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

by A. R. Winters

She shrugged. “Closed circuit. I wouldn’t spy!”

  “You’d spy.”

  “Yeah, I would.”

  The timer went off and I got the cake out. The center sloshed and the edges were cracked like the Mojave Desert. “It’ll be okay. I’ll just put it back in and turn the temperature up.” I put the cake in the oven and then stood up and stared at it. I had combined a lot of ingredients and then put them in the oven just like anybody else, and I couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t give me what I wanted back.

  “You can’t serve that,” Zoey said. “Please don’t serve that. I like you. I don’t want you to go bankrupt and have to move away.”

  She had a point… I took a deep breath and blew it out. There was something else that we needed to talk about and I’d been avoiding it.

  “Zoey, about Max—”

  “You saw him, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” I studied her face, looking for some sign of what she was feeling, but I couldn’t get a read on her.

  “My face recognition program has been pinging for days.”

  “What are you going to do? Have you spoken to him yet?”

  “I’m going to feed him your brownies,” she said, and I grimaced. “Sorry. Low blow.”

  “It’s okay. I get it.”

  “I’m going to leave it alone for now… but that cake, that cake’s gotta go, as in someplace other than this café and your customer’s bellies. You can’t serve that here.”

  She was right. “Any ideas what I should do with it?”

  “There’s a homeless shelter down past the railroad tracks.”

  “The homeless…” I looked again at the cake. The edges had gone from a golden color to something closer to a good sear on a steak. The homeless had so much to contend with already. I felt really guilty about the idea of giving them this cake. “Are you sure?”

  “They’re a tough and resourceful bunch. They’ll figure out what to do with it.”

  That did make me feel better. “Okay.”

  We let the cake finish cooking so that the center no longer sloshed, and we wrapped it in tin foil. We both put on heavy coats and headed out on foot. The day was overcast and the clouds were having trouble making up their mind as to whether they wanted to snow or rain, so they were opting for something in between with a wet, frozen mist with minuscule snowflakes mixed in.

  I followed Zoey’s lead. We walked a ways, turned left, then a bit later turned right, walked some more, took a shortcut through the empty parking lot of a deserted drive-up restaurant and then hung another right. The cake was like a spongy brick tucked under my arm, and it was getting heavier by the second.

  I glanced behind us for the third time. Each time I looked, no matter where we were in our journey, there was someone with a hoodie with their hands shoved deep in the jacket’s front pockets. “Are we being followed?”

  “I’m pretty sure. We could have been at the homeless shelter ten minutes ago, but I wanted to see if our tag along stayed with us.”

  I glanced behind us again. Whoever it was, was even closer. Their pace was definitely faster than ours now, and we were walking down a stretch of road that was devoid of houses, businesses or traffic. I did my best to picture Max and overlay his image with the person behind us. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a match.

  “What do you think we should do?” I asked. I was pretty sure that I could sprint for it, but Zoey’s high heel boots looked to be at least four inches high. She wasn’t having any trouble walking in them, but I wasn’t sure how she’d do in a sprint.

  “We stop.” And that’s just what we did. We stopped and turned as one.

  The person following us slowed and eventually stopped about eight feet away. Their hood was pulled forward and their face was masked with shadow. Pulling one hand free from their pocket, the person brushed the hood back from their head to reveal wavy blonde hair with dark roots. Michelle smiled brightly. “Hi! What are you two up to?”

  I blew out a breath of relief. “Michelle! What are you doing out here?”

  “Getting a walk in. It helps me to think clearly.”

  I glanced around her. It was odd not seeing her frisky dog by her side. “Where’s Jessie?”

  “At home. Sometimes I like to just go out by myself.”

  I did not hear the ring of truth in her words; it was more like the gong of fibs.

  Zoey stepped forward. “Why are you following us?”

  “What are you talking about?” Michelle laughed, but it was thin and tinny. “I’m just out for a walk, the same as you.”

  “We’re delivering a cake,” I said, hoisting the offending pastry in front of me as proof of my words.

