A Berry Cunning Conman: A Laugh-Out-Loud Cozy Mystery (Kylie Berry Mysteries Book 4)

by A. R. Winters

  “Here we go,” she said as she placed a festively yellow serving tray on the coffee table. It held a porcelain tea pot, three cups and saucers, and a plate of the orange poppy seed muffins that I had brought her. “Earl Grey tea, is that okay?” she asked as she poured the amber liquid into the cups.

  “Sounds wonderful,” I said, accepting a cup from her. I took a sip, and it was refreshing and light.

  “Did you make these muffins?” she asked. “I took a nibble in the kitchen, and they’re delicious.”

  “I did,” I said, happy for the compliment.

  Perching a muffin on the edge of her cup’s saucer, Danielle sat back into one of the deep-cushioned chairs.

  I looked at Joel. He was up to bat. I didn’t have a clue what to say. This woman looked so well put together, so well managed. I couldn’t imagine Morgan taking advantage of her.

  “Danielle, did you hear about Morgan Bleur’s passing?” Joel asked.

  Danielle’s thin brows arched. “I heard about him being murdered. Is that what your article is about, because that’s not something I could help you with. I don’t know what happened to that poor man.”

  “I agree,” Joel said. “What happened to him was terrible, and I know that’s what a lot of people are going to focus on. I know it’s what my competitor, the Camden Falls Tribune, is going to focus on. That’s why I want to know more about Morgan’s life. I’m more interested in the man who died than how he died.”

  I glanced over at Joel, surprised by what he was saying. He sounded so sincere. Yet coming here to talk to Danielle was all about learning more about Morgan’s death. But looking back at Danielle, I realized that Joel was right. If Danielle hadn’t been the one to kill him, then his life was all that she could tell us about. It was the only thing anybody would be able to tell us about—that is, until we found his killer.

  “All I know is that it must have been some kind of accident. Why anybody would want to harm that man, I have no idea.”

  “I hope that you don’t think we’re prying,” I said, “but another person who knew Morgan had seen you out to dinner with him. Were the two of you dating?”

  “Dating?” Danielle said with surprised laughter. “Goodness, no. He was simply a nice young man who wanted a bit of company.”

  “Did he ever take you to dinner anywhere other than the Bird’s Nest?”

  “Sure. We went to dinner at the steakhouse, Bouche,” she said. “We talked about all kinds of things. World events. Art. Music. Even politics and its impact on the stock market.”

  My ears pricked up. “You talked about the stock market?”

  “Ohhh, yes.” Danielle beamed with pride. “Morgan was a wiz with the stock market. He mentioned his interest in stocks when we went out to eat at the steakhouse, but when we had dinner that second time, at the Bird’s Nest, he wowed me with his knowledge.” Her voice dropped and she leaned forward as if sharing something that was a secret. “He even said that he could help me grow my retirement savings.” Her gaze dropped and she frowned, sad.

  “What is it, Danielle?” I asked.

  “Well, when we went out to dinner that second time, he started to tell me about some ideas he’d had for investing some of my money, but then he got a call and had to leave the table.” She shrugged. “When he got back to the table, we got to talking about other things and never got back around to talking about his ideas.”

  “Did he… ask you for money?” I asked.

  “Morgan?” Danielle asked with surprise. “Nooo, no. Not once.” Her gaze fell to the side and lost its focus as she sank into thought.

  “What is it, Danielle?” Joel asked.

  “Well, we later made another dinner date. He’d said he’d gotten a stock tip that he was excited to talk to me about, but then… well…”

  Silence filled the room.

  “He died?” I asked.

  “Yes, he died. I never got to have that third dinner with him. I don’t know what it was that he was going to tell me.” She shook her head. “I keep watching the shows about the stock market, but it’s all just noise to me. In one ear and out the other. Everybody’s got opinions, but none of it makes a lick o’ sense to me.”

