Death by Chocolate Cake--A Short Read

by K. J. Emrick

  Anya began pacing again at the edges of Miranda’s vision. “This is the woman who’s supposed to help me?”

  “Believe me,” Kyle told her, “she’s aces when it comes to helping. Just not so much when it comes to lying.”

  Miranda put her hand behind her back so she could point at him very sternly.

  “Well,” Barbara said to her with a wintry smile, “let me guide you back to the others. What did you say your name was?”

  “Miranda. Miranda Wylder.”

  “I’d say it’s good to meet you, if my good friend hadn’t just passed away.” Barbara showed her into the hallway, waving her hand back toward the front of the house. “Anya is dead, and I don’t know why Thomas is taking in visitors now. Perhaps you should leave.”

  “Well, that will be up to Thomas, I think,” Miranda said lightly, as they walked with the ghosts trailing behind them. “So, how do you know Anya?”

  “Oh, I’ve known Anya and Thomas for years. I suppose you could call us best friends, really. I suppose I’m something of a motherly figure for them.”

  “I see. Do you live here?”

  “My, but you’re a nosy one.” Barbara chuckled, but it was a strained sound. “No I don’t live here, but I stay here a lot. I still have my own place, but I rattle around in it these days and I do so like company. That’s why I enjoyed being over here at Thomas and Anya’s home.”

  “Funny,” Anya said, whispering to Miranda even though she could have screamed and Barbara still wouldn’t have heard it. “Whenever she came over she always ignored me. If she liked coming here, it was because of my boyfriend. Or his money!”

  Miranda listened, tucking that information away, but wanting to ask Barbara more questions before they got back to Jack and Thomas and she missed her opportunity. “So how did you know Marvin Locke?”

  “I only met him yesterday at the party. But that was enough to know I don’t trust him.” Barbara’s face darkened a little. “I mean, showing up like that, completely out of the blue, and on Anya’s birthday. He had to know how awkward that would be.”

  “There was no explanation?”

  “Well, I’m not one to spread gossip,” she told Miranda, rather unconvincingly, “but I got the impression that he seemed rather upset with Thomas. Almost as if he didn’t expect to see him here.” Barbara shrugged. “Anyway, here’s the front room… oh my. Thomas isn’t here. Well. You just stay put while I go find him and then we’ll see if you’re staying or not, won’t we?”

  “What do you think of Barbara?” Kyle said once the older woman had left. Miranda had the impression the question was being asked equally to her, and to Anya.

  “I think she’s definitely hiding something,” Miranda said, folding her arms. “Anya, could Barbara have been the one who brought you the piece of cake?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Anya said, throwing her hands up in the air and beginning to pace again. “I don’t know. I’m dead, and I don’t know who killed me. I’m dead, and no one can see me, and I can’t do anything about it because I’m dead and—”

  “Whoa,” Kyle said in a soft voice. “It’s all right. Really. Let us help you.”

  “What’s that?” Anya abruptly asked.

  For a moment Miranda thought that maybe the ghost was drifting out of touch with reality again, but then she realized that Anya was staring at the baseboard on the far wall. Now that Miranda followed the spirit’s gaze, she saw that the board there was set loosely in place, not quite square. Like someone had removed it and then hastily put it back in place.

  The ghost knelt on the floor, and reached out for that piece of board on the wall. She reached out a hand for it, but of course her fingers passed right through the solid object.

  “Here,” Miranda offered. “Allow me…”

  As she took a step, the house tilted.

  She was sure she was falling, sliding across the floor as the whole structure pitched sideways. Falling to her knees she scrabbled for balance, for a handhold, for anything that would keep her from falling.

  Then everything was fine again. It took her only a heartbeat to understand it had been a psychic vision, just like the one she’d had when she first saw the house. Was it a warning? Was it a message telling her that the house was in danger, or the people were in danger?

  Or just that everything here was topsy-turvy?

  Anya looked over at Kyle. “Are you sure she knows what she’s doing?”

  “Usually,” Kyle said, a little doubtfully.

