A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  “It is when they die outside on the street.”

  “I found him at the falls,” I said, even though I knew what he meant.

  “Same thing,” he said. “We investigate any unexpected deaths. It’s just routine.”

  “Did you find out who he was?” I asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say right now,” he said. “I was hoping you might have something else to add.”

  “Well, I’ve told you everything I know—last night,” I said. “And I told that police officer everything I know more than a few times.”

  “Which police officer?” he asked.

  I let out a sigh. “The one that kept me company until his ‘backup’”—I did the air quotes—“came. Which, I’m assuming, included you.”

  He nodded. “Like I say, this is routine. I’m waiting for the autopsy report to come back. Thought I’d follow up with a few of the witnesses.”

  “Were there other witnesses besides me?” I asked, surprise in my voice.

  His eyes lit up and I saw a small smile curl up his face. I didn’t think he expected me to be as inquisitive as he was.

  He forged past my question. “People forget things sometimes when they’re faced with a traumatic event, then remember later.” He tapped his finger on his temple. “Something jars their memory.”

  “Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m sure I told you everything last night. No jarring here.” I tapped on my temple.

  “You forgot about the boy and the scarf,” he said, a smirk on his lips. “You didn’t mention him until you saw him.”

  Hmmm . . . He was right. I had done that.

  “So can you think of anything else?” he asked.

  I decided not to just brush him off. I earnestly thought about everything that happened the night before. I squinted my eyes and tilted my head. Could I have forgotten something?

  “You thinking?” he asked.

  “I’m trying,” I said, squinting my eyes even tighter.

  “Well, while you’re thinking, let me ask about something else.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Did you find a lost puppy yesterday?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “But I saw someone who did.” I glanced over at PopPop’s now vacant bench and was glad he wasn’t there to hear this line of questioning.

  “And what happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said, hoping my expression would belie the fact that I knew something about the guy who had the lost puppy. I didn’t want to start that conversation if I didn’t have to. It seemed to upset everyone I knew when I said anything about him. “A guy asked me if it was my puppy, I said no, and he said he was going to take it to the police station.”

  “It never made it to us,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said, recalling how I’d seen him walking the opposite way of the police station. I hoped the puppy was okay.

  “Did you know the guy?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I said, which wasn’t a complete untruth. “I didn’t know the guy. And I can’t think of anything else I might have missed telling you yesterday.”

  I had officially joined my dad and Glynis Vale in the Village League of Liars.

  chapter

  FIFTEEN

  As soon as the detective left, Maisie’s imagination went into overdrive. She put Felice back down on the window seat and hurried over to me.

  “You think he suspects Ari?” she asked.

  “He didn’t ask me one question about Ari, Maisie.”

  “Won’t be long.” She ran over to the window and peeked out of it. “I bet he’s on his way over there now.”

  “Where? Molta’s?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good,” I said. “Let him ask other people questions.”

  “That phone call Dead Guy made before he died is probably all the proof they need.”

  “That would be some pretty flimsy proof, Maisie. I don’t think anyone could be convicted on that.”

  “Why did he ask you about the puppy?” Maisie asked, my comment going right past her. “That was weird.”

  “I know,” I said. “How did he even know about the puppy?”

  “I don’t know, but he knows something about it,” Maisie said. “Maybe he was testing you.”

  “Testing me how?”

  “He knows information about the puppy and he’s checking to see if you know the same information.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  She shrugged. “They like to get people tangled up in a web of lies.”

  “Well, I’m not lying about anything,” I said. It was a little difficult getting those words out. “I didn’t see anything, and I told them everything I knew.”

  “He’s got his work cut out for him,” Maisie said.

  “Finding the puppy?”

  “Catching the murderer.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “And I remembered his name.”

  “Whose name?” I asked.

  “Dead Guy’s.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What is it? Or what was it?”

  “Peter Sellers.”

  I scrunched up my face. “Like the actor?”

  “Actor?” Her eyes got wide with the realization. “Never thought about that until now. That was the name of an actor, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You remember that guy?”

  Maisie, like me, had hung around her grandparents as much as her parents and had knowledge about a lot of topics that most people our age didn’t. Movies from the sixties was one of those topics.

  “The Pink Panther?” she asked. I nodded. “Then maybe that wasn’t my guy’s name,” she said. She squinted her eyes. “But I’m almost sure it was.”

  “I’m sure the police took fingerprints or something to identify him.”

  “Or we can go to the restaurant.”

  “And do what?”

  “Find out his name. He had to have a time card or something. We could look around.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “Don’t get me involved.”

  “Don’t you want to see if we can’t figure out if there is a connection between Ari and this guy, whatever his name is?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, you do.”

  “Why would I care about who Dead Guy is?”

