A Berry Deadly Welcome_A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery

by A. R. Winters

  “Mind if I try giving the ball a throw?” I asked just as Michelle wrangled it from her dog’s mouth. I tried to look pleased and not as if I wanted to wash my hands in a gallon of sanitizer when she put the saliva-slicked ball in my hand.

  “Be sure to throw it away from traffic. Throw it into this upcoming yard.”

  My nerves instantly eased. Michelle’s voice washed over me like that of a reassuring friend. Taking aim, I threw the ball and watched her dog go bounding after it. “Your dog is beautiful. What’s his name?”

  “Jessie.” She bent down to pet him when he’d returned with the ball and managed to get the toy away from him again. “Who’s my bestest pal? Who’s my boy?” she cooed. He wiggled and whined his answer, soaking up every ounce of her attention and snapped playfully at the scarf that hung down from her neck. She threw the ball. “Go get it!” Jessie sprinted at lightning speed to fetch it.

  “He really is a pretty dog,” I said. I’d never been a dog person. Never been that much of a pet person despite the fact that I’d wanted one for years, but seeing their joy for each other made me envious.

  “I saw you talking with Jerry.” Her lips had gone from smiling to pinched.

  Okay, no segue there. “He feels lucky to have you.”

  Her expression softened. “He’s got some good stuff about him, too.”

  “But Rachel wasn’t one of them?” If daggers could have shot out of her eye sockets, I’d have been dead.

  “Rachel’s in the past.”

  Really in the past, as in six-feet-under in the past. “Were you two friends?”

  Michelle snorted. “No.” She quickly amended. “Not enemies either, just not friends. She came on the walks just like the rest of us. She’d talk with Jerry sometimes, sometimes she’d talk to me. She’d bounce around.”

  I guessed that saying Rachel had “bounced around” was a polite way of saying what it was that she’d done. First she’d had an affair with Adam, then Jerry, then Ned. I’d seen basketballs with less bounce.

  Jessie turned his happy attention to me, and I rubbed his ears. He really was a sweet dog.

  We walked on a bit, letting Jessie be the focus of our attention. Finally, Michelle filled the silence. “Rachel wasn’t all bad. I felt sorry for her, to be honest. She was insecure, always trying to find ways to put other people down.”

  “She’d put you down?”

  “Well, yeah, I’m people,” she laughed, but it lacked mirth. We walked some more in silence before Michelle filled the void again. “I love Jessie so much.” She gave the dog a hearty shoulder pat before throwing the ball for him again. “He means the world to me, so I know that having kids with Jerry is going to be amazing. He’ll be a good dad and a good husband. It’s what we want, and nothing Rachel had to say about it could change that.”

  “But she tried?”

  “Sure she tried. She was always trying. She couldn’t stand it when a man got away.” She chuckled again, and this time there was mirth… malicious mirth. “Jerry stayed with me, and she couldn’t stand that. She’d catch me in a private moment away from the others and say something like ‘once a cheater, always a cheater.’ And maybe she’s right, but that doesn’t take away the candlelit dinner he made for me the other night or the way he knows how to rub my feet when I’ve had a hard day. So he’s not perfect. I’m not perfect.” I watched her closely, wondering if she was saying what I thought she was saying. Had she strayed too? Is that why she’d been so willing to forgive Jerry for his wandering eye and roaming hands? Maybe she’d found some fun on the side, the same as him. “I’m just glad that sister of hers got the extra financial help that they needed.” She got the ball from Jessie and threw it. “No matter what games Rachel was playing at, her sister was always nice to me, and she and her family have been really struggling. Now they’re going to be okay. Rachel might not have been good for much in life, but she’s done good for her sister in, you know…”

  I did know. People had told me over and over and over, and I was starting to get the message.

  Rachel was good and dead, good because she was dead.

