A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  We walked down the hallways and I stayed closed to the walls. I didn’t want Falls Park employees Glynis or Noah to see me, even though I’d just left Glynis at the grocery store. With a dog in her car. And not just any dog.

  “This is his room.” PopPop stopped in front of the same door I had hidden myself from just a few days before. “He didn’t do it,” he said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Well, when you question him, act like you know.”

  I wanted to remind him it had been Riya who didn’t know how to interrogate people. But I just nodded my head and followed him as he pushed open the door.

  “How you doing, Dan?”

  “Aloysius,” the man said. “Good to see you.”

  His hair was white. His body slumped. His crumpled clothes seemingly hastily put on. He sat with his wheelchair facing the window, but turned around on his own when we came in.

  “Good to see you.” PopPop put a hand on my shoulder. “You remember my granddaughter, Win.”

  “Course I do,” he said. “She’s all grown-up now.”

  “Hi, Mr. Clawson.” He didn’t look anything like I remembered, but I put on a smile and tried not to show how bad I felt that he was so sickly.

  “We didn’t come to stay,” my grandfather said, not wasting any time. “You heard about Stephen Bayard?”

  “Yeah, I did.” He seemed to sit up a little straighter with his words. “Can’t say I care much about that kind of stuff, or him, anymore.”

  “We need to find out about when you did care about that stuff,” my grandfather said.

  “What do you mean?” Mr. Clawson asked.

  “Win’s got some questions. They’re trying to blame my boy for his murder.”

  “Graham?” Mr. Clawson said.

  “Yep,” my grandfather said.

  Mr. Clawson frowned up. “He wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “Everyone knows that but that darn detective. He believes that Graham is his best suspect.”

  “How can I help?” Mr. Clawson asked. He grabbed the wheels on his chair and pushed them to face us better.

  “Answer Win’s questions,” PopPop said. “She’s been doing a little investigating of her own.”

  I went over and stood by a chair opposite him. “May I?” I said, pointing to the chair.

  “Of course,” he said. “Aloysius, you can sit there.” He pointed to another chair in the corner.

  “I’m fine,” PopPop said.

  “I hate to bring up bad memories,” I said, sitting down. “But I heard that your wife left you for Stephen Bayard.”

  “Naw, that’s not true,” he said.

  Leave it to my mother to get the information wrong.

  “Diane left me, but not for him. He had a wife. The two of them were the perfect pair.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “She was just as much of a criminal as he turned out to be.”

  “Did you meet her?” I asked. I remembered reading in the article I’d found about the LaGrosse Warehouse heist that they had questioned David Niven’s wife. I wondered if they were the same person.

  “I met her a time or two. She’d show up at the shop. Go in the back room with him. Take care of their business.”

  “Back room?” I asked.

  “That’s why Diane left me,” he said, hanging his head. “That back room.”

  “What’dya mean, Dan?” PopPop got in on my questioning.

  Mr. Clawson let out a long sigh and shook his head. “Ain’t nothing I’m proud of. But that guy was such a . . .” He seemed to search for the right word, then he chuckled. “Charmer,” he said. “At least that’s the word Diane used for him.”

  “Angel’s smile. Devil’s tail,” I said, remembering my mother’s words.

  “That he was. So I let him put things in my back room. There was a wall back there that you couldn’t tell didn’t belong. That’s where they’d store their loot.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Whoever he was working with at the time.”

  “Did you know the things he put back there?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Didn’t wanna know. To be honest, I don’t know for sure what he did. I just know he’d come and go out of there every time he blew through town. I let him have full access to it. Couldn’t let him keep coming through the shop, so I gave him a key to the side door.”

  “That’s why your wife left.” I had started feeling sorry for this guy. Stephen Bayard tore his family apart. My family banded together because of Bayard. His split apart.

  “That’s why she left. Took my boy with her. But at least he came back.” I saw a smile come across his face. “After that, after she packed up saying she didn’t want no association with a weak, spineless man, I told Stephen no more. I stood up to him. I told him I wasn’t going along with whatever he was doing anymore. He said that wasn’t going to make Diane take me back, but I told him I didn’t care. It was over anyway. And I’d thought it worked. Didn’t see him anymore. Then I closed up shop.”

  “Your store sat vacant for a while,” PopPop said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Couldn’t decide what to do with it. Burn it down, or what. I didn’t know, Stephen might have left something back there. Thought I might need to get rid of the evidence.”

  “You decided not to?”

  “It’s still standing, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, it is,” I said.

  “That’s when Isabella came to me.”

  “Mrs. Cro?” I said.

  “Yep. Said she always wanted to own a flower shop.” His eyes drifted off. “Diane loved flowers,” he said, his voice cracking. “So I told her to take the building. Have lots of flowers. Pretty ones. Wash away all the bad things I let go on in there.”

