Cupid's Corpse: A Cozy Mystery (Gemma Stone Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Willow Monroe

  “I really only have a few questions for you,” the sheriff began. “I think your table was the closest one to the stage. But there’s one really, really important one.”

  “Okay,” Gemma said.

  “Why did you lie about who you were?”

  The question, so abrupt and out of the blue, made Gemma jump. “I...um...we...”

  Sheriff Burton waited patiently for Gemma to collect herself. Gemma couldn’t read anything at all in her steady expression.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m here with Nick Leonard. He’s an investigative reporter for our local newspaper. Somehow he learned about a blackmailing scheme coming from the lodge. He asked me to come up here pretending to be someone else so we could maybe catch them,” Gemma said in such a hurry that she tripped over her words but finally she was able to get it all out.

  “Blackmail?” Sheriff Burton said, sitting up straight.

  “There are cameras in some of the rooms. The video from them was used to blackmail several pretty influential people around here, and who knows who else has been exploited. Nick and his editor thought it would be great if he could come up here posing as a rich playboy with his mistress and blow the story wide open.”

  “And you are pretending to be his wife?”

  “Yes. Well...mistress, actually,” Gemma said.

  “Do you know for a fact that this is going on?” she asked.

  “Right after we got here, I let it slip that I wasn’t really his wife just like I was supposed to. They gave us a different cabin at the last minute. Nick says there are cameras in there,” Gemma answered truthfully.

  “But no one has approached you?”

  “Not me, but...” Gemma hesitated. The sheriff had enough on her plate without worrying about a missing person, and Nick was probably just talking to Harold. Probably.

  “But what? Ms. Stone, this could have something to do with the murder of Mr. Muzak. I think you know better than to try to withhold any information from me.” Sheriff Burton’s voice was firm but calm.

  Gemma sighed and then struggling to keep her voice steady she said, “Nick left early this morning to meet Harold Holland somewhere. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “And Holland called out sick today,” the sheriff said, reaching for her phone.

  Before Gemma could say anything more, the sheriff was already talking to one of her deputies. “Go to Holland’s house. Check to see if there’s a...” She glanced at Gemma.

  “Black Escalade,” Gemma told her.

  “See if there’s a black Escalade parked there. If so, we may have a kidnapping situation on our hands,” she told him and then ended the call.

  “Since you’re an outsider, you probably don’t know much about the dynamics of the relationships here at Cozy Valley. I told you about Missy Tyler this morning...”

  “Did you know that she’s almost as good with a crossbow as Joel?” Gemma asked.

  The sheriff smiled. “I do know that. She’s way better than me.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ve also uncovered a few other things this morning. For example, the owners and Joel kept a second set of books. The accountant was as surprised as we were, or at least he appeared to be. Usually where money like that is concerned, things are going to get dangerous. Someone always gets greedy,” she finished with a shrug.

  “Do you think Joel did it?” Gemma asked.

  “We haven’t made any arrests, not really enough evidence yet, but we’re keeping an eye on them,” Sheriff Burton explained. “Joel is an upstanding businessman in the community. He’s not likely to just take off. Natasha is taking this very hard. She’s been in her room, sedated, since this morning. And its obvious Muzak was the only intended victim.”

  Gemma nodded.

  “We’re just giving them a little while to stew in their own juices. Maybe Joel thinks she did it. Maybe she thinks he did it. Maybe they were both involved or maybe one thinks he’s covering for the other. Either way, one of them will crack.”

  “They didn’t do it,” Gemma repeated.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  Gemma nodded.

  “And how do you know this?” she asked, leaning forward and clasping her hands together on the desk.

  “Well, I don’t know for sure,” Gemma amended, squirming under Burton’s gaze. “I just don’t think they did.”

  “Who then? Missy Tyler? Harold Holland? Maybe someone they blackmailed here without their knowledge?”

