The Smoking Bun (Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery Book 10)

by Chelsea Thomas

  Rebecca jumped to her feet, crossed to the door and held it open for us to leave. “Do me a favor and never come back.”

  Miss May set the pie down on Rebecca’s coffee table. “I’ll leave that there. My card is taped to the top of the box if you ever need to talk. Or want another pie.”

  Seconds later, Miss May, Teeny, and I were back outside Rebecca’s house. It had begun to rain and thunder clapped overhead. On the surface, it seemed we hadn’t gotten much out of our interview. But I had a feeling that Rebecca hadn’t told us the whole truth. And I wanted to find out why.

  11

  Chelsea the Trash Picker

  The downtown of Blue Mountain, New York was small but cute. There was a general store that sold everything from fishing tackle to milk and eggs. The post office was housed in a brick building that looked smaller than my Jersey City apartment. And there was a tiny park, the shape of a thumbprint, with a little pond in its center.

  Miss May and Teeny talked in excited tones about how strange our visit to Rebecca had been. Teeny, apparently, had noticed that Rebecca’s kitchen was a little messy, even though the rest of the house was clean. Teeny theorized that Rebecca might be a sloppy eater, or a messy cook. Miss May hadn’t noticed the kitchen and therefore didn’t have much to add. The discussion of the kitchen occupied most of the drive from Rebecca’s house down into the town of Blue Mountain.

  I pulled into a parking spot in front of the general store and slammed my sky blue pickup into park. “Enough about the kitchen. We need to talk about this case.”

  Teeny leaned forward. “But did you see the kitchen? If you saw it, I think you’d have something to say. Really didn’t go with the rest of the house. The whole place had a weird mismatched vibe. The outside said, ‘a homeless person lives here,’ but the inside said, ‘I’m not homeless, this is my home.’”

  I looked at Teeny sideways. She had a unique way with words.

  “Rebecca says all that stuff outside belongs to the landlord,” said Miss May. “Are you suggesting the landlord was also responsible for her sloppy kitchen?”

  Teeny tightened her jaw. “Please stop condescending to me. I’m an expert sleuth. It’s not my fault I observed a detail the two of you missed.”

  “I suppose I was too busy noticing Rebecca’s generally suspicious behavior,” said Miss May. “She barely looked up from her computer. Her left leg fidgeted throughout our conversation. And I’m not sure she and I made eye contact once.”

  “She didn’t make eye contact with me, either,” I said.

  “She also didn’t tell us anything about her business, despite her preoccupation with emails the whole time,” Teeny said. “I tell you, it is so rude to work on emails when you have company. It’s not the right way to treat a guest, even if the guest is at your house because they suspect you killed the head chef at the restaurant where you work.”

  I pulled out my phone. “Let’s see what we can find out online about Rebecca’s side business.”

  “Good idea,” Miss May said. “The more we learn about Rebecca the more we might begin to understand her means, her potential motive, and this murder.”

  “What are you going to search?” Teeny asked. “Try ‘Rebecca sketchy side business, Blue Mountain, New York.’”

  I laughed. “You don’t use the Internet often, do you?”

  Teeny gave me a big grin. “I’m a Luddite.”

  As soon as I began to type a search into the web browser my phone screen went black. I groaned. “No. No, no, no. I swear my phone despises me. Every time I need it, it dies. Can I use one of your phones?”

  Miss May bit her lip. “I didn’t bring mine. It’s too heavy. It weighs down my pants.”

  “Miss May. We need it.” I turned to Teeny. “What about you? I suppose it’s crazy to think you’d have your phone.”

  “Yup! I only take my phone out of the house if there’s going to be an emergency.”

  “How do you know when there’s going to be an emergency?” I asked.

  Teeny opened her mouth to speak but stopped before she formed any words. “That’s a good point. I never really plan on having an emergency. That’s why I never take my phone out of the house.”

  “It’s OK, Chelsea,” said Miss May. “Don’t let your delicate Millennial heart break for no reason. We’ll get the information we need the old-fashioned way.” Miss May patted the steering wheel a few times. “Start this puppy up. We’re going back to Rebecca’s.”

