A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  “Oh . . . um. Yeah. Yes.” I couldn’t stop stumbling over my words. This illegal stuff was not for me. “We’re all about sustainability. Local farmers. Fair-trade ingredients.” I cleared my throat. I knew I was talking too much. “Come on by.” I had to wrap up my babbling. “We’ve got something yummy for your tummy.”

  I knew saying “yummy for your tummy” was corny. And I so disliked corny. But I was nervous.

  “Yummy for your tummy?” Maisie turned and mouthed the words to me. Her lips pursed, nose crinkling. “I’ve been helping her out,” Maisie said, turning to Ari, I’m sure to get us past my dumb comment. “I’m in charge of the flavor.” She looked at him as if she dared him to dispute it.

  If he was the murderer, as Maisie complained, being so brash probably wasn’t a good idea. It might make him snap.

  I’d known who Ari was for a while, as evident by our present conversation. I didn’t know, however, if we’d ever been formally introduced.

  He’d come around when I was a teenager. I was finishing high school when he opened up Molta’s. I’d gone there a time or two while home on break from school. He’d always seemed nice, although Maisie knew more about him than I did. Still, I didn’t want this moment to be the one where I found out that wasn’t true.

  I was feeling light-headed. Amateur sleuthing was too nerve-racking for me.

  “You’re in charge of the flavor?” Ari raised one of those perfectly arched eyebrows. “And what does that mean?”

  Thank goodness Maisie didn’t have a chance to answer. We were staying way too long in that little bitty office. I knew I was going to start sweating at any minute. The knocks that saved me came hard, heavy and in quick succession. It was like whoever was at the door wasn’t averse to knocking it down to get in.

  “Someone’s at the door,” Althea said, stating the obvious as she turned toward it.

  “Who is it?” Ari called as he headed out of the office, his voice forceful. We followed him.

  “Police. We’re here to speak to Ari Terrain.”

  Maisie grabbed my arms. “Oh my!” she said. “Keep back, they might come in shooting.”

  Ari didn’t seem to have anything to hide, nor was he worried about guns blazing. He opened the door wide and held on to it. “I’m Ari Terrain,” he announced.

  And in walked Detective Beverly.

  “Shoot!” I said.

  “It’s Detective Bumbling Idiot!”

  “In the flesh.”

  “Maybe he’s wised up and now came to arrest Ari.”

  “I’m Detective Liam Beverly with the Chagrin Falls Police Department,” he said, and flashed his badge. “You mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “Not at all,” Ari said. “Come in.” Ari seemed to be filled with mettle.

  The first thing Detective Beverly saw when he set foot inside was me.

  “Bronwyn,” he said, surprise in his voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “She’s here with me—”

  I grabbed Maisie’s arm and squeezed it before she could say anything else. She had stepped forward, seemingly ready to attack even the police officer. I pulled her back.

  “And you are?” Detective Beverly asked Maisie. He tapped the side of his forehead. “Didn’t I see you at the ice cream shop?”

  “Maisie Solomon,” she said. “Win—Bronwyn’s best friend.”

  “She works for me,” Ari said, looking back over at us. “I know why she’s here.” He turned his gaze to the detective. “But I don’t know why you are.”

  “I just wanted to ask you a few questions, Mr. Terrain.”

  “About what?” Ari asked.

  The detective looked at the other three occupants in the room. Althea pressed her lips together and evened out her lip gloss, then tucked a hair behind her ear. She was as calm as everyone else. Seemed like I was the only one in a panic. I had to ball up my fist to keep from clicking my nails.

  “I can go,” Althea said, and put on a polite smile.

  “You’re fine,” Ari said, and held out a hand to stop her from leaving. “Just ask what you need to ask.” Ari looked at the detective.

  “I just had a few questions.” He pulled out a little notebook and a pen. First time I’d seen him taking notes. “I wanted to know if you knew Stephen Bayard,” he said, making sure he made eye contact with Ari when the dead man’s name came out.

  Ari paused as if he was thinking about it. He scratched his beard and showed no other reaction. “No,” he said finally. “Should I?”

  “No,” Beverly said. “If you don’t know him, you don’t know him.”

  “I don’t know him,” Ari said.

  “Okay. Now, you’ve said that you don’t know him, but did you get a phone call from him night before last?”

  “Didn’t get a call from anyone by that name. No.”

  “And where were you from around five to eight p.m. that night?”

  Before he could answer, two more people came in the door. Not police officers. They must’ve been employees coming in for their shifts, but they stopped as soon as they saw the small crowd gathered in the entryway.

  “It’s okay,” Ari told them, then gestured for them to come in with a large circular motion of his hand. “More employees,” he told the detective. I had guessed right. “They need to get to work. How about we go in my office if you have more questions?”

  “I do have a couple more,” Detective Beverly said.

  “That’s our cue,” I leaned over and whispered to Maisie. I tried pulling her behind me but she wouldn’t budge.

  “Cue for what?” Maisie asked.