  Chapter 27

  The coffee’s been made fresh and Melanie will be right out with the cookies,” I said to the walking group members as they trundled past me into the café while I held the front door open. Their expressions ranged from friendly to mildly annoyed, but I didn’t care. A stream of customers were walking into my café. Non-paying customers, but they were butts in seats, and that was a form of advertisement in and of itself for anyone who happened to walk by. An empty restaurant was a little like a dead animal lying on the side of the road: nobody wanted to get within ten feet of it.

  As soon as the last one past by me, I jogged over to Melanie. She was sitting at the grill’s bar with her economics book out. She quickly put it away, though I didn’t mind that she’d been studying. She was here, ready to help anyone who happened to walk in. That’s all that mattered.

  “Coffee, sugar, cream and a couple of plates of assorted cookies,” I said, sounding slightly out of breath. It wasn’t from the walking. It was from the excitement of having people in the café on a Saturday morning. I felt downright giddy.

  “You got it, boss!”

  I put together a tray of empty coffee cups and saucers, ready to go for when Melanie got ready for them. Then, I headed over to the cozy section and joined the group.

  “Thanks for letting me bring Jessie inside,” Michelle said. Her shoes were invisible with the dog laying directly on top of her feet. His head was down and his eyes were closed, peacefully resting.

  “No problem.” I didn’t know if Jessie being in the café was a problem or not, but I wasn’t about to call up the health inspector to find out. Thankfully I didn’t see Sage in sight. Probably she was sleeping in some corner she’d picked out just for herself, and of course, I wasn’t going to call the health inspector about her, either.

  I took a spot in one of the overstuffed armchairs. Tucking my feet up under me, I settled back into the chair and let myself be lulled by the soft murmur of customers in my café. A smile found its way to my lips as I closed my eyes and let my ears’ focus drift from person to person, picking up little snippets about their lives.

  The retired couple’s kids were going to visit next month, and that meant that they were going to get to see their grandbaby, Suzie.

  Joel was talking with Adam about growing the newspaper’s transition to becoming an online news service for the community. He hadn’t figured out how to monetize it yet, but he had some ideas.

  Jerry was trying to talk to Michelle, and she’d murmur a supportive word here or there, but he was having to do the heavy lifting in the conversation.

  I opened one eye and glanced to the side of me at the sound of a chair being scooted closer. Ned sat down in it. “The place is lookin’ nice. You’ve made some nice changes.”

  I hadn’t made any changes, with the exception of chasing away all of the customers. “I appreciate you saying so.” I decided to go with magnanimity over blatant honesty.

  The door to the café jerked open and Dorothy—the bane of my existence—stormed in. Her hair was wild. Medusa wild. Her eyes were bulbous and made me seriously wonder at her sanity. “Get out!”

  The shrill screech of her voice made me jump in my chair, and to my absolute astonishment Ned got up and stood between me and her, positioning himself like a shield. I had to lean to the side to see around him. No one else moved.

  “Get out!” she screeched again, waving her arms in the same way a person would wade through water. It was as if she thought she could push everyone out of the café through her sheer force of will.

  Still, no one moved and no one said a thing. Without anyone saying a word, Dorothy got the message. Everyone was staying put.

  “Hell and damnation,” she hissed, “that’s what is coming to all of ya for canoodling with a murderess. Hell and damnation! ‘Vengeance will be mine,’ sayeth the Lord, and he will visit te
rrors untold upon all of your houses.”

  Silence followed. It would have been possible to hear a pin drop.

  Dorothy didn’t look well. A Y-shaped vein stood out prominently on her forehead, and her skin was a blotchy reddish purple.

  “Dorothy,” I said, “can Melanie get you a cup of coffee? Would you like to sit down? You could sit up at the grill counter. I wouldn’t even come near, I promise.” If she stroked out and died right in the middle of the café, I’d never be able to move past the reputation of being the place where people came to die.

  Instead of answering, she narrowed her eyes and looked at Ned and then at me. “You always were a slut.”