  “You’re the one on Kylie’s fire escape looking in her apartment.”

  My mouth fell open and I saw her anew. The silhouette. The hoodie. It was her…

  “Why were you spying on Kylie?” Zoey demanded to know, and I held back the urge to point out who had the greater stalker tendencies between them.

  “I wasn’t!” Michelle was going from placating to indignant.

  “Why did Rachel poison your dog, because it wasn’t Jerry’s dog she poisoned, was it? It was your dog. Jessie is your dog.”

  Michelle’s expression went from placidly happy to an anguished mashup between rage and triumph. “He’s my dog, and Rachel should have never come near him.”

  “So you killed her… you killed Rachel.” It wasn’t a question. There was no doubt.

  Michelle’s other hand withdrew from her hoodie jacket pocket, with a gun firmly in its grip. “You should have stayed out of my business.”

  “Somebody’s gonna have to catch me up with what’s going on,” Zoey said, not sounding at all distressed about Michelle having a gun.

  “Rachel had an affair with Michelle’s husband, Jerry,” I said, doing my best to at least appear to be as calm as Zoey seemed, although I was pretty sure she wasn’t faking while I was completely faking.

  “What’s that got to do with their dog?”

  “My dog!” Michelle snapped. “Jessie is my dog. He’s always been my dog and he will always be my dog. That… that… that—”

  “Jezebel? Harlot? Skank?” Zoey offered.

  “Maybe we’d best just go with ‘Rachel,’” I said, hoping not to use words to fuel Michelle’s anger and thus get us killed in the crossfire of her rage, but hopes of that weren’t looking good. Michelle was starting to wave the gun around whenever she spoke and she jabbed it forward like a pointing stick any time she wanted to emphasize a word.

  “She tried to poison him! Jessie means the world to me and a good friend of mine was teasing me about it one day when Rachel was around. That’s when it happened. I saw it in her eyes. She decided right then and there that she was going to hurt Jessie. Nooo, it wasn’t enough that she was always trying to put me down, saying that I was fat or ugly or that my thighs were too heavy. She was always insinuating that everything not perfect about me was like a ticking time bomb for Jerry. Sooner or later he’d get tired of taking from the reject list and when he did, when he stopped feeling sorry or obligated, then he’d leave and she’d be right there. Ready and waiting.”

  “So this was about Jerry?” Zoey asked.

  “NO! Aren’t you listening? That… that… that…—”

  Zoey said a string of words that made my ears burn. It started with the letter F and ended with the letter E.

  “Yes! That!” Rachel exclaimed, jabbing the gun forward. “She came over to my house and poisoned my dog! I saw her sneaking off down the street and a few minutes later Jessie started vomiting and couldn’t stop. Jerry’s a grown man capable of making his own mistakes, but to touch my dog…” She shook her head. Her eyes were shining and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  “So you killed her,” I said.

  “I killed her. Didn’t mean to, it’s true. Thought she’d just get so sick she wished she were dead, but she had the good grace to go on and die. Only good thing she ever did.” />
  “So the brownies weren’t yours?” Zoey asked me.

  “I told you they weren’t mine!” I hissed back.

  “Yeah, but you were wanted for murder. If I was wanted for murder, I’d say the brownies weren’t mine, too.”

  “The brownies were mine!” Michelle screeched. “They were mine, okay. Have you seen her bake?”

  I shifted the cake in front of me, feeling suddenly way more awkward. “I’m not that bad.”

  “You’re pretty bad,” Zoey said.

  “You’re bad,” Michelle agreed.

  “Okay, I’m bad,” I said, rolling my eyes in annoyance.

  “You really should take classes or something. I mean, how does someone even get that bad?” Michelle said.

  “The brownies were from a mix!” I said in my own defense. “I followed the directions!”

