“How was the trip today?” Claire asked, and Scott gave a noncommittal shrug.
“Rough until the storm moved on,” he said. “Then it was amazing. I saw some otters, a couple of seals, and about one million seagulls.” He chuckled. “Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not one of the cleanup crew for the ferries. Those guys have their hands full after the gulls stop by for a visit.”
Claire grinned and said, “I love baking, but I envy you the water often enough. Especially since you sent me that picture of the otters holding hands the other day. I was pretty jealous that day.”
She took a piece of the dark bread that had been placed in a basket on the table and let Scott order their favorite drinks. Claire was too busy spreading the bread with herb butter. She hadn’t eaten since the cookie with Darryl, and her stomach was making its demands known.
Scott joined her with the bread and they each had a glass placed in front of them while he ordered their prawns and steaks. Claire had dragged Scott with her back here time and again because she’d fallen in love with the combination of the steak and the toppings they offered, and Scott certainly didn’t mind a repeat visit.
“Tell me everything,” he repeated. “Who’s the heir?”
“I don’t know yet,” Claire said. “No one is talking. Someone will eventually and then either Lucy or Mrs. Applegate will tell us. But I did learn that any of the women in the family could have found out about the cake. Only Ethan Park is a question mark there but Leah could have known. Mrs. Applegate doesn’t remember him coming into the bakery, but Sandy thought he had.”
“Great,” Scott said. “So, my shift tomorrow is covered, did you get time off?”
“Yeah,” Claire laughed. Mrs. Applegate was the most understanding and giving boss on the planet. She even suggested that Claire help Darryl solve the murder, so they could get back to cheesecakes and mousse.
Scott laughed and then said, “Well…when you get to the chocolate mousse cake, you’ll have to make sure you make an extra.”
Claire promised she would, and they finished eating. When they left the restaurant, the weather had turned so mild that they twined their fingers and walked along the waterfront. The sound of the water and the wind provided a musical backdrop while they wandered. They saw several people they knew, but what paused Claire was seeing Helen Nathans and Leah Park arguing near the water. They were standing just above where the waves were beating against some rocks whispering into each other’s faces.
The upset was clear. Helen Nathans was crying and Leah Park was hissing into her sister-in-law’s ear. Claire would give a lot to know what they were saying. She and Scott had decided to swing over tomorrow with something baked for each member of the family. Claire needed to head back to make those things, but she’d give a lot to know what they were talking about.
They’d found out the contents of the will even if Claire and Scott hadn’t heard how the money was going to be doled out. These two knew what Mrs. Park had done and neither of them seemed very happy. Was it because of the will? Or something else?
“You think they didn’t inherit anything?”
“They could be upset over anything,” Claire said, but she didn’t believe herself. “Gertrude Park was their mom and mother-in-law. It doesn’t have to be the money or the will that’s making them upset.”
Scott squeezed her fingers and then said, “Just because it wouldn’t be the money for you, doesn’t mean it isn’t the money for them.”
Claire rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand and pressed her face into his shoulder and said, “It wouldn’t be the money for you either.”
She could feel him press his lips against the top of her head and then he admitted, “I spent today thinking about Mrs. Park while we were out on the water. I imagine it’s hard for her family. When my grandma passed, I was so grateful we had a good life together. I was grateful for the memories. I was sad, but you know…”
“It’s harder I think,” Claire agreed, “when you have to regret that you didn’t have a relationship and never would.”
Scott tugged Claire after him and they made their way past the mother and daughter. “I think you must feel like something of a jackal when you lose someone and you’re more worried about if you get any money than the fact your parent passed. I mean…if that’s how they feel…”
“They must feel like monsters,” Claire agreed. “I would. Only one of them is a killer, if even that, but that doesn’t mean all of them don’t feel terrible about how they’re feeling about Grandma.”
They crossed the street and walked back up the sidewalk rather than along the waterfront walk. The stores were mostly closed with a restaurant here and there that was open. Music poured from a bar with dancing and Scott tugged her inside pulling her into a dance before they headed back home.
* * * * *
The next morning another storm had rolled in. It was no less beautiful, but the contrasting colors were gone and gray skies covered with thick, dark clouds masked the sun. The trees were as lovely as ever, and the daffodils that were just starting to pop up brightened the world even if the sky was gloomy. Claire didn’t mind the clouds. Not after years of relentless blue skies. She loved the blue skies in Brightwater Bay, but they weren’t accompanied by the staggering heat.
Claire had spent the evening reading up on cyanide poisoning even though she hadn’t learned a whole lot more than she’d found in the diner. She’d also stalked the Facebook pages of the Park family who should really get Michaela to help them with their security. Her page was the only one that prevented Claire from seeing everything.
Claire and Scott went straight to the Dogwood Café for breakfast in the morning. In the back of her car she had four boxes of baked goods. She hoped that her offerings wouldn’t be rejected because of the theory that the bakery had somehow been responsible for the murder of Mrs. Park, but Scott said he’d heard already that no one believed the bakery was responsible for killing Mrs. Park. Claire hoped that extended to the members of the Park family.
