A Game of Cones

by Abby Collette

  “Funny,” Riya said.

  “Okay,” I said. “You staying, Riya?”

  “You bet I am.”

  “You know Maisie and I aren’t very good at sleuthing and nothing usually happens,” I warned. “It was just that one instance.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m still sticking around.”

  “Hey, Rory.” I ended my conversation with Maisie and Riya, and went over to Rory, relieved she was back safe and sound. I figured I should keep the conversation light.

  I hoped her little side excursion had gone well. At least more productive than ours.

  “So did you find anything you wanted to buy?”

  “They were closed,” she said, adjusting herself on the seat. “In preparation for the sidewalk fire sale.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.” She nodded in affirmation, her lips tight. “Why do they need two days to get ready for it?”

  “I don’t know.” I turned to look out of the window and at the row of shops across the street. “And with them being so expensive, what are they going to sell cheap enough to put on the sidewalk?”

  “Exactly,” Rory said. “Then I went over to the visitors’ center.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I remembered you said they were having an art show.”

  “They are. I thought you might like that one.”

  “It’s been canceled.”

  “What?”

  “Something happened at the last minute, I don’t know what. The lady there said something about the paintings having to be authenticated.”

  I frowned. “You getting your art fix was a bust, huh?”

  “Yes, it was,” she said, exhaling deeply. “But one good thing, the lady from the Florida DeLouise Foundation called back.”

  “The woman who has the catalog for the Florida Highwaymen artwork?”

  “Yep.” She nodded. “She said she would overnight it to me. But since it’s late, she won’t send it until tomorrow. So I’ll have it for the sidewalk fire sale.”

  “That’s a good thing,” I said.

  “Yeah, it is.” She patted my hand. “Still, I’m beginning to think that Chagrin Falls isn’t the cultural haven you think it is.”

  I chuckled. “We’ll see what you think after you get your artwork. You’ll be singing our praises.”

  “I doubt that. Plus, it wouldn’t be good PR for me to tell you how good this place is when I’m trying to get you to move away from it.”

  “Yeah.” I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Don’t think that’ll ever happen.”

  * * *

  WHEN WE LOCKED the door at eleven, there were still about five customers in the store. We’d been so busy that no one had time to even think about Zeke Reynolds and the trouble he stirred for us all when he was alive and after he died.

  “So what are we going to do? How are we going to solve this?” Riya said after I’d told her what had happened and what we’d done so far. We’d served the last customer and she was wiping down the round tables out front.

  “We’re going to question shop owners,” I said.

  “You think one of them did it?” Riya asked.

  “I don’t,” my mother said.

  “Maisie was thinking that Veronica was the killer,” Rory said.

  “And is she the killer?” Riya asked.

  “We don’t know,” I said. “That’s why we’re still looking at other people.”

  “We did find out they had a lovers’ quarrel,” Rory said. “And maybe Veronica, right when she was angry with Zeke, gained access to a gun.” It seemed to make Rory feel better to help around the shop and with our attempts to solve the murder. “We also found out that Zeke wasn’t too happy with his company. He wanted to quit, remember?” she continued. “Although, I’m not sure how that would fit in as a motive for his murder by Veronica, unless she was being supportive of her company.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “We did find that out.”

  “Better for me to be supportive with a shoe than with a gun,” Riya said.

  “You don’t need either to take down the bad guys,” Maisie said, stopping over to sweep Riya’s trash into a dustpan.

  “I have tomorrow off, too.” She stood up and stretched. “After my morning run, I’m free.” She shook her head and sighed. “I miss one afternoon and all this has happened. What happened to this being the quiet, nothing-ever-happens village?”

  “What kind of work do you do?” Rory asked Riya. Rory was sitting in the window seat. She and Felice had become good friends. She was holding the fluffy white cat in her arms, and they were rubbing cheeks.

  “She’s a doctor, remember?” Maisie answered for her.

  “And a shoe supporter,” I said.

  “A shoe supporter?” Rory said, her face squished up. “Oh, wait.” She chuckled. “You’re the one that threw the shoe at the meeting?”

  “I was being supportive,” Riya said. “I don’t know why that’s so hard for people to understand.”

  “See,” I said. “A shoe supporter. She shows support by way of the shoe.”

  “So why does Maisie think Riya wouldn’t need a shoe or a gun to take down bad guys?” Rory asked. “You a superhero?”

  “No, I’m not,” Riya said.

  “Maisie seems to think Riya’s invincible,” I said.

  Rory looked at Maisie with her eyebrows arched.

  “She has a black belt in everything,” Maisie said. “And when she’s angry, there is no stopping her.”

  As we talked, I was running a report from the cash register on the sales for the day, and my mother was cleaning out the display case and putting up the ice cream. At least what was left of it. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day, we were going to need more ice cream. I’d have to come in early.

  “I don’t have a black belt in everything,” Riya said. “I like to be prepared.” She eyed Maisie. “In whatever kind of situation I encounter. I like to help people. Take care of them. That’s why I became a doctor.”

  Riya didn’t mention that all the black belts came out of a need to control that temper of hers. I didn’t say anything about it either.

