The Smoking Bun (Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery Book 10)

by Chelsea Thomas

  “You’re struggling with work-life balance,” said Wayne. “I listened to a podcast all about that recently. I mean, it can’t be easy, amateur sleuthing and a long distance relationship? Plus, you have your real job at the orchard. That’s a lot to juggle.”

  I nodded. “Yes. Uh-huh. True.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I was immature a few days ago when we were talking and Germany came up. You’re a grown woman and you deserve to live whatever life you want. I don’t care if you’re dating Germany or me or the man on the moon. I want you to be happy. So… I’ll try to help you with the investigation, if I can.”

  I looked up with my biggest doe eyes. “You would do that?”

  Wayne looked around to make sure we were alone then he turned back to me with a sympathetic nod. “Of course. You’re probably wondering about Rebecca, right? You want to know if she was murdered?”

  “…yeah.”

  “Stop wondering. Trust your instincts.”

  “OK.” I studied Wayne’s face. Then I glanced down because my studies started to feel a little too…intimate.

  Wayne took a sip of his milkshake. “Wow. This is good. You want to try?”

  I shook my head. “No, thank you. But there’s one thing that my instincts haven’t told me that I’m hoping you could help me with?”

  Wayne turned up his palms, as if to suggest that he would help if he could.

  “The woman who found Rebecca’s body… What’s her name? Where does she live? None of us recognized her, which was weird.”

  “That I can’t share,” said Wayne. “But I’m sure you’ll figure it out if you keep digging. The answer’s out there.”

  “But time is important,” I said. “And I’m not always a speedy digger.”

  “Legally, I can’t tell you her name. If you overheard me discussing the fact that she shared a name with a certain famous Disney princess, I couldn’t help that. But I couldn’t confirm or deny anything.”

  “Ariel.”

  Wayne took a sip of his milkshake.

  “Um. Belle. Cinderella. Tinkerbell.”

  Wayne kept sipping.

  I gasped. “Jasmine.”

  Wayne smirked. Bullseye. Then he slid it across the table. “You should try this thing. It’s incredible.”

  No one in the history of time has had to twist my arm to get me to take a sip of milkshake. Yes, I was full, but I couldn’t resist.

  Wayne was right. That milkshake was cold, creamy and delicious. It tasted like summer at the beach. I took a second sip, then slid it back.

  “It looked like maybe Jasmine was from the city,” I said. “She looked put together. Nice haircut. Expensive jeans. Are you allowed to tell me where she’s from?”

  Wayne shook his head. “I can’t divulge any of that information. But I can tell you that my favorite pizza shop is in Brooklyn. Greenpoint, actually. Have you tried Paulie Gee’s?”

  I smirked. Wayne’s code was inelegant and obvious but I supposed that somehow it must have protected his sense of legal duty to the police department, so I appreciated it.

  “I haven’t tried Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint, Brooklyn,” I said. “But I’ll add it to my list.”

  Wayne slurped up the last few sips of his milkshake and looked up at me, eyes crinkled with a smile. “You wanna ask me any other questions?”

  I shrugged. Wayne had provided the first name and hometown of the possible killer. That was more than I had expected. “I mean, I don’t think I have any more questions. Why? Have you arrested someone or charged them for these murders?”

  “I wasn’t talking about those kinds of questions.” Wayne leaned forward. He got closer and I got sweatier. “By the way…”

  Was he going to try to kiss me? How was I going to handle that? What was I going to do? I’m not fit for open relationships!

  Thankfully, Wayne spoke when he was mere inches from my face. “I’ve got news about the foot.”

  Wayne reclined back into his chair and chuckled. “You had no idea what I was going to say. You were freaking out. That was awesome.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “The foot. The severed foot. Of course.”

  What is my life? I wondered. How am I in a place where news about a severed foot is somehow a relief to me?

  “What’s the update?”

  A smug look crossed Wayne’s face. “We found a second foot. Outside of town, in an estuary. Must’ve been carried there from the brook on the orchard.”