Lucy greeted them at the door with a grin and then led them directly to Darryl Portman’s booth. He was eating toast with two eggs over easy and a side of bacon. Claire ordered the same to avoid wasting time on perusing the menu when there was news to be had.
“So…” she said with a wicked grin. “Tell us.”
He winced and then said, “What you haven’t heard yet?”
Claire shook her head and then said, “But we will find out…so you might as well give in.”
He hemmed and hawed, but Scott said, “You know she’s right, Darryl.”
“The money was split between the children. It was just…how it was split.”
Scott and Claire exchanged exasperated glances as Lucy placed the coffee in front of them. Claire added cream and sugar until it was just the right shade of milky-brown before she closed her eyes and breathed in the scent.
With her eyes still closed, she asked, “And how was it split?”
“That’s the extra interesting part. She had a will that was about twenty-two years old that had been changed just after Helen had Michaela. That version took Helen out of the will and left her with nothing. All the money that would have been Helen’s was moved over to Ethan.”
Claire wasn’t surprised to hear what that meant, and she could see by Scott’s face he wasn’t any more surprised but equally disgusted.
“Of all her children who would have needed help…” Scott muttered. He doctored his coffee as he grumbled under his breath about poor single parents and their judgmental family members who should love them enough to accept them. It didn’t take long for Lucy to serve up their food especially given how quiet it was.
“Yeah,” Darryl said, “It was a nasty move on Mrs. Park’s part. But it’s not too surprising. What was surprising was that when Michaela was seven and Helen married again, she was added back to the will. That time the money was seventy percent for Ethan and fifteen percent for each of the girls. There were som
e smaller things for the maid and for a friend or two.”
“Fifteen percent for each girl?” Claire asked.
“The will explained, basically, that apparently Mrs. Park found her daughters less than satisfactory and she listed the reasons. It was a letter that told them why they weren’t good enough. Like Helen having a baby without being married and Mary not going to school for the thing that Mrs. Park wanted Mary to go to school for. I asked her about it and she said her mom wanted her to go to law school, and she wanted to be a teacher. I guess she let her mom pay the tuition and told her that she was going to school for pre-law up until she wrapped up everything but her teaching certificate.”
Claire gasped and then laughed, “What a rebel!”
“Sneaky,” Scott agreed. His grin was as wide as he rubbed his chin.
“It cost her in the end,” Darryl said, “But Mary didn’t seem too surprised at the will. She didn’t seem all that upset either. I wasn’t sure if she was just good at hiding her mourning or if she wasn’t that bothered her mom passed.”
“So, what about the third will?”
“Well, that’s the interesting part…” Darryl drizzled hot sauce over his eggs and then handed the bottle to Scott. “The new will—which wasn’t ever finished—would have split the money evenly between the three children. But it wasn’t put into play yet. There was an appointment on Friday for Mrs. Park to come in and read it and sign it.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound good for Ethan and Leah,” Claire said.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Darryl cut in. “Mrs. Park canceled her appointment on Friday and made a new appoint for Monday. The new appointment would have changed the will again, but the lawyer didn’t know what the new changes would be.”
Claire gasped and leaned back and then said, “Well…Ethan and Leah had reason to be concerned about the change from seventy percent to just a third of the money. But…if we were cutting someone out with the change that she only mentioned…Mary or Helen had a reason to care.”
“Especially,” Darryl said, “That they all assumed the even split was in place. Mary and Helen were upset when they realized they only got fifteen percent of the money because the new, updated will hadn’t been finalized. They’d assumed it was in place.”
“Well…that doesn’t help at all,” Claire sighed. “If Ethan knew it hadn’t been finalized, he had a lot of reason to stop his mother’s plan. If she was removing one of the three entirely or switching things from even to not even again…then any of them might have had a real motive for murder. What a mess….”
“Yup,” Darryl said, popping the ‘p’ loudly. His frustration with the case was pretty evident.”
Claire leaned against Scott’s shoulder and thought about what the next step would be. “Any of them have access to cyanide?”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Darryl said. “It can be found in normal things like rat poison. Unfortunately, there was some at the house where Mrs. Park died. They had mice earlier in the year in the garage, and Mrs. Park had always used the kind of poison that had cyanide in it. Even with the alternatives, she insisted on that brand. Any of them who had access to the house that day could have poisoned the cake. The only ones who have alibis are Mr. Miller and Mr. Nathans. Neither of them left the group. The rest, however, were alone for long enough sometime during the evening or day. The cake was just on the counter while the maid made dinner and got things ready.” He scratched his head, trying to untangle it all. “Mrs. Park sent Michaela into the kitchen for the maid. The maid came out first and Michaela was alone in there for about five minutes. The maid said she’d asked Michaela to watch the gravy while she helped Mrs. Park. Then, Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Leah Park both excused themselves before or during the dinner. It would’ve been enough time for either one of them to poison the cake.”
“What about Ethan?” Scott asked.
“He arrived before everyone else. He’d dropped his sons off at a football game and drove over from that. There was a large period of time where he was supposedly reading on his tablet in the parlor, but no one could confirm that. The maid had been setting the table and Mrs. Park stayed in her bedroom until everyone had arrived.”
