The worst thing about what had happened last night was Zoey being front and center to see it all. She’d seen Max fall. She’d seen him dead. Her heart had been through so much. “I haven’t really spoken to her much since last night. By the time the police were done talking to me and the crime scene inspectors had finished inside, Zoey had already gone. I texted her but didn’t hear back. Has the investigation found a link between Cam and Max yet?”
“Yeah, Zoey led a couple of squad cars out to that abandoned barn. They picked up the vehicle used to transport Cam’s body from where he’d been killed to where he was dumped in front of the café. DNA comparisons haven’t been completed yet, but they found Max’s fingerprints all over the car, and they found blood in the car. That plus surveillance footage of the car at the murder ties it all together.”
“So Steph didn’t do it?”
“No, but we have her on various murder charges relating to Zoey, Cam, and you. She shot at you and Zoey and hired someone to kill Cam. She’d thought that her hired guy had been the one to do the job, but it looks like Max beat the hired killer to it. She also confessed to killing her mother and cashing her mother’s Social Security checks. She was paying off a beach-front condo in Florida with the extra income.”
“Any chance Max was the hitman?”
“Steph’s not giving anything up about the hitman. She seems scared to talk about who she hired or how she hired them. And since Max is dead and she wouldn’t have any reason to be scared of him, that gives us reason to believe that the hired hitman wasn’t Max.” Brad shook his head. “Any way it went, Cam was a dead man walking. At this rate, it’d be surprised if there weren’t a few others out there who’d been planning his death.”
“And Zoey’s off the hook?”
“Zoey is no longer a suspect,” Brad said, then wagged his spoon at me. “But that don’t mean she’s not guilty of something.”
I blew out an exasperated breath and went back to my list of unending fixes.
The café door opened and the silver-haired Agatha walked through in front of a dapper-looking Jack. His dark skin was a shade off from his expensive brown suit but had a glow all its own.
“You’re still alive,” Jack said in his rich baritone as he took a seat at the bar.
“Had you heard otherwise?”
Jack shrugged. “I’d heard someone had died here. I figured there was a five percent chance it was you and a ninety-five percent chance it was someone else.” He smiled. “I liked the odds.”
The café door opened again and this time it was Joel. He had the same large bouquet of multicolored daisies that he’d had last night. He took a seat next to the others, although his shoulders towered over everyone. “I didn’t get a chance to give these to you last night.”
“Thank you! They’re lovely.” My smile was so big that it hurt my cheeks as I took the flowers, but I was fully aware of Brad’s glower and the way he jabbed his spoon at his bowl of oatmeal. I put the flowers in a pitcher and filled it with water.
“Anybody heard from Zoey?” I asked.
“I went by her place this morning, right before coming here,” Agatha said. All eyes turned to her. “She’s had better days.”
“Does she hate me?” I asked.
“For not letting her ex-fiancé kill you? No, sweetheart. She doesn’t hate you. She hates Max, and she hates herself for having ever thought that he was someone worthy of her love.”
Brad humphed. “Mussolini would be worthy of that girl’s love,” he said under his breath.
“Brad Hugo Calderos,” Agatha rebuked, “that girl is a fine young woman who has stood by Kylie’s side more than anybody else has.”
“Mmm, I’ll give her that,” Brad said grudgingly.
“You’ll give her nothing,” Agatha said. “Standing by Kylie’s side is something that she has done and it has nothing to do with you.”
The café door opened again and in walked a man who I had never seen before. He was a bit taller than me, probably closer to sixty than fifty, and had a scraggly beard that reached down past his neck to the top of his chest. He wore khaki slacks, a light blue button-up shirt with rolled up sleeves, a thick gold-banded watch on his wrist, and heavy work boots. Round glasses sat perched halfway up his nose. He had a clipboard in his hand.
Brad’s expression went from sullen to cocky as soon as the newcomer walked in. He got up off the stool and walked to greet the older man with his hand held out. The two men shook hands. “Good to see you, Art,” Brad said, giving the older man a clap on the back of his shoulder. “Thanks for coming out.”
“Glad to do it,” Art said. “Now who’s this young lady you want me to meet.”
“Right over here.” The two approached the grill’s bar. “This here is Kylie Berry, the new owner-operator of The Berry Home. She’s renamed the place from Sarah’s Eatery but hasn’t changed the sign yet.”
My whole body warmed. Brad had remembered me changing the café’s name, even though I’d been far from being able to make it official yet.
“Hello,” Art said, extending his hand over the bar. “I understand that you had a run-in with the city’s new health inspector.”
I shook his hand. “I, uh, yeah…” I was still at a loss for what was going on.
“My name is Arthur Seymour, and I am the regional health inspector.”
“Regional…” I said, parroting him as I worked to connect the dots that were being laid out for me.
“I’ve come to re-inspect your café.”
“Oh… Oh!” I was finally understanding where this was going.
“My inspection results will supersede the results of the local inspector,”—he referenced his clipboard—“Roberto Bianchi.”
I couldn’t quit smiling. I was sure that my face would crack, and I channeled my happy energy into bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet. Brad wasn’t just going to get a date out of this. He was going to get a home-cooked meal… Scratch that. He was going to get carry out from any restaurant he wanted and served up like it had been home cooked.