  My mouth fell open, shocked. I’d only been with one man my entire life while Dan had slept with half the upper east side of Chicago. The nerve of her! I didn’t get a chance to tell her what I thought of her, though, because she turned on her heel and headed back out the same way she’d come.

  Ned sat back down, and nobody said a word. The walking group looked at each other and avoided looking at me.

  Silver-haired wife then turned to silver-haired husband. “I think I’d like a bowl of spaghetti.” Then to me, “I’d love to buy everyone a spaghetti brunch.”

  “Brunch is on us,” the husband exclaimed, slapping the arm of his chair for emphasis.

  My mouth fell open again, and then I smiled as tears filled my eyes.

  I really was going to have to learn the names of that beautiful couple.

  Joel leaned forward. “Let me know when you’re ready for a write-up to go in the paper about the café and what you want it to say. I’ll make it happen.”

  I felt my jaded little heart swell inside my chest.

  The group’s murmurs returned. People were talking. People were enjoying themselves.

  I had a café with customers and a place within the community. I did my best to hide what I was doing as I swiped a tear away from my cheek.

  I was home.

  Chapter 28

  Sunday came with the whisper of a cold, chill wind blowing against my bedroom window. Fall was dying and winter was taking over.

  Groaning, I rolled out of bed and dropped the few inches it took to reach the floor before climbing to my feet with a groan. Outside the sky was a deep gray and did not yet carry any of the warmth of the rising sun.

  I put myself together and headed downstairs with Sage leading the way.

  Brenda wasn’t going to be in today. This was her one day of the week off. I wasn’t expecting Sam in until after 10 AM. I had the place to myself, and I did with it the one thing I knew how to do. Clean. I mopped, I wiped and scrubbed, vacuumed and dusted.

  I found Michelle’s red and yellow striped scarf. It had gotten wedged between the cushions of the chair she had been sitting in.

  The morning ticked on and Sam finally came. I made him and me a breakfast of undercooked, runny oatmeal and burned toast. The jelly was good, though. It was from a jar I’d gotten at the store. Sam didn’t complain.

  I texted Zoey, told her about Michelle and the scarf and said I needed Michelle’s address. She sent it back ten minutes later. I still hadn’t told her about Max and swore I’d tell her one way or another before the end of the day.

  By the time I left, Sam had his books out, the same as Melanie had done, and was studying at one of the tables. I didn’t mind. I loved how enterprising and tenacious they both were. Neither of them had quit me or the café, and with no tips in sight, they both had plenty of reason to quit.

  I gave my Uber driver the address, but we got lost twice on the way there. Finally, the car pulled up in front of a house matching Michelle’s address and I got out. I’d meant for the driver to wait for me, but as soon as I was free of the car, he drove off. Frowning, I gave him a stern scowl and mentally gave him a one-fingered wave.

  Michelle and Jerry’s home was beautiful. It was small but everything about it was neat and tidy. The white house paint looked fresh, the green shutters were immaculate, and the walkway leading up to the front door was lined with some type of low-growing decorative plant with multicolored leaves.

  I tried to open their fence’s front gate but discovered it locked.

  “They’re not home,” a disembodied woman’s voice reached my ear. I looked around me for the source and spotted a forty-something woman with long brown hair and naturally tanned skin across the street and one house down. “They’re at church.”

  Sunday morning. Church.

  I felt like a dope for not having thought of that possibility before I left the café. I didn’t want to have to make a second trip to return Michelle’s scarf, but I definitely wanted the kudos points for having made the effort. I needed every ounce of goodwill that I could garner.

  I went across the street. “I was just returning Michelle’s scarf,” I said, stopping at the edge of the woman’s property as she headed over to meet me there. I held up the scarf as proof.

  “Oh, she leaves that thing everywhere. I’ll take it and give it to her.”

  I handed it over. “Hi, I’m Kylie Berry, the new owner of Sarah’s Eatery.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You don’t look anything like I’d imagined.”