Chapter 8
The small house Mary Miller lived in with her family was yellow with white shutters, a pretty blue door, and lots of flowers in neatly-tended beds. The weather was mild enough that the pansies and daffodils were thriving even though it had started to pour buckets of rain. Claire eyed the rain outside the windshield of Scott’s car, then flipped up the hood of her coat, and grabbed the box of cookies. The Miller house had a thick carpet of green grass that was almost effortless in places like Brightwater Bay. A little white picket fence wrapped around the yard and inside of it was a golden retriever with big brown eyes. He called an excited greeting and raced up and down the porch line, just under the cover of the patio roof, tail wagging, as Scott and Claire approached.
“Hello, you beautiful thing,” Claire said to the dog, holding out her fingertips. He barked again and then licked her fingers before they walked up the front steps together.
“He is lovely,” she said to Scott. He took the pink box filled with the chocolate chip cookies she’d made for the Millers while she pressed noses with the dog and scratched his ears. She hoped that the Millers wouldn’t be too bothered by the fact that she was baking for them. She wasn’t lost to the irony that the last thing she’d made for them had killed their matriarch, but she and Scott needed a reason to show up, uninvited, to the home. The time-honored decision to bring food to the grieving was the reason they were using. So, maybe baking for them wasn’t the best choice, but Claire wasn’t going to worry too much about it. She was going to walk up, look for the chance to talk to Mary about her mother and what had happened, and hope that Mary let something slip that put the puzzle together.
Mary was the librarian at the local grade school, and from what Claire had pieced together, she seemed to love it. Claire didn’t blame Mary one bit. Introducing children to books sounded magical. Mary’s social media accounts were full of photos of artwork by her and her daughters. She seemed legitimately happy and of all the Parks, it was Mary that Claire didn’t want to be the killer. The photos she’d seen of Mary’s little girls showed sometimes-dirty faces that proclaimed them as enjoying dirt, soccer, and tiaras. Claire liked them without ever having met them.
When Mary answered the door, she paused for a long moment, eyeing Scott and then Claire warily. Finally, she sighed and said, “You’re the baker, right? The one from the resort?”
Claire nodded and said, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your mother.”
Mary’s mouth firmed for a moment and she eyed the box in Claire’s hands before slowly holding out her hands. Claire ignored the silent request, hoping that she’d be able to maneuver her way inside. Mary’s gaze moved from the box to Claire, then to Scott, and finally she sighed, stepping back. Mary waved them inside with her gaze, her expression showing that she knew what they were up to.
Claire knew that they were intruding on the woman’s grieving, and she did feel bad about it, just not enough to leave. Instead she said, “It was devastating to us at the bakery to hear that the cake may had been doctored. I’m so sorry to hear about your mother.”
Mary’s only reply was a nod, but she had to know that everyone suspected a member of her family. If she wasn’t the killer, she might have her own guess as to who finally snapped. Maybe she even knew. Would she tell the police or give the clue away to Claire and Scott?
“I didn’t know your mother well…” Claire trailed off. She didn’t want to say something like ‘she’ll be missed” or ‘she was a good woman’. Was it better to lie about the dead and pretend that she was a good woman? Or was it better to delicately dance around the truth?
“My mother was a difficult woman to know well,” Mary said, her voice flat and cold. Her gaze was fixated beyond Claire and Scott, her face was totally blank. Claire couldn�
�t guess what Mary was thinking. Was it about her mother? About her mother? About who might have killed her? Nothing at all?
“But I can imagine how hard it is to lose a mother especially when she was taken from you.” Claire kept going because she needed Mary to open up and actually start talking to them. They needed to know what Mary knew.
Mary smiled grimly at the comment about her loss, and glanced between Claire and Scott before she said, “I know about you two and the last two murders. You got involved and helped to solve them.”
Claire stole a quick look at Scott, feeling her face heat with embarrassment, but she didn’t say anything. So, they were going to be totally blunt. Claire and Scott were there to help solve who killed Mrs. Park, and Mary was a suspect. They all knew it, so why dance around the subject?
“I loved my mother,” Mary said carefully, “But I didn’t like her very much. Her death is…difficult.”
Claire nodded as though she understood, even though she didn’t. She couldn’t really imagine what Mary must be feeling. Claire was projecting what she might be feeling, but losing a mother like Gertrude Park? Was there a level of relief? There must be.
Mary leaned forward, pressing her fingers into her eyes. She was sitting across from Scott and Claire on the loveseat, while they sat side-by-side on the couch. “I’m not stupid. You’re not stupid,” Mary said. “So, I know why you’re here. And you know that I know that.”
Scott cleared his throat, but Claire nodded. Better to be straightforward.
Mary continued, “But I’m not against finding Mom’s killer either. Mom…deserves to have her killer found. I’m not saying I can’t empathize with whichever of my family killed her. My children deserve to never wonder which of their relatives murdered their grandma.”
Scott moved forward to the edge of the couch next to Claire, then asked, “Do you know what would have been in the new will? The one she didn’t ever write?”
A Sweet Spoonful of Cyanide Page 5