A Berry Baffling Businessman

by A. R. Winters

  The café door chimed, and Zoey walked in. She spotted us and made a beeline for the table. She looked much better than she had yesterday. She was wearing a short black poodle skirt—minus the poodle—with a tucked in off-the-shoulder hot pink peasant top and four-inch-heeled powder pink Mary Janes. In contrast to the pinks, her eyeshadow was electric blue outlined with pearl white.

  The diva was back. She was in control of her life.

  But as soon as Zoey reached the table, I noticed her bloodshot eyes. She might have been back in control of her life, but that life was still taking a beating.

  Sebastian hurriedly put his shoes on, then stood and the two hugged. After he sat back down, Zoey settled into the seat next to me. Brenda brought her a cup of coffee, and she downed half of it in one go.

  “Have you been to bed yet?” I asked.

  “Uh uh,” she said with a head shake. She blinked a few times and stretched her eyelids wide. “I’m good. Let’s do this.”

  Brenda came back with three plates of stacked french toast dripping with maple syrup and melted butter, with some perfectly crisp bacon tucked on the side. I loved having her back!

  Sebastian lifted a palm to me once Brenda had gone again. He started to speak, then his expression turned stricken. “I just realized—I don’t know your name.”

  I almost did a face-palm, and I felt my cheeks heat with embarrassment. “Sorry. Kylie Berry.”

  “Ms. Berry,” he said with a nod of greeting.

  “Please, call me Kylie.”

  “Kylie,” he said, then turned his attention to Zoey. “Kylie was just asking me if I murdered my Pop, and I was just telling her no.”

  Zoey glared at me with venomously narrowed eyes.

  I lifted my hands in defense. “I had to ask. I always ask.”

  “Always?” Sebastian exclaimed. “Who do you spend your time with? Zoey, is this something I need to worry about? Do the two of you moonlight as murder mystery buffs who go around to all the prisons?”

  Zoey waved his concern away, and I took a great big bite of my breakfast and suppressed a groan at how tasty it was.

  “Seb, what can you tell us about your dad? Who might have wanted to do this to him?” I asked after I’d swallowed down my giant bite.

  “You mean make him impersonate a pancake? Nobody!” Sebastian’s voice rang through the café.

  I chewed another bite as I glanced around but the other customers present were too busy digging into their own breakfasts to care.

  “Sorry,” Sebastian said. “I’m upset. I get upset. Things like this… Pop said I’d die of a stroke before him because I let things get to me, but how am I supposed to not let this get to me? Somebody put a one-ton dumpster on top of my Pop. I’m bothered by it.”

  “Sebastian,” I said, reaching across the table to hold his hand. He focused completely on me and seemed to settle. “We need to know who had something to gain from your Pop’s death. Or is there anyone who hated him?”

  “Me,” he said.

  Shock ripped through me. “You hated your dad?” He’d been so torn up about his father’s murder that I’d simply assumed they’d been close.

  “No, no. Not that. The other thing. I’m going to gain from Pop’s death. I get his company. Not my brothers. Me. Well, my brothers get a financial inheritance. They’ll get money, but I’ll get that, too.”

  “Did you want to take over the company?”

  “Now? No. Someday, sure. But do you know what my Pop’s death means? It means seventy-hour work weeks. I’m not going to have a life. I’m twenty-six and a half years old. I had a vacation scheduled to tour the pyramids. I had plans to go snorkeling. I wanted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. The only way any of that will happen now is if I take an entourage of fifteen people with me so that work can get done as we go. I wanted Pop’s company but not right now—and that’s exactly why he picked me to give it to. He knew I wouldn’t shove him out the door. Not for another twenty years at least.” He sat back in his chair with his shoulders slumped and his hands lying limp in his lap. “What am I going to do? My life is over.”

  I knew he might be a murderer, but I still wanted to hug him. If he was lying, he was Meryl Streep. I believed every word coming out of his mouth. Still, his dad was dead and he was lamenting over his own circumstances. Talk about seriously narcissistic. But then again, why shouldn’t he think about his own life? He was the one stuck living it.

