asked. “Did Gillian say something about us?”
“In short, yes.”
“And in long?”
“She wouldn’t stop raging about you, but, well, she didn’t stop raging about many things. I’m included in that.” The mayor wriggled his nose and picked up a cup of coffee. He sipped it, his gaze fixed on Bee. “You know, she was a difficult woman to live with. Very moody. Fragile, even.”
“Fragile?” I prompted. Bee was the perfect distraction—while the mayor made heart-shaped cartoon eyes at her, I could ask him questions he might not have answered otherwise.
“Yeah, she couldn’t handle any form of competition,” the mayor continued. “If she felt like someone was moving in on her territory, she’d be sour all day.” He brushed his fingers through his gray-brown hair. “She hated women in particular.”
“Good heavens,” Bee said. “That must have been difficult for you.”
He finished his coffee and placed the cup back on the tray. “Oh yeah, you could say that. I slept in the shack on the night before it happened.”
“The shack?” I frowned.
“My toolshed,” he said. “I call it the shack now because I sleep there so often. Put a bed and a TV in there and everything. Whenever we have an argument, I’ve got to sleep out there and she gets the house. If I don’t, she breaks things. Or she did.”
“And you had to sleep out there on the night before she was… murdered?” Bee asked, pulling a face. “You poor man.”
Interesting. So, he wasn’t with her. That or he’s lying. Either way, he doesn’t have an alibi.
“Yeah, she was convinced I was having an affair with Sara,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Sara Robertson?” I asked.
The mayor colored. “I shouldn’t be telling you two all of this, but I just… I’ve been so stressed lately, and between you and me, things weren’t going well between Gillian and me. I’d been thinking about a divorce, but she scared me, quite frankly. I don’t think she would have let me get away unscathed.”
Is that why you killed her? “That’s OK,” I said. “Everyone needs someone to talk to.”
“I guess you’re right.” McKene had a weak chin under that gray stubble. “I’m struggling to come to terms with what happened.”
<
br /> “When last did you see her?” Bee asked.
“The afternoon before. She was furious about your food truck. She said she was going to make sure you’d never sell a single cake in this town. I bought her a restaurant, you see, and she was focused on making it the best restaurant in town,” the mayor said. “I wanted to apologize to you both on her behalf. She wasn’t the nicest person, but she meant well in her own way. She loved this town. Just not the people in it.”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Bee said, leaning in to pat him on the arm. “You’ve been through enough. Are you sure you don’t want any Sprinkle Cake? It’s good!”
“Oh, sure. OK. Yeah. I’m sure it’s better than anything Gillian could’ve baked.”
“I’ll get it.” I rose from the sofa. It would give Bee time to tenderize the mayor a little more. She’d already done a great job of getting him to open up.
And I had more questions. Like, why had he stayed with such an overbearing woman for so long? Surely, he could’ve gotten a divorce sooner. And what a coincidence that the day after Gillian had accused him of cheating, she wound up dead in a creek.
Would he really tell us all of that, though, if he was the one who’d done it?
Either way, we needed more information about Gillian, and I thought I had good idea where we might find it.
7
That evening…
“I’m just saying, I’ve never seen you light up like that.” I grinned at Bee. “Are you sure it was all an act? Most women are suckers for men who have a lot of power.”
“Oh please,” Bee said. “I’ve got much more important priorities than men. Besides, Arthur’s too weedy for my liking. It was an act to ensure he told us everything we needed to know.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Arthur?”
“He told us to call him that.”
I’d been teasing her all afternoon about her interaction with the mayor. It was a nice change from her teasing me about Jamie, my not-boyfriend who happened to be the most handsome man I’d ever met.
“Now, stop this, Ruby,” Bee said. “We don’t have time for silliness.”
“You didn’t let me get away from the silliness when it came to Jamie. Just saying.”
“Yes, but you’re young and you deserve happiness.”
“And you don’t?” I stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk, incredulous.
Bee laughed. “I’ve already found my happiness in baking,” she replied. “Men are too much trouble for me. Now, let’s find this Gillian’s restaurant before I starve.”
“Do you think it will be open?” I asked. “I mean, she just died.”
“Usually, restaurants have managers, and Arthur probably took over after she passed.” Bee was the picture of confidence, strolling down the street, her hands tucked into the pockets of her peacoat. “But we need to take a look at the place regardless. We can’t rule out a work-related grievance.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, lowering my voice as we passed a group of women on the street. They glared at us, looked on the verge of hissing, and stayed quiet until we’d gone a few steps.
“There’s a chance that someone who worked for her or with her might have done this because, from what we’ve heard so far, nobody liked the woman,” Bee said. “She was a mean, controlling witch.”
“Probably don’t say that too loud,” I whispered. “You know, since we are the prime suspects, and everyone keeps looking at us like we’ve grown two extra heads or fangs or something.”
“Oh relax.” Bee rolled her eyes. “If you could arrest someone for finding a body, we would have been on death row by now.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“As I was saying.” Bee checked her phone for directions to the restaurant. It was down the street from the town square where we’d argued with Gillian on the afternoon before the murder. Depending on whether she was murdered that night or the next morning, of course. “As I was saying,” Bee repeated because I’d been zoning out, “it could be a disgruntled employee, or someone who took a disliking to the way she did things. We need to cover every avenue.”
