Sweet Taffy and Murder: Sweet Taffy Cozy Mysteries Book #1

by Dana Moss

  “You’ve got me entertaining the notion that Bill Doucet could have hurt Janet, and I don’t think he would ever do that either. So I’m trying to keep an open mind. I kind of have to at this point.”

  “Ethan has an alibi, doesn’t he?”

  “So does Bill. Oddly enough, he and Bill vouched for each other. Claimed to be at the same meeting.”

  Ethan and Bill had both held Janet in such high esteem. It didn’t seem possible that either of them could be involved. Taffy hadn’t intended to implicate Ethan. If the firewood led back to him, what would she do? As Ethan had once said, she was determined to find out the truth, but what of the cost?

  “So what can you do? Send it to the lab or something? Check to see if the blood’s a match, or if there are fingerprints or whatever?”

  Maria smirked. “It doesn’t quite work like that, but yeah, I can look into the substances. No harm in that.”

  She dug around in her desk and pulled out a large evidence bag.

  “It could be a breakthrough though, right?”

  Maria cleared her throat. “Look Taffy, I appreciate your help, I really do, but a chunk of wood leaves a different impression than a bowling ball. It’s highly unlikely this was the murder weapon.”

  “Oh.” Taffy was disappointed, and a little embarrassed.

  “I know you’ve been trying to help, but support is waning here at the station. Chief Green wants to set aside the case. He’s concerned we haven’t found anyone with a real motive for killing Janet.”

  “Herbert had one.”

  “But his alibi sticks.”

  “We haven’t ruled out Swain or Bill.”

  “Or Ethan for that matter, but what motive would they have?”

  Taffy thought for a moment. “What about that silent partner?”

  Maria leaned back in her chair. “No word yet from the law firm, but by the paperwork, they really functioned at arm’s length, so I have my doubts they’d know anything at all. And any time now, they’ll be finding out the worst of it.”

  Taffy raised an eyebrow, waiting for Maria to continue.

  “The fact is, the candy factory’s on the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to Herbert’s mismanagement. There’s barely enough money to pay out this period’s wages, not even the full two weeks. The accounting firm that’s taken over is cutting checks to pay up to yesterday. Sorry for the bad news. About the factory and the firewood.”

  Taffy looked down at her hands in her lap. Her fingernails were chipped. She’d never gotten around to finishing her polishing the night before. But she didn’t care about any of that anymore. These past ten days she’d felt useful for the first time in her life, as if what she did actually mattered. Even at the candy factory. And she believed that if she found Janet’s murderer, she would help make right something that was wrong. She couldn’t bring her back to life, but finding out the truth about Janet’s death might give her life new meaning. Maybe it would for Taffy, too.

  “I really thought the wood would be… I don’t know… I wanted to make a difference is all.”

  Maria reached for Taffy’s arm, touching it lightly. “You’ve been really helpful. Without your help, we’d never have uncovered Herbert’s embezzling at the factory. You’ve proven that you care about all this, I don’t doubt it. But don’t you think it’s a teeny bit possible that life here in Abandon hasn’t been, I don’t know, exciting enough for you? I mean, you’re used to the pace and drama of NYC, and Abandon doesn’t come close. I don’t mind admitting it.”

  Was Maria implying that Taffy had nothing better to do than stir up a murder investigation for her own entertainment and self-esteem?

  “But two people have died in the span of two weeks.”

  Maria sighed. “Yeah, I know. And accidents happen. And people die. And someday you’re going to have to face that fact.”

  Did Maria think this was all about Taffy’s mother’s death? And Taffy’s inability to grieve? It wasn’t that at all. She pushed down the lump starting to form in her throat. Maria just hadn’t considered everything yet. They had missed something.

  “You’re sure there’s no link to Swain’s death?”

  Maria gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. The chief is reviewing the notes on the investigation while we’re waiting on the medical examiner’s report. I promise I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

  Maria was clearly frustrated.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Taffy assured her. “I know we will.”