  “What?!” I asked. “A second foot.”

  “That’s right. And it matches the first foot. Same size, same shape, same hairy little toes. Pretty good development, I thought.”

  “I guess that’s good. I mean, a foot washed right into your lap. And you still don’t know whose foot it is. But—”

  “Can you just be impressed, Chelsea? I’m trying to impress you here! We found another foot. That’s a hundred percent increase in the productivity of that investigation.”

  “OK. Sorry. Any clues about the owner of these feet?”

  Wayne frowned. “No. No idea.”

  “Well let me know when you have an inkling,” I said. “I need to plan a trip down to Brooklyn.”

  41

  Two Left Feet

  “He actually told you something?” Miss May’s eyes bugged out of her head.

  “Yup. I was cunning and wise. And flirty.”

  Teeny smacked the table. “That’s my girl. You used your feminine wiles to your advantage. We should do that more, come to think of it. We all have feminine wiles and we almost never use them.”

  “Yeah. We use our brains instead,” said Miss May.

  “If we were really using our brains we would use our feminine wiles,” said Teeny. “That’s objectively the smart thing to do. Men are more convinced by flirting than by thinking.”

  I shuddered. “Can we please stop saying wiles? It’s giving me the creeps.”

  We were all gathered around the kitchen table at the farmhouse picking crumbs, and sometimes chunks, off of a little flatbread pizza Miss May had whipped up. The dough was thin and delicious. And the mozzarella was fresh from my favorite Italian deli. But both Teeny and Miss May had, perhaps not surprisingly, been more interested in my encounter with Wayne than by their dinner.

  “You did good, Chelsea,” said Miss May. “Maybe this is the beginning of a new chapter for us and the Pine Grove Police Department. Imagine if we can work in tandem with the police more often? Share information?”

  “They can tell us anything they want,” said Teeny. “But I don’t think there’s any need for us to return the favor. Not until they solve a couple murders on their own.”

  “That’s just obstinate,” said Miss May. “But I understand your point.”

  “What do you think we should do now?” Teeny asked. “We have Jasmine’s first name. And we know she lives in Greenpoint. But Greenpoint is big. Are we just going to go there and start driving around with the windows down screaming the name ‘Jasmine’ as loud as we can?”

  I smirked. “This is the moment where I can share my big, fun secret.”

  Teeny braced herself against the table. “Wayne tried to kiss you. You kissed him back. You took a moonlit walk along the Hudson and he told you about all his childhood fears. You confessed that you’ve loved him since the moment you set eyes on him and he said the same back to you. You’re getting married in two years and the ceremony will be somewhere along the water in a nice river town. You want me and Miss May to make the wedding cake and you’re going to name your firstborn daughter after me!”

  “Uhhhhhh,” I said. “What?!”

  “It’s not that much of a stretch,” said Miss May. “Is that what happened?”

  “I’m dating Germany!” I reminded them.

  “But we all know you’ve got eyes for Wayne,” said Miss May.

  “Everybody has eyes for Wayne. He’s a super-hot, smart, hunky, helpful, friendly man. Yeah, sometimes he stubborn or closed-off. But the same could be
said for each one of us.”

  “So now you’re defending him,” said Teeny with a smile.

  “I’m not defending him I’m just pointing out his character traits, good and bad.”

  “I would defend him too if I were in love with him,” said Miss May.

  “Oh my goodness! We didn’t kiss! I stole his police pad!” I pulled a small yellow pad from my purse and slammed it down on the table. “There. Happy?”

  Miss May picked up the police pad, squinted, and flipped a couple pages. “This handwriting is terrible. It looks like somebody put a pencil in his mouth and said, “Write me a sonnet.”

  “OK. Fine. It’s not the most legible handwriting I’ve ever seen. But look at the last page.”

  Miss May followed my instructions. She held the notebook close to her nose and squinted. “I can’t tell what this says.”

  “Let me see,” said Teeny.