“But the truck…”
“We’ll have plenty of time to sell cookies and cakes,” Bee said. “Assuming anyone wants to buy them while we’re the prime suspects.”
She had a point there. The way people had been gossiping told me we’d have maybe one customer—Sara, the councilwoman. “What about Sara?” I asked. “She didn’t like Gillian, and Mayor McKene said that Gillian suspected them of having an affair.”
“But—” Bee put up a finger “—it would be stupid of the mayor to tell us that he was suspected of having an affair if he was having an affair.”
“True. Or it could be a misdirect.”
“Maybe. Or—oh! Looks like you were right.” Bee had stopped outside the glass front doors of the restaurant. The sign atop the building, McKene’s Restaurant, was unlit. “The restaurant isn’t opening today.”
“Now, what?” I asked.
“We’ll grab something to eat at one of the other places, and follow the love triangle lead,” Bee said.
A clatter came from the alleyway next to the restaurant, and a heavyset man wearing chef’s whites appeared from a side-door. He strolled out onto the sidewalk, dusting off his jacket. To be fair, his chef’s whites weren’t that white but stained in patches. He paused, spotting us, and muffled a burp behind his hand.
“Hello,” I said.
“We’re not open,” the chef replied, waving a hand. Bourbon fumes practically poured from him. “Not today, not tomorrow, and shoot, I don’t know when we’ll actually be open again. Depends on what the mayor wants to do.”
“Right. Uh, you work here?”
“Sure,” the chef said, scratching his sweaty bald head. “At least, I did before Gillian went and got herself strangled and thrown into a creek.”
Wait, had Gillian been strangled? We hadn’t heard what the official cause of death was yet. Did that mean this chef guy knew more about the murder than the police? There was only one way he’d know that.
“You don’t seem unhappy about that,” Bee said. “The creek and… Gillian.”
“Yeah, nobody’s unhappy about that. The woman was a witch. You can feel free to replace the ‘w’ at the front of that word with another one.” He brought a silver flask out of his pocket, unscrewed it, and took a swing. “Ah, that’s the stuff. You know, she’s such an idiot, that Gillian. She couldn’t just keep to herself. If she’d acted like a normal woman, she wouldn’t have died.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The chef strolled closer. The collar of his jacket was stained purple, and a cold shock passed over me. Hadn’t Gillian been wearing purple lipstick on the afternoon she’d confronted us?
“I mean that she stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, got into fights with people, and made herself some real dangerous enemies,” the chef replied, and took another sip from his flask. “Heck, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single person in this town who isn’t happy she’s dead. I bet you’re happy too.”
“We didn’t know her,” I said.
“New to town? Neat.” He paused, licking his lips. “Name’s Tank, by the way.”
“Ruby.”
“Bee.”
“Good, now we know each other, I can tell you this without it coming from a stranger’s lips,” he said. “You two want a hot tip about Prattlebark Village?”
“Sure,” Bee said.
“This ain’t the first murder to happen here. Every once in a while, somebody dies. Now, I had my money on it being some undercover operation and that Snotweed detective being involved, but I might be wrong. Dunno. Anyway, my advice to you ladies? Get out of this town before it eats you alive.” And with that, he wandered off.
I stared after him, jaw dropped.
“Didn’t I tell you there was something wrong with this town?” Bee asked. “Cold.”
“He’s very clearly dr
unk, Bee. And he could be trying to freak us out. I mean, he did just talk about how he’s happy that Gillian’s dead. Oh, and he came out of the closed restaurant. He’s not a manager. He shouldn’t have the keys.”
Bee wriggled her nose. “You’re probably right. We need more to go on than that.” She turned in a circle, looking at the quaint street with its lampposts and clapboard signs outside businesses and stores. The day had started fading to purple. “But you’ve got to admit, there’s something different about this place.”
“We’ll see,” I said, frowning at the restaurant.
8
Later that night…
“I can’t eat another bite.” I was tempted to undo the top button of my jeans, but that was never a good look, even in the comfort of the driver’s seat of the food truck.
Bee groaned and rested her head against the seat. “That has to be the best pizza I’ve ever eaten. Who knew Vermont pizza was a thing?”
“Not me.” I scanned the street, my mind turning over the evening, the chef, and the strangeness that was this town and its people. Everyone in the restaurant had been friendly, wait staff and customers included. There had been no staring or whispering for once, which made me even more uncomfortable. Why were they being nice now?
Or had we just run into the few people who hadn’t heard of our supposed involvement in Gillian’s murder?
“Ready to hit the sack?” Bee asked.
“No,” I replied. “No, I don’t think I am. I’ll end up staring at the ceiling.”
“You’re full of dough, cheese and pepperoni but feeling awake? It’s the murder, isn’t it?”
“I agree with you about checking out Gillian’s business,” I said. “I just wish we could, I don’t know, find out more about what might have happened behind closed doors. That chef told us that she was hated by everyone, and he didn’t like her either so…”
“Right.” Bee nodded.
Murder With Sprinkles: A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 11 Page 3