THE INSPECTION WENT off without a hitch. When it was done, I had five things that needed to be fixed. They were all minor. I’d be able to fix them in an afternoon with an investment of thirty dollars, and Mr. Seymour told me exactly where I could go to get the materials and how to do it. The follow-up would still be in forty-five days but that was now an easy deadline to meet.
Agatha, Jack, Brad and Joel had long since gone, and as I bid Art farewell, a tired-looking Zoey walked in the door and took up her regular seat at the bar. Without asking what she wanted, I got her a cup of coffee and a piece of the blueberry cobbler that Brenda had made in the wee hours of the early morning before dawn. I added a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream on the side.
I didn’t talk as Zoey ate. I simply stayed near and waited until she was ready.
“I’m sorry about what he did to you,” Zoey said at last. “He almost killed you, and he messed with your business. This is your livelihood. It’s all you have.”
“It’s not all I have.” I put my hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. “As for the rest, you didn’t know. I didn’t know. Not even Steph knew. She’d thought she’d been behind Cam’s death. No one but Max knew who Max was and what he had done.”
“Yeah…”
Silence stretched between us. “I’m glad he did what he did,” I said.
“What?” Zoey said in surprise, and I realized how it must have sounded.
“Oh, no… no. I don’t mean Cam. I meant me. I’m glad he tried to, you know, kill me. It stopped him from being able to weasel his way back into your life. So, it was worth it.”
Zoey smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was a start.
The café’s phone rang, and I answered, “Sarah’s Eatery.” Silence was my only answer. “Hello?” More silence. I pulled the phone away from my ear and was halfway to hanging it up when I heard a voice. It was muffled, but it sounded like my name. “Hello?” I said
again, returning the phone to my ear.
“Kylie?”
My past flashed in front of my eyes. I didn’t like what I saw. The caller couldn’t be who I thought it was. I didn’t even want to say his name out loud, but I had to. “Dan?”
“Kylie! It’s good to hear your voice.” It was Dan. My stomach dropped. “Honey, how are you?”
“I’m good. Why are you calling?” It had better be because he needed to prepay for a surprise dinner for his folks or something like that.
“I’ve been thinking so much about you, about what great a team we made.”
Someone might as well have dragged a needle over a vinyl record. Everything in my head came to a halt at the sheer audacity of his words. When we’d divorced, I’d lost my unpaid position with the company I’d helped him build, had become penniless because of the grossly unfair prenup that I’d signed as a starry-eyed, in love eighteen-year-old, and he’d gone far, far out of his way to ruin any chance I had to get any job anywhere in Chicago.
“Dan, I’m hanging up now.” I lifted the receiver from my ear only to hear him yelling “Wait! Wait!” I put the phone back up to my ear. “What?” I asked.
“Kylie, I want you to come back to work for me,” Dan said without all the saccharine sweetness that had until now filled his voice.
“Dan, I never worked for you. I had worked with you. And with no pay, remember? You’d said that paying me would have been like double dipping into the company’s earnings and that your salary was enough for the both of us.”
“I’ll pay you this time. Thirty thousand a year.” Ten percent of his own salary.
“For sixty hour work weeks? I don’t think so. Goodbye.” I started to pull the phone away from my ear again.
“Eighty thousand!” Dan called out.
I put the phone back to my ear. “No…” I said, and waiting to see if he’d bump the dollar amount up even higher.
“A hundred and fifty,” Dan said, sounding out of breath. “That’s my final offer. As high as I go.”
“Three hundred and eighty,” I countered. I was pretty sure that was more than the amount that Dan was paying himself.
I heard Dan cough and splutter, then to my utter shock and amazement, he said, “Fine!”
I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He’d either figured out that he couldn’t run the business without me or he’d been embezzling from the investors and needed to set me up as the fall guy. Either way, I was smiling.
“That’s a lot of money, Dan. You sure about this?”
“Yes, yes. I’m sure.”
“Hmmm, well, let me go wash some pans and scrub the toilets and I’ll get back to you in, oh, I don’t know, six months.”
“Kylie…” Dan whined.
Zoey had just gotten rid of a killer ex-boyfriend. There was no way that I was going to invite a narcissistic psychopath with a messiah complex back into mine. “I’m going to pass, Dan, but good luck with the company. Goodbye.”
I could hear him calling my name the entire time it took to hang up the phone. But when the phone clicked off, feelings of freedom and independence flooded in.
I turned to Zoey. “You know, life’s not so bad.”
“How so?” she asked, swirling her spoon in her half-drank coffee.
“We’re free. Both of us. You’re free of Max, and I’m free of Dan. Neither one of them has any control over either of us anymore. It’s been a long time coming.” I said.
Zoey pondered this. “It has been a long time since I’ve lived my life for me instead of some memory, something from my past. I haven’t even done any sightseeing. You’re the first real friend I’ve given myself the time make to since I’ve gotten to town.” She smiled and sat a little taller. A weight seemed to be lifting from her. “Maybe life is pretty good… Hey, you want me to mess with your ex-husband, blow up his credit or something?”
I laughed. Zoey was back.
“Let me think about it.”
It was always nice to have options.
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A Berry Murderous Kitten: A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery (Kylie Berry Mysteries Book 2) Page 16