  The thoughts playing ping pong inside my skull were giving me a headache.

  “Sebastian, are any of your brothers super hard up for money? Were they desperate for their inheritance to come now?” I asked.

  Sebastian stared into space, but he shook his head.“No. They already got their inheritances. Me, too. Pop set it up in a trust. We get payouts every year and have been getting them for years already. None of that changes. I didn’t kill Pop, and my brothers didn’t kill Pop. There wasn’t any reason to.”

  Lara’s face blipped into my head. She’d been Ollie’s fiancée. If she’d also been Sebastian’s secret girlfriend, that could be a reason for Sebastian to kill his father. If Lara left Ollie, Sebastian might be at risk of losing everything, including his trust fund money.

  But how to find out? I had to tread lightly.

  “Your Pop was living a very full life,” I said. “A successful company. A son he could trust. And I met his beautiful fiancée, Lara.”

  Nothing in Sebastian’s expression changed when I said Lara’s name. Nothing at all. If he was hiding feelings for her, then Meryl Streep had taken charge again.

  “She is beautiful… and young,” he said. “I told Pop she was going to give him a heart attack.” He snorted and smiled. “Pop thought that was funny. Said he’d die happy if that was the case.” His smile was short lived and slowly dissolved into a grimace.

  I took a breath to ask if he and Lara were close, but Zoey spoke first.

  “Will Lara get anything now that Ollie’s gone?” she asked.

  Sebastian shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose she will.” His brows pinched as worry set in. “If Pop hadn’t set anything up yet, I’ll need to take care of that.”

  “Take care of what?” I asked.

  “Take care of her, set her up with an allowance or something.”

  I blinked, surprised.

  “Why?” The question came out before I’d had a chance to give any thought as to why I was asking it.

  Lara Tiggs was a gold digging trollop who deserved to be penniless and have boils on her derriere that were so bad they made it impossible for her to sit down. She was a vile scourge to all woman-kind, and I hoped she got such severe halitosis that it landed her in the medical journals. That she’d slept with Dan while we were still married had nothing to do with it…

  Sebastian’s head snapped back, and self-conscious embarrassment swamped me.

  I didn’t say that out loud. Tell me I didn’t say any of that out loud.

  “Pop and Lara were getting married,” Sebastian said. “He would have wanted her taken care of.”

  I pictured Lara dead with a bullet wound in her forehead, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the “taken care of” that Sebastian had meant.

  “Did your dad have any plans to change his will after the wedding?”

  Sebastian shrugged. “I have no idea. He never mentioned it.”

  “Then how do you know he would have wanted Lara to be taken care of?” I challenged.

  Sebastian looked from me to Zoey and back again. His expression was one of disbelief, kind of like I’d asked him if poop smelled like watermelon lollipops.

  “Pop was married to Mom until she passed away. Twenty-eight years. He stayed by her side in the hospital for the last two of those years and wept like a baby when she died. Then he was alone for three years until he met Sarah. But then Sarah decided to become a nun. After that he swore off women, said he’d reached his lifetime allotment of women to love. But then he met Lara.” He looked back and forth between Zoey and me
again. “Pop wasn’t a frivolous man. He wasn’t the love ‘em and leave ‘em kind. If he asked Lara to marry him, it was because she meant a lot to him. I have to honor that.”

  I opened my mouth to object, to tell him what a scammer Lara was, but I shut it instead.

  Lara was a greedy cheat and didn’t care who she hurt to get what she wanted. Maybe Sebastian didn’t see that yet, but I’d make sure he eventually did. I opened my mouth and sucked in a breath, preparing to speak.

  “I don’t really like her, if I’m being honest.”

  I stared at Sebastian in surprise. Those words had not come out of my mouth. No, they’d come from his.