  Maria dropped the marble into her desk drawer.

  “You’re a good nut, Taff,” said Maria. “But you might as well go home. No point in going in to work now. I’ll let you know if anything pertinent turns up.”

  Taffy got the hint. She stood up to leave.

  Maria added, “Will I see you at the coffee shop opening later this afternoon?”

  “Sure,” Taffy said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  * * *

  Taffy left the police station. The lump in her throat that had started to form when Maria talked about facing the fact that people die would not go away.

  So she got in her Aveo and drove. She drove and drove until she found herself heading up the bluff road to the candy factory. There was no point in going into work, but it seemed to be habit now. By the time she got up to the bluff, she’d managed to push her feelings aside. All that remained was a feeling of disappointment at realizing she hadn’t lasted two weeks at her first job, but at least she hadn’t gotten fired.

  Across from the factory, several cars were pulling away from the sanctuary, including two police cruisers. Was that protest Maria mentioned over?

  Taffy pulled over next to the Castle Rock Bird Sanctuary sign. Someone had scribbled over the development permit sign: ‘go home desert swindlers’ and ‘birds are people too.’ That one made Taffy smile.

  She noticed Ethan’s truck on the road leading into the sanctuary, and then she saw Ethan, too. He was packing signs and a megaphone into the flatbed of his pickup.

  “Hey,” Taffy called out.

  Ethan smiled when he saw her. “Hey, yerself.”

  She looked around the site. Half the trees had been cleared, but the other half had tape woven around them and ‘save our trees’ and ‘save our birds’ signs tacked to them.

  “Good turnout?”

  “Not bad, but I think it’s a losing battle. The machines are still coming in early next week.”

  “Guess you can’t stem the tide of progress.”

  He gave her ‘a look.’

  “What? Is it really that important?”

  “Do you have any idea what they’re trying to do here?”

  “No, I’ve had my mind on other things.”

  “Right, the investigation.” He kept packing things into his truck. She didn’t understand why he was in such a bad mood.

  “How can you be so keen on saving a forest of trees and so apathetic about getting to the bottom of a friend’s death?”

  Ethan frowned. “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?”

  She stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and thought about what Maria said about keeping her mind open about suspects.

  “Do you remember where you were the night Janet died?”

  Ethan’s lips quirked into a smile. “Are you interrogating me now?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maria already has, you know.”

  “Right. She says you were at some meeting. The same one Bill Doucet was at.”

  “She told you that? I didn’t think she was supposed to share information like that with just anyone.”

  “‘Just anyone’?”

  Ethan shook his head. “It was just a meeting, Taffy. It had to do with the parks.”

  “Then why was Bill there?”

  He paused. “He volunteers sometimes. Always has. Before Janet helped him get trained as a technician he helped maintain paths at the park from time to time
.”

  He looked away as he was speaking, and Taffy was unconvinced that this was the full truth.

  “Was it the same kind of meeting last Saturday night, when you had to miss Ellie’s party?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re suspicious and argumentative and dead set on finding a murderer before you have all the facts.”

  He dropped the protest signs into the truck bed with a bang.

  “Well, I’m glad to know your true feelings, even if you don’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

  Ethan seemed angry, but he spoke calmly. “Taffy, it’s not that.”

  She took a step forward.

  “You know something about the MBC, don’t you? The other day you pretended like you’d never heard of it, but I think you have.”

  “So what? It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “What else are you lying about?”

  “I’ve never lied about anything, Taffy.”

  “What about misconstruing the truth, avoiding certain questions, lying by omission.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t need this.”

  “You’re acting like you have something to hide.”

  He laughed, but it wasn’t very friendly. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He threw the last of his supplies into the back of the truck.

  “It’s ridiculous to want to figure out who killed Janet Harken?”

  He paused by his open door.