  “And now I want to help in other ways, too. That’s all,” Riya said. She looked at Rory. “Even though I just met you, any of Win’s friends are also friends of mine.”

  “Thank you,” Rory said. “Because it seems like I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

  chapter

  THIRTY

  We didn’t go to the Chagrin Falls Public Library, the place where we’d first learned to use the internet to parse out clues. O had told Maisie and me, when we were trying to solve the first case we worked on, that we could find a wealth of information about people. Even if we just checked out their social media pages. This time, he had directed us to the county auditor’s site to find out property owners. We decided to do it at Riya’s house. The library, our usual spot to do our internet searches, was long closed.

  Riya lived in a big house, and for the most part, it was void of any furniture or anything that would make it seem like a home. Our voices and footsteps echoed through the house as we walked through empty rooms, across bare wooden floors, and headed into the kitchen. There, Riya had put some effort forth. And knowing Riya’s family, it was easy to understand.

  Riya, on her mother’s side, was Italian, and on her father’s side Indian, both sides boasting they were the best cooks. Her family was large and spent lots of time in the kitchen feeding their brood. It was the family gathering place.

  “I can whip us up something to eat while we think this thing through,” Riya said.

  “Sounds good,” Rory said and rubbed her tummy like it needed tending to.

  “We ate earlier at the Village Dragon,” I said, directing my comment to Rory. “Lin co
oked us a spread. You ate like it was your last meal.”

  “I’m hungry now, though,” Rory said and eyed me. “But you know, just something light.”

  I shook my head.

  “I could eat something, too,” Maisie said.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “Okay,” Riya said. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs. “How about a Riya omelet?”

  “What is that?” Maisie asked.

  “Oh no,” I said. “Don’t tell me my father told you about that.” I laughed at her suggestion.

  “Yep. Gave me the recipe, too. I was honored for him to name a dish after me.”

  “What is it?” Maisie asked.

  “My father named it after Riya because it has, like, a little basil, some sweet Italian sausage . . .”

  “Turmeric”—Riya took over naming the ingredients—“garam marsala and red chili pepper.”

  “Oh,” Maisie said. “I see. A little Italian. A little Indian.”

  “And a little hot, just like me,” Riya said, putting her hand on her hip and a grin on her face.

  “Sounds good to me,” Rory said.

  “You have all that stuff?” I asked.

  “Food, I have,” she said. “Let’s just hope I have enough dishes. I’m the only one eating here.”

  “How about bottled water?” I said. “You have any of that?”

  “Yes,” Riya said and went back to the refrigerator and pulled four bottles of water out of it. “I hope you like your H2O chilled.”

  “That’s fine,” Rory said.

  Riya passed out the bottles to us. “Okay, before I start cooking, let me go get you guys a couple of laptops.”

  “You have more than one?” Rory said.

  “Yes, I got one from each of my grandmothers,” Riya said over her shoulder as she headed out. “They are always competing with each other.”

  Riya left and Rory turned to me. “She seems very nice.”

  “She is,” I said, wondering why she’d think otherwise.

  “But Maisie said . . .”

  “Oh,” I said, remembering Maisie’s consistent warnings about Riya. “It’s her temper.” I lowered my voice.

  “She has a bad temper?” Rory asked.

  “Yep. My father didn’t add that hot chili pepper to his recipe because she’s good-looking,” I said.

  “We met in kindergarten when she was beating up a little boy for being on the swing she wanted,” Maisie added.

  “I heard that,” Riya said, coming back into the kitchen lugging two laptops. “And, Rory, you should know, I’m working on keeping my temper under control. I didn’t hit that guy with my shoe. And I could have, you know. I missed on purpose.”

  I laughed. “I’m rooting for you, Riya,” I said. “I know you can do it.”

  “I don’t have as much confidence,” Maisie said.

  “Why don’t you guys fire up the laptops and I’ll start on the omelets,” Riya said, ignoring Maisie’s comment.

  “Come put in your password,” I said after I got the computer booted up.

  While Riya cooked, we looked up who owned what. It took a minute to figure out how the website worked and then the range of addresses we wanted to look up, but once we did, we found our answers fairly quickly.

  Maisie, Rory and Riya ate eggs and took notes, and I recited the information from the website. We discovered that Rhys Enterprises had already bought up Amelia Hargrove’s Around the Corner Bookshop and Baraniece Black and Ivan Rynok’s Black Market Paper Fine Art gallery, which we already knew thanks to our little talk with Veronica. Also the Blue Moon, and the Sassy Kitten, the souvenir shop. We hadn’t known who owned the Blue Moon, but checking the records we saw that it was transferred to Rhys from one Reginald Ingomar. I had always thought a woman owned it because they sold women’s clothing, but I guess I was wrong. The Sassy Kitten was owned by Rosabelle Pfeiffer. I knew her. She was old, probably too old to kill Zeke Reynolds, plus she’d been sick and the store had sat dormant for at least the last few months.

  The building that housed Juniper Tree was owned by Delilah and Daubie Dixby. And the building that Maisie wanted to buy and two of the vacant lots were owned by Kvest LLC. The land where Maisie already had a community garden was owned by the Village of Chagrin Falls.