  “Shut up,” Miranda told him. “I had a vision, that’s all. Just… shut up.”

  She reached for the board and it easily came away in her hand. Behind it, in a shallow space, was a small wooden box. Surprised, Miranda picked it up. She set the board back in place and then stood up to scrutinize her find.

  Just then the door to the room opened again and she had no time to do anything but drop the box in her purse so she could examine it later. If it was important enough for Anya to focus on, when she was having such a hard time focusing on anything else, then it was important enough for her to investigate.

  Turning, she saw Barbara coming back into the room, her expression catty as she led Jack and Thomas in behind her. “I told her that she shouldn’t be here, Thomas. This is a house of mourning now.”

  Jack slid past the other two and came right to Miranda’s side, holding her hand and giving her a quick hug. “Wait until you hear what I found out,” he leaned in closer to whisper in her ear.

  Thomas heaved a heavy sigh, looking at the two of them. “Barbara, Jack Travis and his, er, acquaintance are here at my invitation. My girlfriend is dead. I don’t think it was natural causes. I don’t want to wait for the bumbling police around here to get a toxicology report. I don’t want them bungling the whole thing. I want a man who has some investment in this and who isn’t afraid to crack a few skulls in the process. I want Jack, here.”

  Miranda’s eyes went wide at the way he had worded that. Crack skulls.

  “Hey now,” Kyle said from behind her. “Is that a reference to the barfight Jack told us about?”

  “Oh, yes,” Thomas said with a smug nod as he saw the expressions on Jack’s and Miranda’s faces. “I know all about the incident that got you kicked off the police force in the Northern Territory. Anya and I didn’t have any secrets. You were a bad boy in your younger days, Detective. I hope you’ve settled down a bit so you can give your full attention to my Anya’s death. Just not settled down too much.”

  It wasn’t lost on Miranda that Thomas had called her “his Anya.” He knew that she used to date Jack, and Marvin for that matter. Marvin knew all about that part of Jack’s past, too. So then, why come asking Jack to look into this? He was still hiding something, Miranda was sure of it.

  And why had Marvin come here on Anya’s birthday?

  Those were all good questions that ran through her mind, she realized. If only Marvin were here for her to ask them directly…

  “Hello?” a voice called out. A woman’s voice that Miranda didn’t recognize.

  “Oh, for the love of God,” Thomas grumbled. “I forgot about paying our caterer. That will be Millie. Barbara, would you mind telling her to come back some other time for her check? I truly don’t want her here right now.”

  Barbara seemed eager to throw someone out of the house and went to the door of the room like a woman on a mission. She wasn’t two steps, however, before a woman in a prim green dress and thick horn-rimmed glasses came walking in.

  Right behind her, was Marvin.

  “Hello Thomas, Barbara,” the woman said, “and uh, hello people I don’t know. Thomas, I found Marvin here wandering around outside. I remembered he was at the party yesterday so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I invited him in.”

  “Marvin, what are you doing here?” Thomas asked, in a voice that definitely said he minded that he had been invited in.

  “I used to be with Anya, too,” Marvin said by way of explanation. “I have a right to
be here.”

  “No,” Thomas insisted, “you don’t. But hey, what’s one more? Millie if you’ll come with me I’ll get you the check for your services and then I’d like you to leave, please. Barbara, if you wouldn’t mind escorting Marvin out of here? Perhaps then Jack and I will be able to speak more about the matter at hand.”

  “Are you sure?” Millie asked Thomas, putting on a very suggestive smile. “I know how hard it can be to lose a loved one. I wouldn’t mind staying around longer, if you needed someone to… talk to.”

  “That little vixen!” Anya exploded behind Miranda, in a voice loud enough to make her ears pop and rock her forward a step.

  “What is it?” Jack asked her quietly, tightening his grip on her hand.

  Of course, he didn’t hear that. No one did, except Miranda.

  “It’s nothing,” she told him as she watched Thomas firmly rebuff Millie’s offer, and turn her toward the door to leave. “I’ll explain it later.”