  “No, it’s ridiculous to want to pin it on me.”

  Then he got in and slammed the door. He turned the truck around in the muddy clearing of the sanctuary.

  As he drove by her, he didn’t meet her gaze.

  When the rumble of his truck had died away, Taffy looked across the clearing. She saw a pile of stumps and dead branches all prepped for a bonfire. Beyond that, a thick ring of trees, most marked to be cut down. She didn’t walk farther in to the sanctuary, not wanting to get her brown suede boots all muddy, so she headed back toward the road, trying to figure out what had driven her to confront Ethan like that.

  She hadn’t meant to make him mad. She had only wanted to rule out her suspicions, but his reaction had only increased them. She couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone, but he seemed to be hiding something.

  Janet was dead, and now Swain was, too. Maybe their deaths weren’t linked, but what if they were? If Swain had been killed because of knowing something about Janet’s death, then Taffy’s influence in getting the case reopened was partially responsible for Swain’s death. She really had opened a can of worms with her marble theory. She looked up at the sky and the gray clouds scudding by. Silently, she apologized to Randall Swain. And to Janet. And even to Ethan.

  Maybe it was true. Maybe people did die accidentally and there was nothing Taffy could do about it. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to do anything about it. Maybe it was time to let sleeping dogs lie.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The thing about death is that life carries on right around it. That had happened after Taffy’s mom died. It had happened after Janet died. And it was happening again now.

  Of course, everyone had been shocked to hear about Swain’s drowning, and yet they really couldn’t do much but carry on with the daily business of living.

  Including attending a local business’s grand opening.

  The Vallee brothers’ coffee shop ribbon-cutting drew a big crowd.

  Taffy didn’t think Ethan would show up, in part because of their earlier argument but mostly because of his irrational dislike for the Vallee brothers, but when she looked around, from within the midst of the gathering crowd, she saw his navy-blue pickup truck parked across the street. He climbed out of the cab and leaned against the hood of his truck, watching from a distance.

  Taffy gave him a small wave. A peace offering. He hesitated and then gave a small wave back. But he didn’t come any closer. Taffy let it lie. She’d told herself on the drive over that she would try to forget about the case, forget about Ethan, just be in the moment, and enjoy herself for a while.

  After leaving the sanctuary and driving around a bit longer, Taffy had returned home to change into a cute outfit: slim jeans, a cropped blazer, and a small, fedora-style hat. She wasn’t feeling so hurt about the things Maria had said before. She did need to take a break from thinking about the case. She’d let it color everything these days. She could put her attention on other things for a while. Like romance. She had an eye on Mick as potential date material for Maria, and she was going to do what she could to get them to talk to each other today.

  Taffy watched Mayor Gifford slip under the red ribbon to stand next to Austin and Mick, who looked nervous and shy standing next to his brother, who was all smooth confidence and charm. With a broad, bright smile, Austin handed the mayor a large pair of scissors.

  “If you would do the honors, Sir.”

  Mayor Gifford beamed. And then he bellowed, “It is with great pleasure that I preside over the official opening of the Vallee brothers’ new coffee shop, BrewHaha, the first of many small, and large, business ventures these industrious brothers have in store for our sleepy little town.”

  What did Mayor Gifford mean about small and large business ventures? Did they plan to make BrewHaHa a chain? Taffy looked across to Ethan, to see if he’d noticed the mayor’s words.

  Ethan had his arms crossed, and he was frowning.

  The speechifying continued, and then Mick ripped the paper off the inside windows. Everyone leaned forward to peer inside.

  “Before we go in,” Austin said, waving his arms in a welcoming gesture. “We get to choose our first customer, who not only gets first choice of any specialty coffee on our menu, they also get a six month’s supply of free coffee beans.”

  Everybody smiled and clapped. A few people raised their hands, hoping to be chosen. Taffy saw Aubin Terkle’s wedding ring waggling around, and Ellie's pudgy fist punched the air with enthusiasm. Mick pulled something from his pocket and handed it to Austin.

