A Berry Deadly Welcome: A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery (Kylie Berry Mysteries Book 1)

by A. R. Winters

  Wait. We're in the country. I bet she had a pig. Or chickens. I bet she had chickens. Then I thought about chocolate-flavored eggs and tried not to cringe.

  "I'm sure. I have a real weakness for brownies." She reached out her hands with a hopeful look on her face.

  Oh my God, she's going to eat them herself. I thought I might cry. With joy. She wanted to eat my cooking! I was going to mark this day on my calendar. Embroider it on a pillow... okay, hire someone to embroider it on a pillow.

  "Well, if you're sure..." I let her hands connect with the platter.

  "I'll bring the dish back when I start in the morning, if that's okay." Her smile was happy. I had made her happy with burnt brownies. And the polka-dotted platter had “Sarah’s Eatery” scrawled in cursive in the center. I knew that there was no way she’d be able to confuse it with one of her own.

  "Sure, sure!" I waved her off as she disappeared out the door. I craned my neck and leaned, watching her through the windows for as long as I could, eager to see if she would throw the dish's contents away or toss it into the street for the birds to pick at. Instead, she snuck a little nibble of one of the brownies, taste testing, before cracking off a sizeable wedge. She didn't spit it out or anything.

  "Holy cow... she likes my brownies." Suddenly I wasn't sure if hiring her had been a good idea. I mean, if she liked my brownies, what did that say about her flavor palette? The café's food could go from terrible to inhumane.

  I looked around at all the empty seats. Taking a risk on her wasn't really that big of a risk. The café couldn’t fall much further.

  Chapter 9

  You've done it! I knew you would," Dorothy, my ex-aunt-in-law declared after slamming through the café's front door. It wasn't even 8 AM yet. A blurry-eyed Zoey sat at the grill's counter nursing a cup of black coffee. Her thick, straight, glossy, black hair was pulled away from her face in a messy half ponytail. Yet, as always, the petite Asian somehow looked flawless, and she didn't even turn her head to acknowledge Dorothy's overly dramatic entrance.

  I was pretty sure my ex-aunt-in-law was about to break into song. She was on her stage.

  "Good morning, Dorothy. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

  Dorothy's eyes flew wide. She drew her arms up to her chest protectively, hissed, and took a step backward. "And let you poison me too?" Each word was said as if she were spitting.

  I glanced at Zoey, then down at her coffee.

  Zoey looked at me. "It's pretty good this morning." She shrugged and then took another sip. We both turned our attention to Dorothy, but Brad's entrance in his crisp officer's uniform had me looking past Dorothy at him instead.

  Dorothy turned around, saw who had entered, and then literally cackled. I couldn't help it. My eyes darted all around her, expecting a witch’s broom to materialize. "You're finally getting yours for all the misery that you put that poor man through. Take her away! Put her in cuffs!"

  Brad stopped when he had stepped far enough into the café to be even with her. He wore something akin to a regretful grimace on his face. "Ma'am, I'll need to ask you to leave." Those are the words he said to Dorothy—not to me.

  Dorothy sucked in air. Shocked.

  I fought the urge to dance.

  Brad reached a gentle hand out to her elbow, turned her around and escorted her to the door. He opened the door, guided her through, and then closed the door. There, she stood gape-mouthed, staring in, but Brad turned his back on her and walked with a casual ease to the grill's bar where he sat down on a stool next to Zoey.

  "Could I get a cup of coffee, Kylie?"

  "Sure!" I had a steaming cup of coffee sitting in front of him a moment later. Next to it I sat a chilled cream dispenser and a bowl filled with sugar cubes.

  Brad fixed his coffee with some of both, gave it a stir and then took a sip. "Pretty good this morning."

  His compliment had the same effect as putting me on cloud nine. I was sailing.

  "You had any luck getting a chef in here yet?"

  I glanced at the wall clock behind me before turning back around to face Brad. It was coming right up on 8 AM. "I have. Actually thought she'd be in by now."