  Gemma kept quiet. There was something wrong with the whole scenario and she just couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Tyler actually videotaped the whole thing with her cell phone. I don’t think she would have done that if she was involved. Holland is just a computer guy, he could handle the timer but I’m betting he doesn’t know a thing about crossbows. Any other bright ideas?”

  Gemma shook, her head.

  The sheriff’s phone chimed and she answered it immediately, speaking quietly into the phone. “It is. Can you tell if he’s inside?”

  Gemma listened closely.

  “Okay. If you’re sure. Be careful and call me right back.”

  “I’m guessing you don’t get many murders up here in the mountains,” Gemma said. She made it clear she was not moving until she knew that Nick was safe.

  “I’ve been the sheriff here for five years. We’ve had a few. Up until now they’ve all been domestics,” Sheriff Burton told her. “And this one probably will turn out to be one as well.”

  “Can you tell anything at all from the video Missy made?” Gemma asked.

  “From all of the videos that we’ve seen - and we confiscated all of them - it looks like Natasha was tugging at his arm as if trying to pull him in front of the arrow.”

  “Or pull him out of the way. If she was involved, perhaps she had second thoughts,” Gemma suggested.

  The sheriff shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  Before she could say anything else, her phone chimed and she snatched it up. “You’ve got him. Is the victim okay?” She nodded at Gemma and gave her a thumbs up. She listened a few moments and then said, “Alright, I’m on my way.”

  Gemma stood and faced the sheriff. “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re staying here. We’ve got another crime scene to investigate, this one involving kidnapping and blackmail. I don’t need a civilian in the way.”

  Chapter Nine

  Gemma knew there was no way she was going to change Sheriff Burton’s mind, so she simply stood there and watched her walk out of the office. After a few moments, Gemma followed, again not sure where she was headed. She stood in the lobby, looking through the old journals and the pictures on the table.

  “He was such a romantic,” Joel said.

  Gemma jumped at the sound of his voice and almost dropped the journal she had been leafing through. He had come up on her so quietly she hadn’t heard him. “Oh, you scared me.”

  “Sorry. It seems so empty here, now that almost everyone has left. It wasn’t the way this weekend was supposed to turn out at all,” he said, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “I’m sure Mr. Muzak had the whole weekend planned perfectly, didn’t he?”

  “He usually did. He planned everything down to the last second. If you think I’m a stickler for that, you should have seen him at work. Spreadsheets, logs. Lists on top of lists. Everything.”

  “Did he have an office?” Gemma asked.

  “He had an office out in the old theater. That was one of his favorite places on the property. Said he just loved the romance of the old place,” Joel told her.

  “Joel, I need your help out here.” That was Missy and she didn’t sound happy. In fact, it was almost like she was blaming Joel for whatever was going on.

  “Excuse me,” he said, politely.

  Gemma thought he just looked tired and somewhat defeated. He certainly didn’t look like a man who had just killed his longtime friend.

  She de
cided to go back out to the old theater and, if she could get inside, look around for Muzak’s office. There might be a clue the police overlooked, even though she was sure they’d scoured the place the night before. This time, instead of going outside and around to the theater the way she and Nick had gone that first morning, she saw an exit sign and knew it probably led to the back of the lodge.

  What she didn’t realize was that she would pass directly by the kitchen. The door was open and a slender man in a white apron and chef’s hat was pulling a huge pan of cinnamon rolls out of the oven. He was having trouble maneuvering the large pan and closing the oven door at the same time. Gemma’s natural instinct to help kicked in, and the next thing she knew, she was in the kitchen and taking charge of the heavy oven door so the chef wouldn’t drop those fabulous cinnamon rolls on the floor.

  “Got it?” she asked as the chef slid the heavenly smelling rolls onto a cooling rack on a huge prep island in the center of the kitchen.

  “Oui. Merci, beaucoup,” he said, bowing slightly.

  He was much older than she had first imagined him to be, with a solid white, neatly trimmed mustache and laugh lines framing his pale blue eyes.