  “We can’t break into her house,” I protested in a slightly whiny tone. “She’s home and she’s angry for no reason.”

  “We’re not breaking in,” Miss May said with a twinkle in her eye. “We’re digging through her trash.”

  We rolled back into Rebecca’s neighborhood nice and slow and parked about two blocks away from her home so she wouldn’t spot us on the approach. I hopped out of the car upon our arrival, but neither Teeny nor Miss May budged. When I poked my head back in the car of the two of them were twiddling their thumbs, looking as innocent as newborn lambs.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Digging through trash isn’t a task suited for elderly women, Chelsea.” Miss May said, as though it was the most obvious statement in the world. “It’s your job to gather this particular piece of evidence.”

  I threw up my hands. “I’ve already been in a dumpster once this week!”

  “Practice makes perfect,” Teeny said.

  “Oh come on. Miss May has way longer arms than me!”

  “I’m also much larger and more conspicuous than you,” Miss May countered.

  “You’ve dug through trash before! In the Hamptons!” I said, not willing to give up without a fight.

  “That was at an empty house. No one around to spot my hulking girth,” Miss May said.

  “Oh you’re not hulking or girthy!” I said. “You’re just saying that.”

  Miss May shrugged and I could see there was no use arguing. So I took a deep breath and let it out, long and slow. “Fine. I’ll be back soon.”

  The second I closed the door to the pickup and turned to face Rebecca’s neighborhood, I realized I was all alone in the world on a desperate hunt for trash. That meant that I needed to be stealthy in order to succeed in my mission. Rebecca’s house was at the other end of the street, but I didn’t want to be seen on the approach so I snuck into the backyard of one of her neighbors’ homes. For some reason, it felt important not to make any sound, so I entered the small patch of forest that connected one backyard to another on my tiptoes.

  Once I was five feet into the forest I noticed all the new sounds around me. Birds chirping, squirrels scampering through fallen leaves. Somewhere in the distance a stream seemed to gurgle out the words, “Chelsea the Trash Picker. Chelsea the Trash Picker.” Wasn’t the worst epithet I’d been called.

  I hurried through the woods toward Rebecca’s house and moments later I could see her side window from where I stood. Rebecca was in the kitchen, which looked clean to me, preparing herself a sandwich for lunch.

  I hid behind a tree until she sat down at the kitchen table to eat. Then I started for the side yard, in search of the garbage can.

  Chelsea the Trash Picker was good at her job. An enormous garbage can was propped up against the house, teeming with refuse.

  “Jackpot,” I said, as if popping an enormous safe during a bank robbery.

  I peeked through a nearby window. Rebecca was hard at work on what appeared to be a turkey and cheese sandwich. She was distracted by her lunch, as any sane woman would be, but I needed to be quiet in order to remain under the radar.

  I lifted the lid to the garbage can and it thumped gently against the house. When I looked back inside Rebecca was still enjoying a romantic moment with her sandwich but I knew that the thumping lid was strike one. I had to be extra careful. So I turned back to the garbage with gentle, precise movements, again conjuring the image of a stealthy bank robber on the job.

  The oversized trash bin
was filled with several bags of garbage, each individually tied. I opened the first bag and a few empty soda cans spilled to the ground. It was way too loud. I flattened myself against the house and tried to remain unseen and silent.

  Seconds later, I heard Rebecca’s footsteps approaching the window. I could hear Rebecca groaning as she tried to open the window from the inside.

  The sound of an idling engine pulled my attention over to the street. It was Teeny and Miss May, ready to make an escape in the getaway car.

  Rebecca cursed as she fought the window and I heard it begin to open.

  I realized that was my moment to take action so I grabbed the overflowing bag of trash from the top of the garbage bin, slung it over my shoulder and darted toward the pickup. Miss May’s eyes widened as I ran toward her, trash spilling out behind me like exhaust on an old diesel clunker. My heart raced as I got close to the pickup truck and tossed the trash bag into the bed.