  “To leave.” This time I gave her a yank. “We’re leaving now.” I pushed her through the front door.

  “Didn’t you want to hear what else the detective is going to ask Ari?” she said, trying to hold her ground.

  “And how were we going to do that?” I asked. I made sure the door shut behind her. I put my hands on my hips and looked at her. “Unless we followed them into his office.”

  She made a face that told me she didn’t see a problem with that.

  “I’m going back to the ice cream shop,” I said, vowing never to let her draw me into wacky schemes again. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll walk back that way with you, I guess,” she said, disappointed.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Hey, is that your grandfather?” she said, looking down the street.

  “Where?” I followed her gaze. “I don’t see anybody,” I said. I didn’t see anything, let alone my PopPop. “I’m sure he’s still at the ice cream store where I left him.”

  “Hmm. Looked just like his car,” she said.

  I glanced over at her. “It felt like I didn’t even know you in there,” I said.

  “In where?”

  “The restaurant,” I said. “You going into emails, talking tough to that woman. And what kinds of faces were you making to Ari?”

  She smiled. “Someone has to stand up to him.”

  “Doesn’t have to be us,” I assured her. “You were just ready to take on the world.”

  “It was two people.”

  “Still,” I said, and shook my head. “And who was that woman?”

  “Althea Quigley. She works at Molta’s.”

  “She seems nice enough.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Maisie said. “She dresses way too nice to live on a waitress’s salary.”

  “You don’t like anyone over there, do you?”

  She hesitated. She seemed to be going through the Rolodex of employees in her mind. “Nope,” she said finally. “That’s why I’m quitting and coming to work for you.”

  Maisie never liked anything for long.

  “Okay.” I smiled. “You know I’m happy to have you. But you just can’t u
p and quit on me like you always do.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’ll love working at the ice cream shop.”

  “Okay.”

  “I did good, huh?” she said, getting back to the matter at hand. “Getting us evidence. Standing up to that murderer.”

  “‘Good’ is not the adjective I’d use to describe you in there,” I said. “It was like you turned into some kind of psychopath or sociopath. I don’t know the difference between the two, but you were so far from the Maisie I know.”

  “I know, right?” Her face lit up and she pumped her arms out in front of her and did a jump, hop, stomp. She was quite pleased with herself.

  Narrowing one eye, I shook my head. “I’d expect this weird flip in personality from Riya. You never know which bag she’s coming from. But not you, Maisie.”

  “Well, whatever I turned into, it worked,” she said, and wiggled the paper in front of my face. “We got a clue!”

  I leaned back—didn’t want a paper cut on my nose. “We got a copy of an email.” I waved a hand at the paper. “We don’t even know if it’s a clue. What does it say?”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “I guess we should read it.”

  “What does it say?”

  She stopped walking and looked down at the paper. “It says, ‘Coming to town. You owe me. I need you for a job.’”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.” She flapped the paper.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that Dead Guy was blackmailing Ari.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It does not mean that.”

  She was starting to develop a newfound gift for leaping to conclusions.

  “Yes, it does. And now we know the reason why Ari killed that guy.”

  I glanced at her. “The police came looking for Stephen Bayard,” I said. “You know that means they’ve identified the guy who called Molta’s as him.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe. But I’m sure that’s not the name of the guy who was missing from work.”

  “Maybe that guy—Peter Sellers or whoever—quit. Or was too sick to come to work.”

  “Or dead,” she said. “Maybe Stephen Bayard used an alias.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But we have no way of knowing that.”

  “Just because his name is something else doesn’t mean that Ari didn’t kill him.”

  “I have to give it to you,” I said, pursing my lips, “you did guess right about it being a murder.”

  “And I’m right about this, too.”

  I wasn’t sure of that and didn’t say anything.

  “Althea must have come in with Ari,” Maisie said after we’d walked in silence for a while. “I wonder if she knows he’s a killer.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said, even though the whole mission had been to discover something that would prove he was.

  “Well, I hope she doesn’t get involved with him,” Maisie said.

  “You didn’t seem to be too friendly with her,” I said.

  “That doesn’t mean I want her dead,” Maisie said.

  “We didn’t get any information that would convince her not to,” I said, “or anything to convince the detective that my father didn’t do it.”

  “I think that will happen,” Maisie said. “With a little help from us. And”—she tapped my arm—“that detective going to Molta’s and wanting to talk to Ari should tell you we’re on the right track.”

  “That detective came to my store, too,” I said. “What does that tell you?”

  “That they think your father killed Peter Sellers.”

  “Oh my God!” I said. I stopped and bent over. “Ugh! I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “And.” Her voice raised a few decibels with the word. She came and stood in front of me. “There was going to be an ‘and’ in there, Win,” she said, “just let me finish. I was going to say more.”

  “I don’t know if I can take what else you have to say.” I rested my hands on my knees and looked up at her.

  “Annddd, you were the one that found that guy. That’s why he came to talk to you. They wanted to know if you could identify the victim.”