  She watched the expressions of all those involved. Millie looked disappointed, like she actually had expected Thomas to jump at the chance to be with her now that Anya had been dead for a day. She had to wonder if that wouldn’t make an excellent motive for murder. Women had killed for men since the beginning of time.

  Marvin looked annoyed that he was being given the bum’s rush. What was his real reason for being back here, Miranda wondered.

  And Barbara just seemed thrilled to be removing everyone she could, so she and Thomas could have the house to themselves again to mourn the loss of Anya.

  Possible motives danced in Miranda’s head like sugarplums on Christmas morning. Too many, and not enough clues to point to just one suspect.

  The wooden box in her purse felt heavy. Could that have something to do with it?

  Anya’s spirit dropped to her knees on the floor, and then sank a few inches through the floor itself. Her hands held tightly to either side of her head. “I want them all gone. This is my house. My house!”

  Miranda felt for her, but she knew that wasn’t exactly correct. “It’s not your house though, is it? It was Thomas’s house.”

  Jack looked at her in confusion, staring around the room that appeared to have just him and Miranda in it. “Who are you talking to? Kyle?”

  “No, it’s Anya’s ghost,” Miranda explained, knowing they were going to have so much to talk about whenever they solved this mystery and went back home. “She’s here now, too.”

  “Great!” Jack exclaimed. “Find out who killed her.”

  “It doesn’t work that way…”

  Anya flew up off the floor and right into Jack’s face. “Doesn’t he think that if I could tell someone who killed me I would! You always were so dense, Jack Travis!”

  Jack blinked, and waved a hand through the air like he had just walked into a spider web. “Anya?” he asked weakly.

  Miranda swallowed a lump of sour emotions. This was his ex-girlfriend. This was a woman who had meant so much to him that he had lost his job up in the Northern Territory over her. Now here they were, solving her death. The irony could choke a horse. “Jack, listen. I’ll try to explain all of this later but for now we don’t have much time. What did you find out?”

  He blinked at her. “Uh, right. It turns out my old flame was broker than broke, according to Thomas. No money in the bank. No job. She’s been living off him. So I don’t think Thomas is our killer. There’s no financial motive, and there doesn’t seem to be any hint she was cheating on him. Not even with Marvin. Thomas confirmed what Marvin said; the first time he’d seen Anya in years was yesterday.”

  “So,” Miranda wondered aloud, “why did he come here now?”

  She turned to look at Anya, and Jack tried his best to do the same, even though he didn’t have a chance of seeing anything other than empty air.

  Anya shrugged. “I really don’t remember. He was kind, I know that. He kept asking me how I was and if I have any mementos from the old days. Actually it was kind of suffocating. I had to get away from him. That’s when I went to the kitchen.”

  Miranda relayed that to Jack, and filled him in on what Anya had already told them about the cake and dying while a shadowy figure knelt next to her. “Maybe,” Jack offered, “it was Marvin who followed her, on the pretense of apologizing, only to give her a poisoned piece of cake.”

  “Maybe,” Miranda agreed, looking sideways at him. “You really don’t like the men that Anya took up with after she left you, do you?”

  “Marvin was cheating with her when she was with me, and Thomas is an entitled jerk. No, I don’t like them.”

  Anya floated closer, reaching out to gently brush his cheek. “Poor man. I really hurt him, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” Miranda said a little coldly, “you did. It’s in the past for him, let’s leave it there.”

  Anya’s eyes turned to her. “I will. As long as you treat him right.”

  “What did she say?” Jack asked, his jaw hanging open a little. Ghosts were all around him. Miranda could understand why he was so stunned by it all. Moving closer, she slid an arm around his waist.

  “She told me to look out for you.”

  Kyle cleared his throat. “Well. Not exactly. I suppose I won’t split hairs, though.”

  With an arched look, Miranda mouthed to him, shut up. She was not going to start dictating messages between the living and the dead verbatim just to satisfy Kyle. All Jack needed to know was that Anya wasn’t going to object to him being with a new love. That was enough.