  "Who'd you hire?" He took another sip.

  "Rachel Summers."

  He put down his cup of coffee. He didn't say anything for a moment—he just blinked a few times. Then, "I didn't know she could cook."

  "She can't, but she said she was willing to work hard at learning." I didn't want to ask how he knew that Rachel couldn't cook. I imagined her butchering an attempt at a cheese omelet to serve up to Brad as a special breakfast for two, and I could feel my little jealousy monster's nails digging into my psyche as she crawled her way up out of my depths.

  "Rachel's dead, Kylie."

  I stretched my neck forward and turned my ear to him a little. I couldn't have possibly heard him right. "Come again?"

  "She was found dead last night. A plate of brownies was found next to her."

  I was going to be sick right where I stood. I was going to dry heave my empty stomach right in front of my only two customers.

  "Bummer," Zoey said before taking another sip of her coffee. Then she turned to Brad. "I feel fine."

  Brad gave her a nod. "You are looking better. Any word?"

  "Nope. The"—she said what sounded like Mandarin curse words—"has disappeared. He's been using his credit card. I've seen him on some hotel surveillance video. His cell phone is still active and he has accepted phone calls, but none from me.”

  The title of the books that I’d seen Zoey reading on an earlier day came back to me. How to Know if He’s a Jerk and How to Move on After Being Ghosted. Zoey had been ghosted. She’d had someone in her life who had severed ties with her without even giving her the chance to say goodbye, just as if one or the other of them had died.

  Suddenly I saw Zoey with fresh eyes, the way she always looked as though she had been crying or might start crying. She was so young, but she’d experienced something truly awful.

  Brad took another sip of his coffee, then asked, “You hacked the hotel cameras and his cell phone records?"

  In a completely deadpan fashion, Zoey looked Brad straight in the eyes and answered, "No. Of course not. Not me. Would never." She said it with all the oomph that I might use when reading off the ingredients of a recipe. Eggs. Flour. Butter.

  Brad nodded. "That's good to hear." He said as if with complete acceptance of her disavowing having done anything at all wrong, but then his gaze returned to me. "Did you give Rachel brownies, Kylie?"

  "Yes." I felt as though my foot were hovering over a bear trap and in the next instance I was going to have to step down into it.

  "Did you make those brownies?"

  Snap. I all but felt my bones crush.

  "Yes." It was the only answer there was to give.

  Brad took another sip of his coffee, then stood up. "I need to shut you down pending the results of an investigation. You'll need to lock the café and put up your closed sign. You're not to serve any more customers until further notice."

  Zoey took another sip of her coffee. Quiet defiance and unilateral support. I loved her in that moment.

  "Am I under investigation for murder?"

  There was a slight hesitation before he answered, but when he did answer, there was no hesitation or apology in his voice. "You are a person of interest at this time."

  The bear trap snapped again, this time breaking my foot clean off.

  Chapter 10

  What happened next felt as invasive as anything I'd ever experienced. I might as well have been at the dentist’s office with my mouth pried open with fifteen different utensils sticking out of it while the doctor rambled on to a bevy of dental students on the importance of dental hygiene.

  I was humiliated.

  I was mortified.

  I was angry.

  Police officers were everywhere, searching through the kitchen and grill. They crouched low, they searched high, and they didn't put anythin
g back where they'd found it. Pots and pans littered the floor. Dishes were stacked on tabletops, and unused tables were turned upside-down as they checked the bottom of the tables and chairs.

  "Why are you doing this?" I asked one officer as he trudged past, but instead of answering me, he barked out a question to the collection of officers.

  "Why is she in here?" His voice bellowed as if he was yelling through a bullhorn. His shoulders could have withstood an impact from a linebacker, and his hair was in the style of a flat-top bur cut. As gruff as he was, I had to resist the urge to brush my palm over the top of his straight-up hair.

  Brad materialized at my side. "I'm keeping an eye on her, Sarge. We don't have a search warrant, but Mrs. Berry gave us permission to search anyway as long as she was allowed to remain present."