  “Hurry up,” said Miss May. “We need to get out of here.”

  Trying to expedite our departure, I climbed onto the wheel well and hoisted my stumpy little body into the bed of the pickup truck, landing with a resounding clunk right beside the pile of trash.

  Miss May pulled out with a squeal. I tossed my head back, closed my eyes and sighed. Part of me felt like that entire debacle had been pointless.

  But I couldn’t have been more wrong. And you’re about to find out why.

  12

  Apothecary Now

  About an hour later, Miss May, Teeny and I were back at the farmhouse staring down an enormous pile of trash. We’d spread out a tarp and laid all the trash out flat, which made for a smelly and repulsive sight. There were food wrappers and crumpled papers and takeout containers and tissues… It was disgusting. But all in a day’s work for a team of amateur sleuths.

  “Alright,” said Miss May. “Let’s get to work and see if we can find anything suspicious.”

  Teeny clamped a clothes pin down on her nose then offered an identical clothes pin to both me and Miss May. “Clothes pin?”

  Miss May and I laughed. The laugh lasted probably a full minute, and the whole time Teeny looked at us like she wasn’t crazy at all for snapping her nostrils shut with a clothes pin.

  After the laughing finally died down Teeny gave us an oblivious shrug. “What are you two laughing at?” Her voice was so high-pitched and nasally we cracked up laughing again. Then, after Teeny explained that the clothes pin kept the stench out of her nose, Miss May and I each begrudgingly accepted one of our own clothes pins. It did help a little, but we must’ve looked absolutely insane as we dug through the smelly trash pile.

  For ten straight minutes, all any of us found was literal trash. Then I found a small piece of paper that seemed promising. I handed it to Miss May. “Look at this. It seems like an invoice for Rebecca’s business.”

  “Let’s see here.” Miss May put on her glasses. “Hard to tell much of anything past all these mustard stains.”

  “Look at the top of the paper,” I said. “See? It’s a thousand dollar bill sent from some big company in New Jersey to a company in Blue Mountain.”

  “And you think that Blue Mountain company is Rebecca’s side business?” Teeny asked.

  Miss May let out a long, deep sigh. “That theory makes sense to me. You girls ready for another adventure?”

  I grinned. “Always.”

  The address on the invoice led us to a cluster of large, square buildings nestled along one of Blue Mountain’s many wooded back roads. Each building had a large garage door that took up most of the façade, with another small door on the side. The whole area had a dark and intense energy, like the kind of place a Bond villain would hide his secret weapon. There were no cars in the parking lot and there wasn’t another soul in sight.

  “I don’t like this place,” said Teeny. “It feels evil. Like it’s storage specifically for criminals to hide their dirty secrets.”

  “I thought the same thing,” I said. “This place gives me a bad feeling. And it doesn’t look like a business park. It looks like a boring storage facility.”

  Miss May shook her head. “You can’t get mail to your storage unit. These units must be zoned commercial. Sometimes people use garages like this as autobody shops or warehouses that double as retail spaces, stuff like that.”

  “What kind of business do you think Rebecca runs out of here?” Teeny asked. “What if she’s selling black market organs or something?”

  “I doubt she’d have invoices for her organ business,” I said.

  “Hey, even illegal organ dealers need to stay organized,” Teeny replied. “Gotta keep track of your livers somehow!”

  “What unit is she?” Miss May asked.

  I checked the paper from the trash. Its wet mustard smell burned my nose. “Unit 109C.”

  “Let’s go,” said Miss May.

  We soon found ourselves at the entrance of Unit 109C. By all appearances, it was just like every other unit. We tried the large garage door and the side door but they were both locked.

  “No way in,” Teeny said. “What do we do now?”

  “Hold on a second.” I spotted a small window above the door on the side of the building. It looked as if it was slightly ajar. “Give me a boost and I bet I can climb through that.”

  Miss May and Teeny both looked at me like I had a thousand heads and peanut butter eyeballs. “You can’t climb on us,” said Miss May. “Our bones will disintegrate.”