  “So what did you find?” Jack asked her.

  “Oh. Well, outside of what Anya told me, I found this.”

  She dug out the little box she’d found in the baseboard. She hadn’t had time to open it before but as she brought it out now Anya’s eyes went wide. This was important, whatever it was.

  Opening the lid, she and Jack stared inside at a collection of differently sized, brilliant green rocks.

  “Emeralds…” That came from Anya, in a voice that was distant and tinny. “My emeralds…”

  Chapter 6

  “Your emeralds?” Miranda asked Anya.

  “Is that what she said?” Jack asked. He picked up one of the stones and held it up to the light to look through it. “These are real. How could she possibly afford these? Hang on, wasn’t there… yeah, there was.”

  “Was what?” Miranda asked him. “Stop talking in cop code.”

  “Sorry, right.” He put the emerald back in the box. “When I was working in the Northern Territory there was a theft from a bank. The only thing they took was a safety deposit box with two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of emeralds. We could never solve it.”

  “You think these are the same emeralds?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just really coincidental that these show up here, now, in a house where Anya is… was living. Emeralds. Anya. Even Marvin. It’s like all the pieces of my past are coming together in one spot.”

  “Yes,” Miranda agreed, her gaze settling on Anya’s ghost. “Odd.”

  Anya crossed her arms over herself and floated up toward the ceiling, away from everyone. “I don’t know anything about those. You think if I had emeralds like those I’d be living in a place like this?”

  Miranda wasn’t sure how she meant that, or if Anya even realized what she was saying. This house was huge, and grand, and amazing by anyone’s standard. Yes, if she had emeralds like that then she would definitely be able to afford to live here, without a job, with her new boyfriend.

  “It can’t be the same emeralds,” Jack finally said. “There were twenty stones in the heist. I only count… twelve here. There’s eight missing.”

  Miranda thought she knew why. “Enough, maybe, to sell one or two at a time and have just enough money so no one would suspect you were the thief?”

  “Oh, man. Yeah, that makes sense. Steal them, sell one every year or two, live off the proceeds. Yeah, could be. But then how did Anya get her hands on them?”

&n
bsp; In the corner of the room, Anya huffed, and disappeared back through the wall. She didn’t like that question.

  Miranda thought she knew why.

  “Yes, Jack,” she told him. “I think Anya was selling them over the years. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that she and these emeralds both showed up here. Nothing is coincidence, after all,” she said, adding one of her favorite quotes.

  “You think she was the thief,” Jack said simply.

  Miranda nodded.

  Jack started to argue, and then stopped. “I think you’re right. Damn it, she really played me hard, didn’t she? So what about Thomas? He’s here with her. If Anya was selling these little beauties to make money he must have known about it. He must have been involved.”

  They looked at each other. It was Kyle who voiced what they were thinking. “That much money at stake… it’d make a fine motive for murder, wouldn’t it? Well. That certainly changes things.”

  “Jack,” Miranda said gently. She hated herself for thinking this, but she had to ask. “Are you saying that Thomas might be guilty because you think that as a cop, or as an ex-boyfriend? He was living with Anya, and now here you are dredging up all those old feelings, you know?”

  As an answer, he reached out to cup her cheek with his hand. “The only feelings I have, Miranda Wylder, are for you.”

  Kyle watched them kiss with keen interest. “Oh, yes. He’s a keeper. How is he at kissing? He looks positively wonderful.”

  Miranda nearly choked as she stepped back from Jack, keeping her hands on his shoulders. “Kyle, aren’t you supposed to be up on the roof when we do that?”

  Jack looked around the room now, his eyes wide. “Kyle’s here? Is Anya still here, too?”

  Miranda tried not to feel a little pang of jealousy that Jack was worrying his ex’s ghost might see them making out. He shook his head, a smile curling just the corner of his lips. “I guess it’s just something I’ll have to get used to, isn’t it. You’ll help me learn?”

  “Yes,” she agreed readily. “I will.”