  I stumbled on what to say to that. Ultimately, I didn’t know if it was a compliment or an insult. “Thank you?” It came out sounding like a question, though I hadn’t meant for it to. Wanting to move forward from the awkwardness, I quickly asked. “Have you lived here long?”

  “I’ve lived in Camden Falls all my life. I’m Cindy Roberts.”

  Small town. Fish bowl. I took a shot. “It’s nice to meet you. Did you by any chance know Rachel Summers?”

  Cindy sucked in her breath and then tsked as she blew it out. “That poor girl, dying that way. I heard it was rat poison, same thing that happened to Michelle’s dog a few months ago! And old man Matthews down at the end of the street was rushed off to the hospital two weeks after that. The family never would say what happened to him, but he’d been perfectly fine when I’d seen him the night before. He was old, but he ran marathons. There hadn’t been anything wrong with him.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what gets into some people, but it’s getting so that I don’t feel safe leaving my door unlocked. This used to be such a quiet little place.”

  It wasn’t quiet anymore? I glanced up and down the street. Other than Cindy and me, it was completely deserted. There wasn’t even any traffic.

  “Hopefully things will settle back down.”

  Cindy promised to give Michelle her scarf, and I texted for another Uber, hoping I didn’t get the same driver who had dropped me off. While I walked slowly down the road away from the dead-end direction that Cindy had indicated, I thought about what she’d said. Michelle’s dog had been poisoned, and the vet had said that Rachel had poisoned someone’s dog.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence—it was such a small town. The vet had to have been talking about Michelle and Jerry’s dog Jessie. On the walk he’d looked so good, so healthy. It never would have occurred to me in a million years that he’d gone through something as traumatic as being poisoned only a few months ago.

  Maybe Rachel had been sorer about losing Jerry than Jerry had let on. If Rachel had been pulling femme fatale moves like poisoning his dog, there was no telling what she could have been capable of. Maybe whoever had poisoned her had thought that they were acting in preemptive self-defense.

  Chapter 29

  It was Monday, mid-morning, and Brenda was already gone. There were a few customers in the café, but Melanie was taking café of them. I had no idea what she was serving them to eat.

  “Is it supposed to look like that?” Zoey asked. Zoey was bent over and peering through the window of the oven at the from-scratch cake inside. I’d made it with Zoey standing by to verify that nothing hinky or life-threatening had gone into it. If someone keeled over while eating it, I didn’t want anyone to be able to claim it was because something I’d done wrong. I was too cute to go to prison.

&nbs
p; “What’s wrong with how it looks?” I asked, bending down next to her to peer in.

  “It’s getting all golden around the edges but the center still looks wet and shiny. It’s sunken in, too. What are those brown spots?”

  “Raisins.”

  She looked at me.

  “You saw me put them in.”

  “I was daydreaming.”

  “You’re supposed to be my alibi if something goes wrong.”

  “Nobody’s going to believe me. I’m almost as new in town as you. If you’ve been here less than two generations, you’re a newcomer.”

  We both turned our attention back toward the cake.

  “Is it a rum raisin cake, like the ice cream?”

  “No…”

  “Spice cake?”

  “No.”

  “Did you follow a recipe?”

  Pause.

  She looked at me. “You didn’t follow a recipe?”

  I shrugged. “I followed a bunch of recipes! I picked out what I like and I like raisins.”

  We stood and Zoey crossed her arms over her chest as her eyes scanned the room. Today she wore a vivid, brilliant blue eyeshadow above and below her eyes with a splash of hot pink in the center of her eyelid and the same hot pink as eyeliner on her lower lid. The outer corners were somehow swept up into a cat-eye shape. As for the rest of her, she wore a belted, light gray tunic dress that only reached a small way past her hips with midnight black high heel boots that came halfway up her thighs.

  I was wearing a pair of jeans that were a week overdue to be washed and the t-shirt that I’d been sleeping in for nearly the whole time I’d lived here.

  “I could install cameras to record what you do in here,” Zoey said.

  I looked at her warily.