  "Ms. Berry," I hissed hurriedly under my breath. Regaining the title of "Ms." had been hard, and I wasn't about to let such an oversight pass without saying something.

  Sarge, as Brad had called him, humphed and then grumbled something I didn't catch before marching on.

  I wondered for the eighteenth time whether or not I'd made a mistake by allowing them to search the café. A million what-ifs were flooding through my brain. What if I combined the wrong two ingredients and they turned into a poison? Could food even do that? What if I used something in them that I wasn't supposed to? What if I accidentally killed more people? The police were performing a civil service. They were protecting the entire town from me!

  "We got something!" a voice from within the walk-in pantry called out. I followed Brad around the long center island as the person who had spoken appeared. He stepped out of the pantry holding an orangeish-yellow box over his head.

  It was the baking powder I’d used when baking the brownies. I'd gone old school by not using self-rising flour--not that I'd known what self-rising flour was before I came here. Instead, I'd used all-purpose flour. Self-rising flour already had baking powder added to it, but I'd had to add baking powder myself to the all-purpose flour. The recipe called for that kind of four, so that's what I'd used. I'd done everything exactly as the recipe had said, as best as I could understand the instructions.

  "Rat poison!" the officer yelled and then slammed the box down on the island counter.

  My knees buckled. The only way I stayed standing was Brad's fast arm around me. He pulled me in tight against him, tight enough that I could smell the freshness of his Old Irish soap and the slight smell of starch from his crisp shirt. His body was hard and warm against me, and I wanted to melt into him. I wanted to give him all my troubles and lean against him, but he was my troubles. He and his band of merry officers were my personal hunters, and they had me in their sights.

  I'd done it. I'd killed that poor, innocent woman. I'd murdered her. The only thing she'd done wrong was answering my ad for a chef. I was about to go away to prison for a very long time.

  "Keep searching," Brad instructed the group and everyone regained their focus.

  I looked at him, dumbfounded. Why keep looking? They had their murder weapon. Why wasn't I in handcuffs already?

  My life would change forever. Once I got to prison, maybe I could "marry" a big butch woman in prison and she could keep me safe. I'd keep the cell nice and tidy. I wouldn't even have to cook for her or worry about children. It could be okay. I could make it work. Did saying you have a headache work with women?

  I heard a door open behind me and to the right.

  "Where does this door go?" I turned around to the sight of an officer standing at the stairwell doorway.

  "That leads to my apartment," I said. How much worse could this day get?

  "Do we have your permission to search your apartment?" Brad asked, releasing me to stand on my own. The absence of his body left me feeling cold.

  My head was nodding, giving them permission to search before I'd given my head permission to nod.

  I led them up the L-shaped flight of stairs and unlocked my door. I then opened the door and stepped aside as a small task force of officers poured in. From there, they scattered. The apartment was almost completely empty, and most of them congregated in the kitchen although some of them headed down the hallway to my bedroom and the bathroom.

  I trailed behind, and I felt Brad following. I glanced in the bathroom where two officers were going through the nearly empty vanity. Then, when I reached my bedroom, I found the mattress I slept on turned on its side and the contents of my open suitcase strewn across the floor.

  I didn't have to look to know that Brad was standing next to me. He was so incredibly handsome, and now he got to see firsthand the way I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, just like a homeless person might. The mattress was bare. I didn't even have sheets. I'd been using a long dress as a makeshift blanket to sleep under and a rolled up shirt as my pillow.

  My cheeks burned with embarrassment when I felt his gaze on me, but I refused to let my eyes fill with tears. I was in the best living situation I'd been in for months, and by God I would hold my head up high. I would not cry.

  Chapter 11

  The cops were leaving and the café looked as though it had been hit by two tornadoes and a hurricane.

  Brad paused beside me, and I took the opportunity to ask what was foremost on my mind. "Why aren't you arresting me?"

  "Did you do it?"