  I fell quiet and let Joel carry the conversation from there. From everything that Danielle had said, I was sure that Morgan was going to try to get money out of her the next time that they met, and it sounded like she had been eager to give it to him. The only thing that had gotten between Morgan and Danielle Stokes’ retirement savings had been Morgan’s death.

  Chapter 15

  Less than thirty minutes after leaving Danielle Stokes’ house, we were sitting at Mrs. Felicity Jameson’s dining table in her spotless home, drinking her coffee, and eating yet another orange poppy seed muffin.

  Felicity looked to be in her late fifties. She looked like what I would imagine a well-aged stripper might look like. She had bold, purple-tinged hair that fell in cascading curls. She was wearing high heels, silver leggings, and her black wrap-around top showed no small amount of cleavage. A low dangling pendant pulled the whole ensemble together. But just like Danielle, Mrs. Jameson’s personal style looked good on her.

  “Do you know who done him in?” she asked, directing her question to Joel more than me. In fact, I might as well not have been in the room. She hadn’t been rude to me, but her preference for Joel had been unmistakable.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Ahhh,” Mrs. Jameson said, waving a wrist-flopping hand at him. “You call me Felicity.” She gave him a wink, and Joel smiled warmly in return.

  When Joel spoke next, I had to do a double take to make sure we weren’t in a bedroom. His voice had deepened and softened at the same time. “I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to us.”

  “Anything for you, honey.” She winked again, then her expression turned pained. “That poor man. I can’t believe what they done to him.”

  Since the topic at hand had been Morgan, I could only assume that was who she was talking about.

  “It was tragic,” Joel agreed. “Can you tell us more about the time you spent with him?”

  “Oh, honey, I never saw no one give him any trouble. Everybody liked Morgan.”

  “But if we could know more about the time you spent together, that would be great. Even the most trivial detail.”

  Felicity’s eyes narrowed and she turned her head a little to the side, distrustful. “What’s it matter? The man’s a cold slab of meat in the morgue. What do you care about the time we spent together? He never stayed over, if that’s what you’re implying. We was proper with each other.”

  I decided to jump in. “We’re just trying to make sense of what happened. If we could understand more about what was going on in Morgan’s life, maybe we could understand more about his death.”

  She looked me up and down behind spider-leg eyelashes. “I didn’t kill him. Never laid a hand on him. Well… I mean, not to hurt him. I mean, not more than he wanted.”

  The series of images that flashed through my brain were more than I had bargained for. I didn’t know what to say, but thankfully Joel did.

  “Felicity,” Joel said, reaching across the table to take her manicured hand with sculpted red nails in his. “We want to figure out who did this. Not knowing, it’s going to haunt people.”

  Felicity sucked in a deep breath of air, pulled her hand free of Joel’s and laid it over her heart. “You want the man to be able to rest, that’s it, isn’t it? You want his poor soul to rest instead of wandering around, aimless and upset because the people who killed him haven’t been brought to justice.” Her eyes grew shiny with unshed tears.

  I jumped at what she was saying. “That’s it. That’s exactly it. If we can catch who killed Morgan, then maybe he can rest in peace.”

  She looked at me with adoration in her eyes as she shook her head. “Ahhh, honey,” she said, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “I’ll tell ya anything you wanna know.” She shook her h
ead some more. “I know you don’t want no more of them pesky unrest spirits hanging around you.” She frowned and wiggled her fingers in the air. “They’re all around you. So sad.”

  “Wha—”

  “Did you go out to dinner with Morgan?” Joel asked, and then shot me an apologetic look for cutting me off.

  “Oh, sure. We went out a few times. We went to that steakhouse out by the interstate, Bouche. Then he took me to Bird’s Nest. Oh, and then we went to that Indian place, Tandoori Nights.” Her expressive lips turned down at their corners. “He was so excited. He’d just gotten some good news, a tip on a stock. You should have seen him. He couldn’t stop talking about it. It made him so happy!”

  A tip on a stock… That was the exact same thing he’d told Danielle Stokes.