  “It’s a very nice flower shop,” I said. “She always has the most beautiful flowers. And she’s so happy to be there.” Those words were because I wanted him to know he’d done a good thing.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m glad something good came out of it.”

  chapter

  THIRTY-NINE

  In twelve hours, I was supposed to serve dessert to one hundred benefactors attending the President’s Dinner at Wycliffe University.

  With five days’ head start, I hadn’t begun making any of it.

  But it was all good.

  We’d be fine. I had everything all figured out.

  Twelve hours ago, Detective Liam Beverly had questioned my father about his involvement in the murder of Stephen Bayard.

  After five days of investigation, I hadn’t begun making headway on who the real murderer was.

  That wasn’t good.

  I didn’t know if my family would ever be fine again. I didn’t have one single thing figured out.

  The day before, I had been so busy I couldn’t even think straight. I had colored sticky notes everywhere. I think Maisie pulled one off the back of my pants. Me and my crew—old and new—ran around getting everything together. We made sure the frozen cart was powered up and cold (all the while listening to Maisie wondering why I just didn’t have a food truck, like I could take on another big project!), counting dessert plates I’d gotten from a party rental company and chopping up bushels of cherries, strawberries and nuts. I hadn’t conducted one interrogation, as PopPop liked to call them, or collected one iota of evidence, as I liked to call pieces of paper and pictures of dog collars, and I had avoided my father, not wanting to hear what happened when he went to the station.

  It was six o’clock in the morning and the three of us had already been at the shop for two hours.

  Maisie, my mom and me.

  My investigation had to be put to the back of the freezer. For now.

  “Okay,” Mom said. “I’ve got all the cakes ready. They’re either i
n the oven, or ready to go in. Now what do you want me to do?”

  And that was the way our day went. Hectic. Busy. Frenzied. Loud. But we got it done. We made fifty individual raspberry java ice cream cakes, and five each of the chocolate cherry and almond and the seven-layer strawberry tart ice cream cakes. Ten slices a cake. I figured we’d have enough to serve one hundred and fifty people. Surely, we wouldn’t run out.

  Felice slept the entire time and PopPop played backgammon.

  When the store opened, PopPop went behind the counter for the first time to help Candy serve customers. Candy was my night help, but PopPop, who had insisted on volunteering, said he didn’t want to work with Wilhelmina. I had to laugh. I was going to have to have a talk with that lady, I decided, flirting with my grandpop, making him nervous.

  By three thirty, we were ready to roll out for the six o’clock dinner.

  “You got everything?”

  “I do,” I said. “Except for the business cards I had Liken Printing do.” I glanced out the front window. “They’re coming UPS. I thought I might have them before we left. I wanted to pass them out.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” my mother said. “After they taste your desserts, people will be sure to find you.”

  “Fingers and ice cream scoops crossed,” I said.

  “Okay, then, I’m going home,” my mother said. “You two are okay without me, right?”

  “We don’t really have to do anything,” I said. “Clara’s assistant, Sophie, called yesterday and said Ari’s waitstaff would serve our dessert. We just have to plate it. Maisie and I can do that.”

  I had warned Maisie to be nice to Ari when she saw him, although I couldn’t count on her listening to me. I knew, though, that she knew how important this was to me. Ever since word had gotten out about us catering the dessert at this event, the foot traffic in the store had picked up. And customers tasting our wares had come back with their friends and family in tow. And the weather hadn’t mattered one little bit.

  “You two aren’t going looking like that, are you?” my mother said.

  Maisie and I were covered from head to toe in chocolate and flour, and were sticky from sugar and eggs.

  “Noo,” I said warily. “But we hadn’t planned on dressing up.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No,” I said, sudden skepticism about that idea surfacing. “I just figured we’d get messy again. I got us some aprons with our logo on them and we’re wearing matching white shirts and black pants.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, nodding her head. “That’ll be cute.”

  Glad that passed her approval, because it was too late to change.

  Maisie and I dressed quickly upstairs in her grandmother’s apartment and hustled out to the university’s campus. Even though our food was the last to be served, I didn’t want to do my setup while the guests ate their main course or while the speeches were going on.

  We stopped at the front door of the University Center to unload and told the student who was working the desk who we were. He told us to go to the second floor. We packed the elevator and Maisie rode up with our stuff. I went back out and drove down into the underground garage to park. Nearly all of the parking spaces were reserved for the evening’s guests, but there was also a spot reserved for me. I pulled in, hopped out of the car and, in my haste, made the mistake of trying to go up the stairwell from the garage and found after walking up that the door was locked. I peeked through the wire-threaded square window, but couldn’t see anyone to get their attention. Shoot!

  I went up one more floor and found that door was locked, too. I looked up and thought I didn’t want to keep climbing just to find that I couldn’t get in. I found, going back down, only the door on the first floor would let me back into the building. Once inside, I got in the elevator with a gaggle of apron-wearing Molta’s waitstaff. They pushed four, I reached over to press two.

  “Aren’t you serving dessert?”