  “Yeah, and did those directions say to cook them until they were ready to be used as a brick to build a house? She would have broken her teeth on those things! I’d been baking goodies for Rachel for months, working up to the day that I’d poison her so that she wouldn’t think me bringing her baked goods was weird. I wanted to make sure she’d eat them instead of throwing them away. When I went to her house that day and let myself into her backyard through the side gate, I was going to leave the brownies and then be on my way. She was always sunning herself back there, so I knew she’d get them. I never left them at her front door, and I didn’t want to risk Nancy or her kids getting hold of the brownies and getting poisoned themselves. So, I went back there but she already had your brownies all laid out on a plate from the café.”

  “You swapped the brownies out, yours for mine?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said as she waved the gun around. “I didn’t have anything against you, but you made it too easy—until you went and started snooping. Nobody would have done anything to you for accidentally killing her. Why couldn’t you leave it alone?”

  “You framed me for murder!”

  “No, I framed you for being a terrible cook, which you are!”

  “I can’t take any more of this,” I said to Zoey. That’s when Zoey grabbed the cake out of my hands and flung it straight at Michelle’s head like a high-speed frisbee. Michelle, screamed, shot at the cake and ducked all at the same time. I went into sprint mode and tackled Michelle in a flying leap. The gun went skittering across the asphalt, out of reach.

  The cake had broken open next to Michelle’s head. “I am not a terrible cook!” I screamed as I scooped out a wad of the cake’s undercooked center and shoved it in Michelle’s face. “I do not kill people with my food!” I was holding my cake filled hand over her nose and mouth, making it impossible for Michelle to breathe. “I am not a danger to the community! I’m nice!” Michelle’s hands were scrambling and her body was bucking.

  In a rare moment of sanity, Zoey stepped in and pulled me off of her. “Let’s try to make it so that the cops of someone other than you to arrest when they show up.”

  “Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah.” My entire body was shaking. “Sounds good. Thanks, Zoey.”

  Zoey called the cops. I sat and stared at Michelle with both my hands filled with cake, ready to pounce on her if she made a move.

  “You’re nuts,” Michelle said. Fear filled her eyes.

  “I’m a divorcee who until recently was penniless and one day away from living on the streets. I’m doing just fine.”

  And I was.

  Chapter 30

  I was in bed with Sage lying on top of me. She had her eyes half-lidded and rolled back in her head in utter bliss as I rubbed the side of her face. Suddenly, her eyes popped open and she lifted her head before using me as a springboard off of which to leap halfway to the open bedroom door. The soft glow of a light being turned on somewhere else in my apartment appeared a moment later.

  Unless Sage had become profoundly adept at fending for herself or there was someone else in the apartment with me.

  Getting up, I wrapped my blanket-dress around my waist, got one of my high heel shoes to use as a weapon and tiptoed to my door to peek out. Brad was standing near the front door, facing the kitchen, and there were a couple of bags at his feet. He was unbuttoning and rolling up the sleeves of his officer’s uniform. I could have stood there watching him all night. He was poetry in motion.

  “Get yourself out here,” Brad called without even looking my way. He then disappeared out of view and into the kitchen.

  Sighing heavily, I drooped my head and considered my options. I could get completely dressed, fuss my hair, sneak across the hall to the bathroom and brush my teeth and put a light dusting of makeup on before going out to talk to the man who had just broken into my apartment in the middle of the night, or I could go as is and he would simply have to deal with the reality that was me.

  I opted for reality. I didn’t dress. I did nothing to smooth my bed hair, and I kept my high heel weapon in my hand.

  I padded down the hallway in my bare feet until Brad came into view. He was in the kitchen washing his hands.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Eggs,” he said. “They’re one of the easiest foods to cook and one of the hardest ones to master.” He turned off the water, dried his hands on a paper towel, and then lifted a bag onto the counter. Out of it he took out three one-dozen cartons of eggs. “Do you have a frying pan?”

  “No.”

  He reached down and picked up a second bag, out of it he took out some butter, a couple of frying pans and a couple of spatulas. “You do now.”

  “Brad, what are you doing here?”