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “About a week and a half ago. He was going to take care of some investments for me. I just needed to get some money moved around to be able to take advantage of it.”

  “What was the stock tip?” Joel asked.

  Felicity’s lips pressed together in a disapproving frown. “He couldn’t say. Said it was regulations and such. Said if he told me that I could go to jail like Martha Stewart. He said it was better if I didn’t know the specifics. He was protecting me. But now I’ve finally got my money out of my retirement fund and he’s dead. He was going to turn it into millions. That’s what he said.”

  Sounded like Morgan had a habit of saying a lot without saying anything at all.

  The sound of Felicity’s front door opening reached our ears, and we turned as one to look in its direction.

  “Robert, that you?” Felicity called.

  “Yeah, babe. Where are you?” a man’s voice called in return.

  “I’m in here, at the dining table. I got some nice people with me.”

  A thick, stocky man about Felicity’s age appeared in the doorway. He was wearing jeans and a pale creamy beige button up shirt. His sleeves were rolled up to expose Popeye-esque forearms. He had deep creases at the corners of his eyes and had the strong look of someone who might have been at home on the docks of a seaport.

  Felicity patted the seat of the chair next to her.

  “Who you got here, babe?” The newcomer sat down in the chair Felicity had patted.

  “Frankie, this here’s Joel Mullen and…” She wagged a finger at me, clearly trying to remember my name.

  “Kylie Berry,” I said with a cheerful smile.

  “Kylie Berry,” Felicity repeated, her attention turned toward Frankie. “She’s the new owner of that café on Main Street.” Then she turned to us, pride-beaming. “Frankie here’s a retired cop.” She rubbed his thigh with her hand. “He says there’s no tellin’ who killed that young fellow.” She turned her attention back to Frankie. “What was his name?”

  I could understand Felicity going blank on my name. This was the first time we’d ever met, and she was starry eyed for Joel from the first second she met us both. I was an afterthought to her. But for her to not remember Morgan’s name…

  Ohhhh…

  The lightbulb went on in my head. The only thing that had changed between her knowing perfectly well who Morgan was and not knowing who he was, was Frankie walking into the room. From the way she touched his thigh and he draped an arm over the back of her chair and rested his hand low on her shoulder, it was clear that she and Frankie were more than casual friends.

  Yet, she’d gone out to dinner with Morgan at least three times. It was clear that her past affiliation with Morgan was a tidbit that she didn’t want her current sweetheart to know about.

  “You two make a lovely couple,” I said. “Mind me asking how long you’ve been together?” That question earned me a sharp look from Felicity.

  “Three years this spring,” Frankie said, beaming as he grinned from ear to ear. His chest seemed to have swollen with pride.

  I suddenly felt a little sorry for Frankie. I wasn’t sure that Felicity was as enamored with their relationship as she was.

  “Did you know Morgan Bleur?” I asked him.

  “Me? Nooo. I just know him from shop talk.” The confusion must have shown on my face, because Frankie continued on with an explanation. “Me and the boys get together at Allegro Takeaway Coffee.”

  “The boys?” I asked.

  “Yeah, other guys retired like me and some of the night retired ones too.” His brows scrunched together, and his gaze intensified as if he was seeing me anew. “Kylie Berry. Café on Main Street. You know Calderos.”

  Calderos was Brad’s last name.

  A pang of jealousy shot through me. Brad was spending time at some coffee shop, some shop not my café. I felt betrayed. Cheated on, even.

  I quickly bundled up those nonsense feelings and stuffed them away in that familiar box, then shoved it to the back of my brain like always. Psycho-possessive did not need to become part of my personality repertoire.

  “I do know Calderos,” I said.

  Frankie grinned, one that reached all the way up to his eyes. He nodded as he looked me up and down. “I get it now.”

  Joel shifted uncomfortably in his chair and Felicity shot Frankie a dirty look, one that said his eyes better go back to being on her.

  “Has there been much talk about Morgan Bleur with the guys?”