  “Yep.”

  “The dinner’s on four,” he said.

  “Oh. I thought . . .” I could have sworn the guy at the desk had told me two.

  When I got to four, sure enough, it was where the dinner was taking place. Maisie wasn’t anywhere to be found.

  “What happened to you?” I asked when she finally arrived. I had run over to the elevator to help her.

  “That dingbat told us two.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said.

  “Well how did you get here and why didn’t you come looking for me?”

  “Sorry!” I said. “And I was just about to come find you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  We pushed and carried our stuff to a back corner and I explained I’d followed the waitstaff up.

  “Ah,” Maisie said, whispering and lifting a conspiratorial eyebrow. “The murderer is here.”

  I glanced at Ari and his crew. “Remember, be nice,” I said as we started unpacking boxes and setting the dessert on the cold, frosty cart. “We’re not investigating today.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll be nice. See . . .” She smiled and waved at Ari. Over the clanking of plates and silverware, he barked out orders, making sure everything was right.

  He waved back.

  “Yes,” I said, smiling and nodding at him. “Be nice.”

  “Look,” she said. “There’s Althea.” Maisie shook her head. “She doesn’t look like she’s working tonight.” She was dressed all in white. Well, winter white, as my grandmother used to call it. Wool slacks, a beautifully crocheted sweater. Ankle boots with a silver buckle. “We should have warned her about him. She should be careful of that man.”

  “No sleuthing,” I said. “That means no accusing either.” I glanced their way as I bent over to take another cake out of the box.

  “I said okay,” she said.

  “Hi, ladies.” It was Sophie, Clara Blackwell’s assistant. I did a quick check over our work to make sure everything was on schedule. Then gave the thermostat knob a little twist to set it lower.

  “Hi,” we answered at the same time.

  “Just wanted to check on you, make sure you didn’t need anything. I see you found somewhere to set up. I should have come earlier.”

  “Yeah,” Maisie said, “because that boy downstairs at the desk said it was on two.”

  She poked out her lips and tilted her head. “I’m sure that didn’t happen.”

  “It did.”

  “Why would he do that?” Sophie asked.

  “I’d like to know.”

  I gave Maisie a look that said, “Cool it.” This was the woman who gave scathing reviews. We did not need to be on her bad side.

  “It’s all good,” I said in a singsongy voice. “We’re here and we’ll be all set up soon.”

  She turned her attention back to me. “Good. I’ve got to run out on an errand for Ms. Blackwell.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, and smiled. She looked around the dining room and back at the cart. “It looks delicious.” She pointed at the dessert cart. “I’m sure Clara will be pleased.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Okay, so, if there’s nothing else . . .” I shook my head. “Okay, I’m heading out.” She pointed to a door with a red exit sign, the same doorway I’d tried to come through. “After I make a stop in the little girl’s room.”

  “Those doors are locked,” I said.

  Sophie glanced at it. “Oh, did you try to come up from the parking garage?”

  “Yep,” I said. “I had to go all the way back down.”

  She chuckled. “Sorry about that. All the doors except for the garage and first floor levels are locked on the stairwell side. But for fire purposes, of course, you can get out that way from each floor.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Good to know
.”

  Sophie left and Maisie and I got back to work.

  “You know, I hope they’re not dating,” Maisie said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Ari and Althea.”

  “I think they are,” I said.

  “Why would you think that?”

  I sucked my tongue and stood up straight, resting my hands on my lower back. “I know we weren’t mentioning anything about this, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “She’s his alibi for the night of the murder.”

  “What?” Maisie asked, her face contorted. “Althea?”

  “She told me I shouldn’t be judgmental about Ari, that he was a nice guy. And that she was with him the night of the murder.”

  “Why would she tell you that?”

  I hunched my shoulders. “I don’t know. Protecting her man, I guess.”

  “Ewww!” Maisie said, and feigned a shiver going down her spine. “When did she tell you that?”

  “One day when I was taking out the trash, I was talking to Mrs. Cro and she walked up.”

  “Between the buildings?” Maisie asked.

  “Yep,” I said, then tapped her on the arm. “Hey! We’re unpacking here.” She had stopped to stare at Ari and Althea.

  “Why would she come into the alley?” Maisie asked, turning back to help me. “That alley goes nowhere.”

  “She was looking for Mrs. Cro. I told you. She wanted to buy flowers. Probably for her man.”

  “There you go again, making me sick to my stomach,” Maisie said. “She must be really desperate to date him.”

  “Ari is not a bad-looking guy, even if . . .”

  “He’s a murderer?”

  “Maisie.”

  “I know. No murder talk today.”

  “We’re going to put the dessert plates under here,” I said. “Keep them chilled.”

  “Look at him looking at her like a little puppy,” Maisie said. “Like he’s just cute and adorable and not dangerous.” Her mouth was turned up like she had a bad taste in it. “I think I should tell her.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” I said. “Here, put these plates up.”