  “Come again?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t like her. She seems fake. I never saw what Pop saw in her.”

  “I guess that her being young enough to be your very slightly older sister doesn’t help,” I offered. I was doing my best to wiggle the tip of my finger into the chink in Sebastian’s Lara-defending armor.

  “Mmm, it’s not that,” he said. “She just always seemed phony.”

  YES! Yes, yes, yes!

  I grabbed his hand so fast that the rest of him jerked away. “She is a phony,” I said with the sound of crazy laughter echoing inside my head. “She’s demented.” I was talking about Lara, not me. “She can’t be trusted. In fact, I bet she killed your dad.”

  “Ms. Berry—I mean, Kylie—those are very serious accusations. Do you have any proof? If you have proof, let’s call the police right now.”

  Reality slammed down and it slammed down hard.

  “Nooo,” I admitted. “No proof. Yet.”

  “What’d she do to you?” Zoey asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re acting weird. What’d Lara do to you?”

  “Nothing.” My voice went up an octave. “Nothing,” I said again, doing my best to sound more believable.

  “Hm… Nothing to you but something to Dan, am I right?”

  “Why are you even asking me this?” I practically yelled.

  “Why are you acting like a crazy person asking where the pitchforks and torches are?”

  I scowled at Zoey. If I’d ever wanted to give somebody food poisoning, that was the moment. Tired of being on the hot seat, I turned my attention on Sebastian.

  “Where were you last night?” I asked.

  “I told you. I went out with Zoey. We had dinner, then we walked around, then I walked Zoey home and then headed back to the B&B where I’m staying.”

  “What time was it when you left Zoey at her apartment?”

  “Midnight.”

  “What time was it when you got to the B&B?”

  Air filled Sebastian’s cheeks and his lips pursed together, but he didn’t answer. I had him.

  “What time?” I asked again.

  “Seb?” Zoey prompted. There was uncertainty in her voice, and it made me feel like the lecherous low life that I was.

  I’d gotten angry about her questioning my motivations regarding Lara’s innocence or guilt. I’d turned my anger on Sebastian, and I’d hurt Zoey in the crossfire. She’d already been hurt far too much in all areas concerning the heart.

  I wanted to crawl under a rock and become one with the slime underneath it.

  Seb played with the food on his plate. He didn’t look at us. “I got in at 3 AM.”

  Whoa…

  “Zoey, how long would you estimate that it would take to walk from your place to the B&B, Piper’s Point Inn?”

  “An hour… if walking slow and with a cane.”

  Her glare was being focused full-force on Seb. I hated to say that I felt bad for him but good for myself.

  “Three hours to walk a distance that would take at most an hour,” I said. “Where did you go, Seb? And, did I mention that Zoey has the ability to tap into the surveillance cameras stashed around town? Traffic lights. Banks. Anything that’s not closed circuit, really.”

  Seb paled and swallowed hard, even though there wasn’t any food in his mouth. “You can do that, Zoey?”

  Her fingers curled around the handle of her fork, and I started to worry. It could be that my poor bestie had suffered one too many of life’s cruelties. If Sebastian had used her in some way, I feared that she might arrange for a very special family reunion between him and his dad—much sooner than anyone had ever anticipated.

  “Where did you go, Sebastian?” I asked in a soothing, encouraging voice. I also chose that moment to lay my hand on Zoey’s fork-wielding forearm.

  Sebastian cleared his throat, sat up a little straighter and lifted his chin defensively. “I went to meet a friend. A good friend.” His shoulders slumped as some of his fight-readiness drained away. “My girlfriend.”

  “Where did you meet her?” I asked.

  He squirmed in his seat. “Is this really necessary? What about the two of you? Where were you the other night? How do I know you aren’t the real killers?”

  With the quickness of a snake attack, Zoey stabbed Sebastian’s french toast with her fork. Its handle quivered back and forth when she released it.

  “Answer the question,” she demanded through gritted teeth.