  We finally knew for sure which properties Zeke Reynolds still needed to get in order for his company to erect that mall.

  “Did you know that?” I asked, looking up at Maisie when I read that name off. “Did you know who owned the land where you garden?”

  “No. I didn’t know the village owned the land,” Maisie said. “I inherited that garden, remember?”

  “Oh yeah, Mrs. Newman used to keep that lot up,” I said. “Those other lots, the ones owned by, what was it?” I looked back at the computer.

  “Kvest,” Rory said. “Kvest Limited Liability Company.”

  “That’s what LLC stands for?” Maisie asked.

  “Yep,” she said.

  “Those other lots used to have gardens, too, I remember,” I said. “When we were little. I wondered why it was only the space you have now, Maisie.”

  “So that leaves us with the Darling Dixbys as a suspect and Kvest LLC, whoever that is,” Maisie said, scribbling in her notebook. “They were holding out for more money, or resisting selling all together.”

  “Remember,” I said, “if they held out because they didn’t want to sell, killing Zeke Reynolds would not have stopped Rhys Enterprises from pursuing it with a different representative.”

  “And remember,” Rory added, “that if Rhys wasn’t able to purchase all the land, they couldn’t proceed with their plans.”

  “Seems like they’d be the ones killing someone, then,” Riya said.

  We looked at Riya.

  “What?” she said, throwing up a hand. “It’s true. They’d want to get rid of the holdout. Especially if they were going to lose money. Big money.” She made her eyes large. “And remember Veronica said that Zeke had only one holdout?”

  “So maybe he confronted them,” Maisie said. I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Zeke, that is. Maybe he confronted them. They had a standoff.”

  She stood up from her chair. “He threatened the shop owner, trying to bully them into selling. Then he pulled a gun on them”—she acted as if she was pulling one from her pocket—“ready to get rid of the obstacle in his way. In the way of Rhys Enterprises taking over Chagrin Falls. The shop owner ran outside.” Maisie stepped aside of her chair. “Zeke followed. They wrestled for the gun.” She started jerking her body back and forth. “The shop owner got the gun. Bam!” she said and made all of us, except Riya, jump. “They shot him dead!” She dropped, her body slack, back down in her chair.

  “Oh brother,” I said.

  “Maisie, you need help,” Riya said. “Believe me, I know when people have mental issues they need to deal with. And darling, that would be you.”

  “I think it could have happened just like that,” Maisie said, sitting upright in her seat. She seemed quite pleased with her deduction and performance.

  “It’s not a totally outlandish theory,” Rory said. “It would make sense if Zeke were some kind of loose-tempered, egotistical, maniacal, ruthless businessman.”

  “Veronica made it sound like he was excited about going to see the shop owners,” I reminded Rory and Maisie.

  “She said the bookstore and the art gallery,” Maisie said. “They had already sold their places. He wasn’t mad at them.”

  “True, Maisie,” Rory said.

  “So who is this Kvest?” I said. “How are we going to find that person to question?”

  “Uhm,” Rory said. “I think you can look up who owns a business with the secretary of state’s office.”

  “You’re right,” I said
, snapping my finger. “I remember that now from my business organization class from college. How did I forget that?”

  I typed Kvest LLC into the business search box on Ohio’s secretary of state’s website. It gave me a link to the organizational articles. “Okay,” I said, reading it, “looks like the incorporator listed himself as president and his name is—Garud Khatri.”

  “Oh geesh,” Riya said.

  “You know him?” I asked hopefully.

  “You do, too,” she said. “You met him after he was following you guys today.”

  “Your uncle?” I asked.

  “My auntie Neera’s husband. There’s a difference.”

  I thought about him and remembered that I thought he looked familiar.

  Then it hit me.

  “And I saw him before today, too,” I said.

  “Where?” Riya asked.

  “At the SOOCFA meeting,” I said. “Sitting right next to Amelia Hargrove.

  “Oh man,” I said. “She came into the shop the other day.” I smacked myself on the forehead. “That’s why they’re having a ‘fire sale.’” I couldn’t believe I missed it. “Those are all the stores that already sold to Rhys Enterprises. They are getting rid of their inventory because they’re moving out.”

  “That clinches it,” Maisie said. “Everyone else is happy to go. Getting rid of all their stuff.” She tapped her notebook. “It’s got to be either Garud Khatri, Delilah and Daubie Dixby or Veronica Russell.”

  “That is?” Riya said.

  “The killer,” Maisie said. “Sorry, Riya. I know one of them is your uncle.”

  Riya shrugged. “Not my real uncle and I don’t like him.”

  “And,” Maisie said, scribbling in her book, “I guess we should add the mayor since he represents the village.” She jotted something on the page and sat back in her seat satisfied with what she’d concluded.

  “Why the mayor?”

  “Because he was a holdout. My garden is owned by the village.”

  “Yeah, I’d probably agree my shady uncle might have done something, but I don’t know about the mayor,” Riya said. “That’s not a big chunk of land the city owns.” She got up from the table and started collecting the plates. “Would the mayor kill over that little thing?”