  “We’re going to toss this coffee bean, like a bride’s bouquet, and whoever catches it will be our first customer.”

  As soon as the bean was lobbed in the air it was too tiny to be seen against the bright sky. People looked this way and that, but there was nothing to focus on. Taffy heard a tiny pit-pat near her ear. Ellie pointed. “It’s Taffy! It landed on the brim of her hat!” Taffy felt the rim and found the hard, bead-like bean balanced on the felt rim of her mini fedora.

  The crowd parted so she could make her way to the front doors. Taffy glanced over her shoulder and saw Ethan, still frowning, climb into the cab of his pickup truck and rev up. What a party pooper he was. She wasn’t going to let him spoil her fun.

  When Taffy approached Austin at the front door, she held out the bean like a ticket.

  “It’s okay,” he said with a wink. “You can keep it as a souvenir.”

  He took her elbow and guided her into the shop. “I’m glad it was you,” he whispered in her ear.

  Taffy inhaled a whiff of his expensive cologne. “Me, too.”

  Behind her, Mick called out to the crowd, “Come on in everyone! We have free samples of coffee and cookies!”

  For the rest of the afternoon, half the town hobnobbed together in the new coffee shop. Taffy finally got her skim-milk double latté with vanilla syrup, and it was actually pretty good. She stood at the corner of the counter watching Aubin, who took every chance she could to display her wedding ring while talking to Mayor Gifford. Gravely had given up his policing post on the street corner, leaving it to Maria, and was sipping espresso while trying to hold Ellie's attention, which seemed to be distractedly wandering between himself and Clint, with the occasional glance at Austin, who was doing all he could to keep Taffy interested.

  For a brief moment, Taffy wished Ethan hadn’t left. She also wished she hadn’t said those things to make him mad. But then she put him to the back of her mind
. He didn’t seem to be interested in her more than as a friend, and even as a friend he didn’t want to open up to her and tell her the whole truth, which hurt her feelings. Besides, in this moment, she was standing across a counter from a set of blue eyes solely focused on hers, and that was feeling pretty sweet.

  Austin’s white teeth gleamed as he smiled hopefully and said, “Third time lucky?”

  “What was that?”

  “I just asked you out for dinner again. I was hoping you’d say yes this time.”

  “Um, can you hold that thought? Where can I find the restroom?”

  He pointed.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  Taffy wove through the crowd, wondering what she should do. Was there any harm in saying yes?

  Taffy ran into Ellie in the rustically stylish bathroom. She was applying sparkly lip gloss in the mirror as Taffy emerged from a stall.

  “Nice boots,” Ellie said to Taffy’s reflection in the mirror.

  “You and Allan are looking pretty tight,” Taffy said, as she washed and dried her hands.

  Ellie smiled, slipped her arm through Taffy’s, and they walked out together, reentering the friendly din of the busy coffee shop.

  “Clint’s off the list. I guess technically he didn’t qualify anyway.” They both looked over to see Clint laughing with Rob from jujube packaging.

  “You’re probably better off with Allan anyway.”

  “He’s pretty sweet to me. But what about you! It’s so obvious that Austin is totally boner-crushing on you.”

  “Ellie!”

  “Don’t tell me he’s not undressing you with his eyes.” Taffy glanced his way, and though he was handing out coffees and chitchatting with other people, he had his eye on the back of the shop, and on Taffy.

  “He asked me out for dinner.”

  Ellie raised an eyebrow. “And you said?”

  “Well, there’s Ethan to —”

  “Park Ranger Dude? Come on, Taffy. He’s not even here. And you should at least give Austin a chance. What I wouldn’t give to ride sidecar in that ’vette, if you get my drift.”

  “Ellie, you’re incorrigible!”

  “Well, what? It’s just a date. It’s not ’til death do us part or anything.”