  Miss May handed Teeny the book. Teeny held it out at arm’s length and tried to read the words. “I think it says, ‘Hello flagpole. Sit in the garden box. Heavy rains expected, two to four inches.’”

  I snatched the notebook back and pointed at the words as I spoke to them. “It says, ‘Jasmine,’ at the top of the page. That’s the one word I can make out. And whatever’s below it is formatted like an address. So it must be where she lives. If we can figure out how to read Wayne’s handwriting it will take us right to our suspect.”

  “How are we ever going to figure out how to read that handwriting?” asked Teeny.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Miss May. “But it’ll have to wait ‘til morning.”

  42

  Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News

  Dr. Ingles waiting room was old-fashioned and charming. It was also packed with people. A pair of toddlers played with colorful wooden blocks in the corner. A few elderly women sat in a row of chairs against the wall. And Miss May and I sat opposite one another, squeezed in between other waiting patients.

  “How do you know this guy is going to be able to read Wayne’s handwriting?” I asked.

  “You wouldn’t have to ask that if you’d ever seen Ingles’ chicken scratch,” said Miss May.

  “So you think just because the doctor has bad handwriting, he’s going to be able to read Wayne’s handwriting? I don’t know. I don’t think the law of transposition applies to reading illegible scripts.”

  “Oh shove it,” said Teeny. “Don’t you talk big about your laws to us. We get it. You went to a fancy old college, maybe not Ivy League but there was plenty of ivy. They taught you all the laws. But this mission doesn’t require college smarts. It requires street smarts and intuition. I agree with Miss May. Ingles is going to be able to read this writing, no problem.”

  An elderly Asian woman stood up from her chair, crossed the room and sat next to Teeny. She leaned in to speak to us. “Are you three talking about your new investigation?”

  “Hi, Janice,” said Miss May. “No. We’re just here because Ingles wrote a prescription and the pharmacist can’t read it. So we had to come back to get the doctor to translate.”

  “Well I think Tom Gigley killed that cranky chef,” Janice said.

  Gigley hadn’t come up in our investigation as a suspect. And I wondered what made this nice old woman so quick to accuse the erudite town lawyer of murder. “Why do you think that?”

  “I’ve never liked that Gigley. Not one bit. The guy seems like a killer. And I hate his band.”

  Another elderly woman piped up from across the room, her voice thin and creaky. “Gigley did it. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “That’s right,” Janice said.

  “He’s guilty for sure,” said the other woman.

  Janice turned back to us. “Me and all my friends, we hate Gigley together.”

  “Was he your lawyer at one point or something? Why do you hate him? Did he do a bad job? Or did he represent your husbands in a divorce, or…?”

  “Never hired him,” said Janice. “And I’ve never met him. But I hate his face. We all do.”

  The second woman chimed in once more from across the room. “I bet he killed Buck with a kitchen knife. One second, the poor guy was chopping an onion and the next second he was getting chopped!” The woman made a slicing motion around her neck with her finger. Then she let her head dramatically fall to one side and stuck her tongue out in an imitation of a dead person.

  “What she said,” said Janice. Then Janice repeated the throat slitting and head drooping motion, complete with stuck out tongue. I stifled a laugh.

  “We’ll take that into consideration,” said Miss May. “Thank you.”

  Ten minutes later, Teeny, Miss May, and I were crowded into the exam room waiting for Dr. Ingles. The place looked like a classic doctor’s office. There was a chart of the human body on the door, a couple of stiff vinyl chairs, a doctor’s table, and a few framed diplomas on the wall.

  The doctor entered with a big smile. He was tall and skinny and appeared to have been stretched out, like in a kid’s cartoon. His face was long and bony but he had bright eyes and an energetic personality. “Ladies, greetings. Was I offering a three for one deal on physicals that I’m not aware of?”

  “Actually, we’re here because we were hoping you could help us with an investigation,” said Miss May.

  “Would you like me to investigate your health? Not a problem. Hop on the scale and we’ll get going.”

  “No one is getting weighed here,” said Teeny with a stern tone of voice. “I had a big breakfast and my shoes weigh at least three pounds. We’re talking about a murder investigation.”