  “I met her at the conference hall door!” Sebastian said, spilling out the words as he stared at the trembling fork.

  “The banquet hall door? In back of this building? About thirty feet down from the dumpster? That door?” My brows had to have been nearly to my hairline, and I thanked goodness that Brenda hadn’t made a breakfast which had required a knife.

  “Yes. Okay? Yes, that door.”

  “What. Time?” Zoey asked.

  “I went there right after I left you.”

  “And how long were you there?”

  “Until I went back to the B&B.”

  “What were you doing all that time?” I asked.

  Sebastian gave me a pleading look. “I was with my girlfriend.” He left it at that.

  “You were with your girlfriend for three hours?” I challenged, miming air quotes around “with.”

  “Don’t be crude,” Sebastian said, taking offense. “We had things to work out. We needed to talk.”

  “You needed to plan,” Zoey said.

  “That’s not what I said.” He turned to me. “That’s not what I said.”

  “Then what are you saying?” I asked.

  “I’m saying I love her, okay? But not everybody would be happy about me loving her, so we needed to talk.”

  “People like your Pop?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe.” He waved his arm. “That doesn’t even matter now. Pop is dead.”

  “Exactly!” I exclaimed.

  We all sat back away from the table, staring and accessing.

  The café door chimed, and I twisted in my seat to see Brad there, in full uniform, staring at me.

  He wasn't happy.

  Chapter 12

  Brad gave me a come-here side nod of his head.

  Without saying anything I quietly extricated myself from the table.

  “What are you doing?” he asked as soon as I reached his side. He spoke in a low voice and leaned his head toward me. There was no way that anyone else would overhear.

  “Zoey and I are talking to Sebastian. You know, investigating.”

  Brad didn’t look one ounce happier. “With Zoey?”

  I looked from him to the table where Zoey and Sebastian sat. They were talking—without me. I was missing stuff—I hated missing stuff!

  “We’ve been through this,” I said. “This is what Zoey and I do. We talk to people and people, you know… talk back.”

  “Berry, Zoey likes Sebastian.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then aren’t you worried about her?”

  I thought about Zoey skewering Sebastian’s french toast. “No,” I answered, a total lie.

  Zoey spoke up. “Is there anyone who actually gets anything out of your dad’s death? Anyone going to get something they wouldn’t have already gotten?”

  Seb
astian’s gaze became distant as he thought. His eyebrows lifted a couple of times, but each time it was followed by him shaking his head no. Then his brows went up and stayed up, but again, he shook his head. Finally, he sat up ramrod straight. His lips pressed together, and his eyes narrowed with a look of resolve.

  He was clearly struggling with himself over something.

  “Robert Cornish,” he finally said. “Robert owns PaperMore. They’re the main competitor of Paperworx, my Pop’s—I mean, my—company.”

  My mind raced. I’d heard that name. Then it came to me. It was the company Jack had been telling us about.

  “He wants everything that belongs to Pops, and I don’t mean equal to. I’m saying he wants what Pops had. He’s a greedy, evil man.”

  “Do you think he had it in him to kill your dad?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do. He tried to shove Pop down an open elevator shaft once.” He shrugged and made a variety of faces as he seemed to wrangle in his thoughts. “Of course, that was in college and the fight was about my ma.”

  “What about your ma?” I asked.

  “Well, Ma was Robert’s girl before he was Pop’s girl. Pop stole Ma away from him. Robert’s been sore about it ever since.” He shook his head with his mouth pulled down into a harsh grimace. “He’s tried to ruin Pop a bunch of times over. I never thought he’d go this far, though.” He put his hand on his stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Concern filled me as my gaze dropped to Sebastian’s plate of food. “But I didn’t cook that!”

  “Huh?”

  “Um, nothing.” I shoved a huge bite of food in my mouth, grinned like an idiot and chewed.

  “Well, ladies,” Sebastian said as he stood, “if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to head back to the B&B. Take a nap. Zoey, I’ll see you Wednesday night?”