  “You, are welcome,” Gemma said, wondering if he could speak English.

  “You like?” he asked, motioning toward the rolls.

  Gemma took one look at the delicately browned rolls with butter, sugar and cinnamon bubbling up out of the center and nodded. The chef motioned for her to sit on one of the stools at the island. Then he grabbed a small plate, placed a steaming roll in the middle and drizzled frosting over the top. Before she took her first bite, he poured coffee for her.

  “Thank you,” Gemma said, taking a small bite of the piping hot, tempting dessert. “Um, this is amazing!”

  The chef bowed again just slightly. “They were Mr. Boris’s favorite,” he said with a sad little smile. “I make them in his honor.”

  “You’ve outdone yourself, Chef,” Gemma assured him. “I’m sure you’re going to miss him.”

  He nodded. “Poor Natasha. Poor Joel. They will miss him most of all.”

  Obviously the older man was oblivious to the rumors about Joel and Natasha, and Gemma saw no reason to sully his memories.

  “So you knew Mr. Muzak well?” Gemma asked.

  He made a motion with his hand. “So, so. I mostly knew what he liked to eat and what he did not.”

  “Cinnamon rolls were his favorite,” Gemma said.

  The Chef nodded, smiling happily.

  “I’m guessing venison or turkey was his next favorite, since he went hunting with Joel,” Gemma said.

  The Chef looked immediately distressed and began waving his hands frantically. “No, no, no,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Gemma said, realizing she had upset the man. “I didn’t mean anything...”

  “Mr. Boris was a, how you say, vegetarian,” he said.

  “He didn’t eat meat at all?” Gemma asked.

  The Chef shook his head. “Would not, could not eat a living thing. Could not harm a living thing either.”

  Gemma popped the last bite of cinnamon roll into her mouth, her thoughts going a mile a minute. “Chef, thank you so much for my reward. I may be back later for another,” she teased.

  “It will be my pleasure,” he said shyly.

  As she dashed out the back door heading for the theater, she wondered why Muzak would go hunting with Joel. Vegetarians didn’t go hunting. Maybe there was some clue in his office.

  The crime scene tape was tattered and torn, fluttering in the cold evening wind like forgotten birds. It would be dark soon and she needed to get back to the cabin before Nick and the sheriff returned. She hurried through the old dusty lobby and took the stairs that led to the closed door at the top. To her right was where the crossbow and timer had been set up, so she shied away from that and moved toward what she hoped had been Mr. Muzak’s office.

  The door was made of wood, black with a white porcelain knob. She turned it, expecting it to be locked, but the door swung open quite easily, revealing a small room with a desk tucked under a long narrow window. An old leather office chair had been pushed out to the middle of the floor. There was a filing cabinet off to one side and a lumpy looking loveseat on the wall opposite the desk. The floor was bare wood.

  “Muzak, what secrets do you have hidden in here?” Gemma whispered, as she closed the door behind her.

  She knew the sheriff’s office had been through every square inch of the place. But what if there was a clue hidden in plain sight? A clue to Mr. Muzak’s murder that didn’t appear to be a clue? Where to start? A large desk calendar filled most of the top of the battered old desk. Valentine’s Day was marked with a red heart drawn in thick magic marker. Lots of notes were scrawled in the blocks before and after the date but they seemed to be just notes to himself about the events at the lodge for that weekend.

  All around the edge Mr. Muzak had drawn hearts with arrows shooting through them. Some were just sketches. Some were in more detail but they were all obviously just doodling while he spoke on the phone or tried to get his thoughts together. Other than that, the top of the desk was empty. And down at the bottom of the calendar it looked like Mr. Muzak had signed his name in that same red marker.

  “What did you expect, Gemma?” Gemma grumbled to herself. “That he would have his killer’s name written down here in code for you to find? You’re not Nancy Drew, you know.”

  Gemma opened the top drawer and was somewhat surprised to find it neat and orderly, filled with general office supplies. The other drawers were just as neat and, for the most part, empty. She would have guessed that he was messy, with his head in the clouds all the time.