  Ingles eyebrows jumped halfway up his forehead. “Finally. I was wondering if the three of you would ever call on my expertise! Is there a piece of medical evidence you’d like me to assess?”

  “Not quite,” I said.

  “Chelsea Rae Thomas,” said Ingles, “How are you? You, I know for a fact, are overdue for a physical. It’s been what, one or two years since your fiancé left you and you moved back into your childhood home? I haven’t seen you once in that whole time. We want you in peak physical shape, especially if you’re going to be out there karate kicking bad guys.”

  “I’ll make an appointment with the receptionist on the way out,” I said. “Anyway, we were wondering if you could read the handwriting on this note.” I pulled Wayne’s police pad from my purse, flipped to the correct page and handed it to the doctor.

  Ingles read Wayne’s horrific handwriting as though the note had been typed in twenty-point, bold font on a computer. “Sure. This is a name and address. Jasmine America, 25 Locksley Place, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York.”

  “I knew you were going to be able to read that horrible handwriting,” said Miss May. “What a gift you have!”

  “A lifetime of reading my own horrible handwriting, and that of my colleagues, has trained me well. I suspect I could decode hieroglyphics without any practice, too. Is there anything else you need me to read?”

  “You don’t have a crystal ball, do you?” Teeny asked. “We could use a little psychic assistance.”

  “I’m sad to say, I do not,” said Ingles. “But even without a crystal ball, I know to tell the three of you to be careful out there. I heard another body was found. That means there’s still a dangerous element in Pine Grove. And if the three of you are at all close to apprehending the villain, he or she might try to silence you before you uncover the truth.”

  There was a somber, quiet moment, then Ingles perked up. “OK. I want all three of you in here for a physical, preferably separate appointments, sometime in the next two months. Have a good one.”

  Ingles looked happy as he bounced away but I knew he was right to warn us. The killer might have it out for me, Teeny, or Miss May. And I was long overdue for my physical.

  43

  Picking Up Clues

  We hopped into my pickup truck, jumped on the highway headed south toward New York City.

  “First of all, why do tho
se ladies suspect Tom Gigley of killing Buck?” asked Teeny. “Tom’s idea of a sophisticated meal is Spam with Grey Poupon. I doubt he’s ever even eaten at Land and Sea or been in the same room with Buck Johnson.”

  “I don’t think any of us think Tom did it,” I said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be driving to Greenpoint right now to try to find that Jasmine woman.”

  “Right,” said Miss May, “if we suspected Tom, we would have walked to Tom’s office to question him right now.”

  “Do you mean that?” Teeny said. “Because he’s my friend. I’m not saying I haven’t suspected him before, the guy has a temper, but I don’t think he did this one.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “That was just gossip.”

  “So those ladies hate him for no reason?” Teeny crossed her arms. “It’s not fair. You can’t go around hating people based on nothing.”

  “Those are bold words spoken by a woman who hates a lot of people,” I said.

  “I hate everybody for a reason. I mean, I don’t hate everybody. But all the people I hate deserve to be hated. I don’t just sit around in doctor’s offices accusing the perfectly nice town lawyer of murder! I mean, what in the world? Tom is a friendly grump. A sourpuss with a sweet heart. He’s one of my best customers at the restaurant. Three eggs, four slices of bacon, and a short stack of pancakes. And he always finishes everything except for a few bites of pancake.”

  “Yikes,” I said. “It sounds like Tom is the one who might need to get a physical. He eats that every morning?”

  “Hey. I thought this was a judgment free zone,” said Teeny.

  I kept my hands on ten and two. “You’re right. No judgment. Everything’s fine. I’m sure Tom is… healthy as a horse.”

  “This is a strange case,” said Miss May. “I’m still thinking about Buck and Hannah’s open relationship. We had assumed, if Hannah did it, her motive was jealousy. But if she knew about Buck’s girlfriends and didn’t care that means she doesn’t have a motive anymore.”