  “That’ll work.” She smiled. “We’ll call him Dead Guy.” She weighed the decision with a side-to-side tilting of her head. “At least until we find out what his name is for sure.”

  “And who you don’t know for sure is the guy I found at the falls.”

  “I do know for sure,” she said.

  “That and that Ari killed him, right?” I said.

  “Right,” she said.

  That was Maisie. She wasn’t always up on everything, and sometimes didn’t have a clue on anything. But when she set her mind to something, it was next to impossible to get her to change it.

  “Why would Ari kill a guy who worked for him?” I asked.

  “Did he really work for him?”

  “I don’t know, Maisie, that’s what you said.”

  “He wasn’t there but for one day.”

  “Did you see him and Ari fighting or something?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I say let the cops find out who your Peter Sellers is—if that was his name—and if Ari had anything to do with his death. And if your guy and my guy are the same guy.”

  “While we’re at the restaurant we should search his office, too.”

  “What?” I turned to look at her. “Whose office?”

  “Ari’s.” She just seemed so calm about her new illegal proclivities.

  “Oh no, we shouldn’t and neither should you.” I wiggled a finger at her. “We can’t go to the restaurant to lo
ok for anything.”

  “Why? We need to find out. They do it on all my British amateur sleuth shows. They snoop and find out what they need to do. We need to find out about him.”

  “In real life, that’s against the law,” I said.

  “You don’t really have to do illegal things to find out about people.” O had walked up to the ice cream display case. Evidently he’d been listening to my and Maisie’s conversation.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked.

  “The restroom.” He pointed in that direction.

  “Were you eavesdropping?” I asked.

  “Who, me?” he asked, a grin on his face.

  “Yes, you.”

  “Nooo,” he said, and smiled. “I just like to be helpful.”

  “And how can you help?” I asked.

  “Your person dilemma. You can find out a lot about people just by doing a little research online. Use a search engine,” he said, his voice authoritative like he was giving a dissertation on the subject. “Type in what you want to know. It’ll fill in the blanks.”

  “What can we find online?” Maisie asked. She nudged me over so that she was standing in front of him.

  “Addresses. Age. Phone numbers. Criminal records.”

  “Criminal records.” That was all Maisie needed to hear. She was on board. “How would I do that?”

  “Well, Cuyahoga County’s court documents are online and they are really easy to access. You can plug in a person’s name and see whatever cases they’ve had in court—civil or criminal.”

  “I can find out what they’ve done?” She was excited.

  “Yes. You can find out the date they were arrested. The charges filed against them and the disposition of the case.”

  “What does disposition mean?” Maisie asked.

  “What happened during the case,” he said. “And in Ohio, if they went to prison, you can look up their inmate record. Shows their picture, what crime they were convicted of and when they were incarcerated.”

  Maisie looked at me as if she’d just learned she’d hit the lottery. Her eyes were full of excitement. I knew this was a bad thing for her to know. She had already had it fixed in her mind that a crime had been committed. She knew who the victim was and who had caused his demise all from an innocent phone call from the police department. Weaponizing her with all the information Google could bestow couldn’t be a good thing.

  “You can look up property ownership on the auditor’s website.” He was building his list of where to find anything needed to snoop.

  “This is so awesome!” Maisie said. “All this information at your fingertips.”

  “You can look up gravesites on Find A Grave—find out if a person is dead or not,” he continued, seemingly happy to engage Maisie. “Lots of times you’ll find relatives and associates of people by checking out Facebook. A wealth of information right at your fingertips, indeed.” He moved his fingers like he was typing on a keyboard.

  This man was dangerous.

  “Who are you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

  chapter

  SIXTEEN

  We finally got Mr. 1-800-Learn-How-to-Snoop-Online, otherwise known as Morrison Kaye, out of the ice cream shop. We needed to get busy printing coupons and prepping for new ice cream flavors. And Wilhelmina came in and I needed to show her the ropes.

  But work wasn’t going to stop Maisie.

  “On Agatha Raisin,” she was saying over the hum of the printer. I had assigned Wilhelmina the task of tasting each one of the ice creams so she could make informed recommendations, and Maisie had followed me into the back. “Agatha, the main character, moves to a seemingly quiet village, just like Chagrin Falls.” She raised her eyebrows and gave me a knowing tip of her head. “And there’s a murder.”

  I expected her to say, “Just like in Chagrin Falls,” but she didn’t.

  “So Agatha becomes a murder suspect,” she continued. “Then she has to solve the murder. You should watch the show because you’ll see what we need to do.”

  “I thought Ari was the murder suspect,” I said.

  “He is.”

  I couldn’t see how she thought that related to her theory of murder and wanting to find out “who done it,” but I wasn’t going to ask.

  As soon as I printed up more coupons (twenty-five this time!), the chime over the door alerted me to another customer and gave me an excuse not to hear any more about Maisie’s shows. Perfect timing.