  “Joel said you kept ledgers and spreadsheets,” Gemma said to the darkened room. “Where are they?”

  She began combing through the file cabinet systematically, one drawer at a time, one folder at a time. At one point, she thought she heard footsteps on the stairs and tiptoed to the door to listen. She waited, holding her breath for what seemed like forever, but heard nothing else.

  All the file cabinet held were documents, ledgers and spreadsheets just like Joel had described, but they all pertained to the running of the lodge. From what she could tell, he was precise and particular. And they were all signed by Boris Muzak with a beautiful flourish at the end of his name and little hearts tangled in that.

  There was only one other place Gemma could think to look for clues and she had to hurry. It was going to be dark soon.

  Missy loaned her the keys to the lodge’s SUV again, barely listening to the reason Gemma needed to borrow it. The short trip into the village was uneventful, even though Gemma pushed the speed limit to the max. Parking where she had that morning, Gemma rushed down the street just as the bearded owner of Valentine Sports was locking up for the day.

  “I’m surprised to see you again, agent,” he said with an easy smile.

  Gemma fought the urge to explain her true identity and simply said, “Could I have your permission to go out to the hunting shack that you leased to Mr. Muzak?”

  “Why, yes, ma’am,” he said, stepping back into the shop. “I have an extra set of keys right here.”

  Gemma took the keys and listened carefully as he told her how to find the place.

  “You’d better hurry. It’s not far but it’s easy to get lost out there in the dark if you don’t know the area,” he warned.

  “Thank you,” Gemma said, already moving toward her vehicle. “I’ll be careful.”

  As it turned out the hunting shack was less than three miles from town. She was going too fast and almost missed the turnoff, which was nothing more than a rutted trail that wound upward through the woods. She was just thinking that she should have let someone know where she was going when she spotted the shack.

  Sitting in the center of four gigantic trees, the shack was nothing more than a lean-to. Four walls with a snow covered roof made up the entire building. There were no windows
that she could see as she eyed the small, wooden structure. The snow up close around the front had not been disturbed and she doubted anyone had been out here for weeks. She was surprised she’d even need a key to get inside. The wooden door was hung crookedly in the frame, the hinges rusted.

  “Shack is right,” Gemma muttered to herself as she slid the key into the lock with shaking fingers. The door squealed as she pushed it open and she stared into the blackness for a moment before going back to the car and digging around for a tiny flashlight she kept there.

  Inside was not what she expected to see either. It was just one small room, not much more than the size of Mr. Muzak’s office in the old theater. The floor was bare boards, warped and dusty. A single, narrow bed stood along one wall.

  “Must have made for some cozy sleeping arrangements,” Gemma said to the shadows as she paced slowly around the room, aiming the light into every corner.

  Much to her disappointment, she found little else. There were shelves attached to one wall which held a few canned goods, but she found nothing hidden there. Under the bed was nothing but dust. She stood there for a moment methodically going over everything but always coming back to one question: why would Mr. Muzak, a die-hard vegetarian, go hunting with Joel Cunningham? Was he oblivious to what was going on with Natasha? Maybe he loved her so much he couldn’t see what everyone else knew.

  Disappointed, Gemma went back outside and circled the shack. She paused at the far corner and then stooped to look closer. Yes, just barely visible in the deepening twilight there were fresh footprints in the snow. Without another thought Gemma followed them around to the back of the shack and straight to a fire ring.

  “Ah, but this isn’t just any fire ring,” Gemma muttered when she reached it.

  The stones were arranged in the shape of a heart. That had to be the work of Mr. Muzak. No one else would even think of it. But why? Why make a fire ring shaped like a heart way out here in the woods? She sat down on a nearby log to gather her thoughts and was immediately back on her feet again as she let out a squeal that startled some animal hidden in the woods. The log was wet - and now the seat of her jeans were, too.