  “You shouldn’t have done that today.”

  “Done what?”

  “Put yourself in danger.” He locked my eyes with his, and they were filled with incrimination. “Some of us would care if something happened to you.”

  My heart tripped over itself.

  “So, you’ve got over easy eggs, over medium, over hard, sunny side up, poached, hard boiled, soft boiled, soft scrambled, hard scrambled, omelets, frittatas, baked, and scotch eggs.”

  He was giving me a cooking lesson. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You know why I’m doing this,” he said, but he’d dropped his gaze to focus on the items he’d brought, and I believed that he was purposefully not looking at me.

  “No, I don’t.”

  He lifted his brilliantly blue gaze to meet mine, and this time my heart forgot to beat. “I want you to stay, but to stay, you’ve got to get better at stuff like this.” He waved at all the raw eggs.

  Brad Calderos cared about me. He cared what happened to me and he cared about where and how I lived my life. I was smiling from ear to ear. I wasn’t even going to ask for my key back this time.

  “How do you like your eggs?” I asked.

  “Oh, that’s easy. Poached. But that’s a pretty advanced technique. We should save it for another night.”

  Butterflies took flight within me and tickled all my senses, but then I remembered the whole being under suspicion for murder. “Less than twelve hours ago you thought that I’d killed Rachel.”

  “You didn’t kill Rachel.”

  “You know that now.” I joined him in the kitchen and took up a spot beside him.

  “I knew that before. I knew it always.”

  “How?”

  “You can’t cook. No one would have eaten your brownies.” In a sly move that happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to think about it, he kissed me on the forehead and then turned his attention to the stove.

  “I can cook!” It was such a lie. I didn’t know why I was saying it. It was so harsh to hear everyone around me tell me over and over again that I couldn’t cook.

  “You are the worst cook I have ever met in my life. Ever. Men and women included. Men who have never stepped in a kitchen before. You’re the worst.” He clicked one of the burner flames to life, turned the setting to low and put one of the frying pans on top of it before cutting a dab of butter and dropping it in. �
��I have never seen anyone with so little natural talent for it. You should work to master a few small dishes and hire a chef for everything else.”

  “I’m not that bad!”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not, and I’ll prove it.”

  He stopped mid-egg crack, holding the shell encased egg over the sizzling pan. “How?”

  “By doing all the cooking myself. All of it. No chef.”

  “Not even Brenda?”

  I faltered. “Well, I gotta have some time out of the kitchen sooner or later.”

  He smirked and my palms itched for cake to rub in his face.

  “Move over.” I pushed him out of the way and took over the frying pan. The butter was bubbling and I didn’t know what to do next. “What do I do?”

  His large, solid form moved behind me, and my cheeks pinked for reasons having nothing to do with the stove’s heat. I definitely hadn’t thought things through. “First, you break an egg.” He demonstrated by cracking and opening the egg with one hand. “Your turn.” He put an egg in my hand. I hit it against the side of the pan and the egg’s shell shattered, sending white and yellow goo everywhere.

  Brad chuckled in my ear, giving me goosebumps all over. “Like I said, worst cook ever.”

  “Today,” I agreed, “but, you know, maybe not next week.”

  “You’re right. Maybe…”

  Chapter 31

  The next morning, Joel, Agatha, Zoey, Jack, and Brad lined the stools of my bar’s grill as I served up each one of them an omelet loaded with their choice of toppings. Joel’s omelet was stuffed with sharp cheddar cheese and diced tomatoes. Agatha’s omelet was filled with crumbled bacon and feta cheese. Zoey’s was zucchini, feta, mushrooms and bacon. And Brad’s was stuffed with mushrooms, Colby, diced sweet onion, and bacon.

  Everyone was digging in and everyone had smiles on their faces, including me.

  “This is amazing,” Joel said. “When did you learn how to do this?”

  I eyed Brad and blushed but kept his nocturnal cooking lesson to myself. “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Have you decided what I want to say about the café in a write-up?”