  “Oh, yeah! That guy was a mess. Don’t see that kind of thing around these parts too often.”

  “Anybody on the force got a beef with him?”

  “Any cops? Naw, nobody’s sayin’ anything like that. Some of the rookies are pretty stoked to be involved in a case like this, but the older guys, well, it’d be okay to retire without ever seeing something like what was done to Bleur.”

  A thought came to me, and I was sitting in front of the perfect person to ask. “With a death like Morgan’s, do you think that the killer knew him?”

  “Knew him? I’d say the killer hated him! People don’t tend to hate people they don’t know. Sure, people think they hate people they don’t know, but it’s different when you’re looking somebody in the eye. Really looking them in the eye. Takes an extra level of hate to hate someone while you’re doing that.”

  “Any ideas who that might have been?” Joel asked.

  “Naw, not a one. Well… drug dealers. Somebody sending a message. That’s what I think this was about.” Frankie got a muffin and took a bite. His eyes got large. He turned to Felicity. “Babe, where’d you get these?”

  “Kylie brought them,” she said. “They’re a gift from Belinda Jackson. She got some, loved them, and decided to help Kylie out by ordering some up as gifts for me and some other ladies. Spread the love around.” She and Frankie were looking at each other when she said “spread the love around,” and the two of them got doe-eyed and sweet for each other, culminating in a cute kiss.

  A few minutes later, we left Frankie behind as Felicity showed us to the door.

  Standing in the doorway, one foot outside and one foot still inside, I stopped. Joel had walked on back toward the car and was out of earshot. “He doesn’t know about the dinners with Morgan,” I asked.

  “No, and he’s not gonna know. Got it?”

  I didn’t know how Felicity planned to back up the warning, but I wasn’t eager to push hard enough to find out. Yet, there was more that I needed to know.

  “What would he have done if he’d found out? He’s an ex-cop. He’s got a network of people who could have reported back to him that they’d seen you out with another man.”

  Felicity’s mouth pinched. “I was sure to tell people that Morgan was my nephew. Like I said, when we was in public, Morgan was never anything other than proper with me.”

  “And when you weren’t in public?” I asked.

  Felicity shrugged. “He was fun, but only fun. He was the good-time boy. I knew that. He knew that. Nobody was going to be gettin’ their hearts broken. Despite what it looks like, I love that man in there. A girl just needs a little bit of extra spice to keep things interes
ting. And, well…” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It ain’t the first time I’ve gotten some extra spice. I don’t know if Frankie knows or not, but if he does know, then he’s decided to look the other way and that’s just fine by me.”

  “The other, uh, spice. How’s he doing?”

  “You asking if they found him dismembered in some field?”

  “Yeah…”

  “No, he’s fine. I see him most Sundays at church with his wife.”

  And on that note, I headed back to Joel’s truck. I can’t say I walked back. It was more like I trudged.

  I climbed in.

  “You got it in you to do one more visit?” Joel asked.

  “No,” I said, covering a yawn with my hand. “I’ve got to get back. There’s nothing set up for dinner, and I can’t put everything on Melanie and Sam.”

  “You can’t put everything on you, either. You need help, Kylie. You don’t look good.”

  I shot him a look out of the corner of my eye.

  “You look good… You just don’t look well. You look like you’re a day away from being hospitalized for exhaustion.”

  “Sure I don’t look that bad,” I said haughtily.

  “I’ll be sure to bring you flowers when they’ve got you hooked to an IV on forced bed rest,” he said with a teasing wink.

  That was a sobering thought because while I was in the hospital, the café would grind to a halt. There would be no one to pick up where I left off. It wouldn’t take long for Melanie and Sam to have to move on to new jobs. I’d lose my entire customer base. I’d lose everything.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I need help.”

  I needed layers of help. I needed redundancy built into the café’s management so that no one person could topple what I was trying to build, including myself.

  Chapter 16

  The next day I overslept again, woke up with another pounding exhaustion headache and barely managed to get some food made before customers started coming in.