  “Oh they will not,” I said. “You’re not centuries old. You’ve got sturdy bones.”

  “I have osteoporosis,” Teeny said. “My doctor specifically said, don’t let young people climb on your shoulders.”

  “Why would your doctor… You know what, nevermind,” I tossed Miss May the keys to the pickup. “Pull Glenn Close under the window and I’ll climb on top.”

  “Your pickup is called Glenn Close now?”

  “Sure.”

  Moments later, I flopped from the roof of the pickup in through the window and landed on a high shelf in a large, dark room. I used the flashlight on my phone to look around. The room was organized in a neat fashion, similar to Rebecca’s home. The shelves were lined with a multitude of jars that contained strange, viscous fluids, powders and other compounds.

  “Are you in?” Teeny called from outside.

  “Of course she’s in. We know that because she’s not out anymore,” said Miss May.

  “She knows what I mean,” said Teeny. “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine.” I took a closer look at the unit. Lots of the jars were shaped like old-timey chemist beakers. And a pleasant floral smell permeated the space. That’s when it hit me… “I think this might be storage for some kind of apothecary or something.”

  “An apothecary?” Teeny asked. “Like from the 1800s?”

  “Apothecaries are trendy again,” I said. “Before I moved back here from New York City, there was a hipster apothecary popping up in every neighborhood. They’re basically glorified, overpriced drugstores. They would sell body butter or organic shampoo and perfumes, stuff like that. And the whole place would be decorated like a chemistry lab or something. One of the many ridiculous retail trends in the city. Possibly the most ridiculous. I guess Rebecca is trying to bring the trend up here.”

  “Thanks for the education, Chelsea, but can you let us in?” Miss May asked.

  I shimmied down the shelf toward the floor. About thirty seconds later, I was sweaty and my arms and legs were tired but my feet were on the floor. I opened the side door and Teeny and Miss May entered and flipped on the lights.

  Teeny walked from shelf to shelf, looking at all of the tinctures and powders and creams. “What is all this stuff?” She picked up a light jar of pink cream and smelled it. “It smells amazing. Like rose petals.”

  Miss May browsed the labels on the bottles and jars, reading ingredients. “Turbines. Glycols. Synthetic colors. Synthetic fragrances. Sodium sulfate. Thyme. Argan oil. Lion’
s mane. Cassava.” She turned back to me. “It seems like Rebecca’s apothecary is a not-so-healthy mix of chemicals and natural ingredients.”

  “That’s better than most of the big companies,” I said. “They just stick to chemicals.”

  Miss May pointed at a large, locked cabinet across the room. “All the expensive ingredients must be in there.” She walked toward the cabinet and pulled at an enormous padlock. “Unless there’s something else in there?” Miss May turned back and looked at me and Teeny. “Something diabolical.”

  “Seems like somebody who knows so much about chemicals and tinctures might be a good candidate to mix up a poison,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Miss May, “but there’s no arsenic in here. No cyanide. No proof.”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  Miss May shrugged. “Now we look for proof.”

  13

  Poison Apples

  You know that feeling when you’re looking for something and then you finally find it and you feel so good? Like it’s the best news you’ve ever gotten?

  Miss May, Teeny and I did not have the luxury of enjoying that feeling that night in Rebecca’s unit. Although we searched for hours, we didn’t turn up any evidence that suggested Rebecca might have killed Buck. So we left late at night, I think it was almost 11 PM, with our heads hung low and our stomachs rumbling.

  When Miss May and I arrived back at the farm that night, Wayne was sitting on the porch steps, leaning back on his elbows with his feet crossed at the ankles.

  Miss May turned to me. “Looks like somebody has a special visitor.”

  My face reddened. “I’m sure he’s just here about the foot.”

  “That’s what all the girls say.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  Miss May chuckled, got out of the car and gave Wayne a big wave. “Detective Hudson. It’s a pleasure to see you looking so relaxed. How are you this fine October evening? Do you have a case of the Mondays or are you feeling great?”