  "No, I mean, I don't know, but I don't think so." I thought back to that box of rat poison and how I'd thought it was the baking powder when that officer had walked out of the pantry with it. I wish I knew which shelf he'd found it on. That would have given me a much better sense of if I had used it.

  "We're aren't arresting you because we don't know what killed Rachel Summers."

  "What?" This was news to my ears.

  "We know that she died and we suspect that she was eating your brownies when she died and we suspect that the cause of death was poisoning. We don't know what type of poison or how it was ingested."

  "So you're saying that you don't have enough evidence to arrest me… yet."

  "That's what I'm saying. We're waiting on the coroner's report."

  A cold chill washed over me. I had until when they got the coroner's report before they carted me off in handcuffs. I glanced at the clock on the wall above the grill, and I swear that I could hear it ticking from where we stood. My time was running out.

  Brad gave me a pat on the shoulder and then followed his fellow officers out the door. When it closed behind him, I was alone.

  I turned in a circle looking all around me. The place really was a disaster. They'd left it in shambles, just the way my life was in shambles. I had no idea how I'd managed to go from a terrible situation in Chicago to an even worse situation here. I had to have a voodoo curse on me or something. No one could be this unlucky.

  I wanted to go to bed. I wanted to hide my head underneath my blanket-dress and pretend that none of this was happening, but it was only three o'clock in the afternoon and I knew that the café would still look like this when I woke back up. Even so, I couldn't handle staying here. I had to get out.

  I decided to go for a walk. But first, I needed to get something to eat. I hadn't eaten anything all day and I was starting to feel light headed. Grabbing a wedge of smoked Gouda cheese from the walk-in cooler, I headed out.

  I was wearing black jeans, white sneakers, and a short-sleeve turquoise top that stopped just above the curve of my hips. Outside the sun was warm but the air had a crispness that was emphasized by the soft blowing wind.

  There was more traffic than I was used to seeing on Main Street, and I knew that it was because of the time of day. Even at three-thirty, people were starting their transition from their day time life to their evening life. People were picking kids up from school, on their way home from work, or running errands.

  As for me, I was simply taking a walk. It felt like there was nothing in the world left for me to do.

  I followed Main Street and passed all of the various businesses. Eventually Ma
in Street curved and the surroundings became more residential. Large, stately houses that looked to be fifty years or more old lined the road with enormous well-kept yards. One house had a wrought-iron fence with pointy spikes on top, and another was made of flat stones that had been lain on top of each other without the use of cement or any other binders.

  It was beautiful and peaceful in this neighborhood, and for a moment I imagined that my life had turned out differently. I imagined that I lived here in one of these beautiful houses with a husband who loved me and with children whose days were filled with laughter and play. We had no financial worries, no legal worries, and we were happy.

  Out of nowhere a kitten bounced out in front of me, hopping up and down like it was on a pogo stick. Its fur was fluffed up and it was spitting and hissing at me.

  I stopped in my tracks, my eyes wide. This apparently hadn't been the response the kitten expected because it quit its hopping, spitting, and hissing and instead rolled onto its back with its talon-like claws stretched and reaching for me.

  I still did nothing and this seemed to bore the kitten even more. It sat up prim and proper, looked at me with eyes that seemed both gold and green at the same time and meowed. It had fluffy white and gray fur.

  "You want that cat, you can have that cat," a woman's disembodied voice said.

  I looked around me. About fifteen feet away, a woman was on her knees planting what I was pretty sure was a rose bush.

  "Won't his owner miss him?" I asked.

  "Don't have none. It showed up a few weeks back and has been roaming the neighborhood. Teases my dogs through the French doors. I'd be glad to see it gone." She spoke rather matter-of-factly. There was no actual malice in her voice, but it was clear the kitten wasn't wanted.

  I broke off a nibble of cheese and gave it a toss toward the kitten. The little guy jumped a foot straight into the air and landed looking like a fur ball, but then inched toward the piece of cheese. It batted it with its paw before going in for a sniff. Finally, it ate it.