  “His name is Stephen Bayard,” I said. I stood up and started walking. She followed behind me. “And that detective is crazy if he thought I would tell him I saw my father doing anything like that.”

  Maisie grabbed my arm from behind. She turned me around to face her and looked me in the eye. “Did your father do it?” she asked.

  “Oh.” I let out another groan and tried to walk away. But she held on to me.

  “Tell me.”

  “No.” I put my forehead to hers. It was too heavy for me to hold up. Our noses practically touched. “My father didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Okay, then,” she said, and let go of me. She gave me a look that said “Get over it,” and started walking. “That’s what I thought. That means we have to push through and find out who did it.”

  Sleuthing Maisie was a side of my best friend I’d never seen before. She was scary.

  I trotted to keep up with her. “I think we should go to the library,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “So we can find out more about this Stephen Bayard. It might help us find out why someone wanted to murder him.”

  “Not someone. Ari.”

  “You are so stuck on Ari doing it,” I said. “It could be somebody else, you know.”

  “I know you think I just latched on to Ari and won’t let go.” She looked at me. “And I know I’m just projecting my dislike for the guy into all of this. But, Win, we have to start somewhere.”

  “And see where it leads us?”

  “Exactly. Put the clues together. And Ari is as good a place as any to start.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, giving in. “So what do we have so far?” I asked.

  “The dead guy called Ari. We know that. And we know that Ari lied about it.”

  “Dead Guy’s name is Stephen Bayard.” I snapped my fingers. “Maybe Ari thought the guy’s name was really Peter Sellers,” I said.

  “Mmmm,” Maisie said. You could see the cogs in her brain turning.

  “Or,” I said, tapping her on her arm, “Ari knew his real name but because of whatever business they had”—I pointed to the paper—“he didn’t want to let on to the detective that he did.”

  “And Ari thought since Dead Guy was using an alias, the police wouldn’t be able to find out the connection,” Maisie continued with my hypothesis. “That’s why he said that he didn’t know Stephen Bayard.”

  “Right,” I said. “Because as far as anyone else is concerned, he only knows Peter Sellers.” I digested what I’d just said. “Oh. But wait. The phone call? The police identified the phone call as coming from Stephen Bayard.”

  “Well, Ari didn’t talk to him when the police called,” Maisie said. “I did. So they can’t prove he knew him or that they had a conversation.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “Still, Stephen Bayard could have called before then. Maybe his phone records show other conversations.”

  “Yeah,” Maisie said, thinking about that. “But that would work in our favor, because then the police would have caught Ari in a lie.”

  “Yes, him lying to the police would be good.” I nodded. “But we do know that they used other means to communicate. Like that email.”

  “Right.” She flapped her arm that was still holding the paper.

  “But answer me this, Maisie,” I said. “If Ari missed the phone call from Stephen Bayard the night he was killed, and that was the only email you saw from him, how would Ari know how to find him to kill him?”

  “Maybe after Dead Guy called the restaurant and couldn’t reach Ari, he called Ari’s cell phone.”

  �
��Oh. That’s a thought,” I said. “If they had Dead Guy’s phone records, then there’s a reason the police may have stopped by and another way they knew Ari was lying.”

  “Right,” Maisie said.

  “So,” I said, wrapping up our little scenario, “Stephen Bayard reached Ari on his cell phone, they met and—”

  “Ari killed him,” Maisie said, finishing my sentence. “And as soon as the police figure that out, they’ll arrest him and have him drawn and quartered right before they put him in front of the firing squad.”

  “You really don’t like Ari, do you?”

  chapter

  TWENTY-THREE

  What’s Riya’s car doing here?” Maisie asked. “Is she helping out today?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If she is, it’s because she just popped in. She didn’t tell me she was coming.”

  We’d made it back to the ice cream shop, faces cold, sniffling and eyes runny.

  “Hi,” I said as we walked in the front door, the chime echoing our arrival.

  “Welcome to Crewse Creamery,” Riya said, smiling at us over the counter.

  “Hey, Riya,” I said.

  “Look at Dr. Amacarelli serving up scoops,” Maisie teased.

  “Yes,” Riya said. “Mrs. Crewse has worked me to death. I don’t get this tired working twenty-four-hour shifts.”

  “No one works twenty-four-hour shifts,” my mother said, coming out of the back. “Stop crying.”

  “Hi, Mom,” I said. “Where’s PopPop?” I glanced over to his usual bench.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and looked at his vacant seat. “I thought he was here.”

  “He left right after you did, Win,” Riya said. “Said he was going home to eat.”

  “Thought you’d be gone for the rest of the day, Win,” my mother said.

  “No, I’m back and I can close up if you have to go,” I said, walking around the counter. “Did we get a lot of customers today?”

  “God yes,” Riya said, and leaned up against the counter. “I didn’t think they’d ever stop coming.”

  My mother rolled her eyes and shook her head. “We had four or five.”

  “Really?” Riya said. “Seemed like twenty to me.”