  I left Maisie chopping nuts for the banana nut ice cream I wanted to make and rattling on about some show called Vera.

  “I’ll get it,” I said to Wilhelmina as she came out front. She looked at me wide-eyed with a mini spoon hanging out of her mouth.

  My customer turned out to be Debbie Devereaux. Owner of Exquisite Designs clothing boutique and as of late, mysterious tea whisperer.

  Maybe Detective Beverly should talk to her, I thought. She seemed to know more about the guy I’d found by the falls than I did. Or than Maisie did, for that matter.

  “Oh, it looks gorgeous in here.” She walked around the room, from one wall to the other, then back to the window overlooking the falls. Pointing her finger back over her shoulder and walking toward me, she said, “That is a nice touch.”

  “Welcome to Crewse Creamery,” I said, happy that she liked what I had done with the store. Ms. Devereaux had good taste. Everyone knew it and it made her store a hot spot in our village when it came to buying fashionable clothes.

  “I feel welcomed,” she said, and smiled.

  Today she had on a furry headband that matched the fur of the coat she’d had on the night before. Her leather gloves and mid-calf boots that laced up the front had fur around the tops and were the same deep chocolate brown.

  “Did you come in for some ice cream?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s too cold.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  I found I didn’t need to say anything because she kept on talking. “I came in to check on you.” She laid her hand on top of the dipping case, and her small cocoa eyes seemed to study me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “It’s not every day that you stumble over a dead body.”

  “No. It’s not,” I said. “But really, I’m okay.” I chewed on my bottom lip, debating whether I should ask her if she knew the person I’d found at the bottom of the falls. With the comment she’d made, it was easy to think she’d seen him before he went down.

  I decided to ask my question in another way.

  “Have you spoken to the police about last night?” I asked.

  “Oh. No. I haven’t,” she said. “Not about last night.”

  Then what did she talk to the police about? I shook my head to clear it. “Do you know the guy who died?”

  “Do you?” She answered my question with one of her own.

  I didn’t know how to respond. “The detective—Detective Beverly—I don’t know if you saw him or not, but he asked me about other witnesses,” I said. Maybe she had seen something.

  “Witnesses to what?” she asked, her eyes big as if she had completely forgotten about what she’d said to me.

  “What happened last night? How that guy may have fallen to his death.”

  “Fallen?” she chuckled. “I don’t think that could have happened. Who tries to go down to the falls with all that snow on the ground?”

  I wanted to raise my hand and say, “Uh, that would be me.” But she already knew that and was seemingly playing dumb. I wasn’t trekking into that territory again, relaying something I knew was true only to find the person would lie to deny it. I’d done it with that woman Glynis Vale and her son, Jasper.

  So I hunched my shoulder and played dumb right along with her. “I don’t know,”
I said. “Who indeed?”

  She laughed again and touched the side of her nose. She knew I was on to her, but still insisted on this cat-and-mouse game.

  That was fine with me. I’d grown up around her and had a lot of respect for her. My grandmother had loved her, saying she had a good head on her shoulders that many people didn’t have. I remembered they used to talk often.

  “Well, I’m going to go,” Ms. Devereaux said. “Your Grandma Kay wouldn’t have ever forgiven me if I hadn’t stopped by to make sure you were alright.”

  “Come back and buy some ice cream,” I said.

  “I will,” she said, waving bye to me. “As soon as it gets warm out.”

  After Ms. Devereaux left, I figured it was as good of a time as any to train my new employee.

  “Did you taste all the flavors?” I asked Wilhelmina. I wanted her to be able to share her experience with the customers.

  “Some twice,” she said. I smiled. “My favorite is the caramel. Tastes just like caramel popcorn.”

  “I used fresh corn in that.”

  “Easy to tell,” she said.

  Wilhelmina Stone didn’t look anywhere near a hundred, like Maisie and I had joked. But she was older. She had a pep in her step and was always stretching out her arms and legs. “Old lady yoga,” she told me when I gave her the first questioning look. She wore a reddish wig, and no glasses. “They’re still twenty-twenty,” she’d told me when I asked her if she knew where we were located, and then added, “I’ll find you.” But what she found when she walked in the store her first day of work was PopPop. She gushed and blushed and wanted to know who he was. I think I even saw her wink at him. She patted on her wig and brushed her hand down her dress. “Size six,” she said proudly. The reason for that, she leaned over and whispered, was that she had smoked for fifty years, quit for more than ten years, but by then the nicotine had killed all the fat cells. Permanently.

  While I talked with Wilhelmina, Maisie kept herself busy cutting and chopping. I made the banana nut ice cream but just didn’t have the energy to make anything more. I’d have to put the mise en place that Maisie had readied for me for the other flavors away.