Brownie Points for Murder

by Nicole Ellis

  “My mother’s family, the Olsens, were one of the original settlers in Ericksville. They owned quite a bit of land around here, including the land surrounding the lighthouse. I grew up hearing stories of the early days of Ericksville.” She crossed her arms and looked out the window opposite my house, gazing toward the condo project that already marred the pristine view.

  “That monstrosity should never have been approved. It ruins the whole feel of downtown Ericksville, and I’m sure people aren’t happy about it blocking their views. Probably another thing my father is responsible for. Thank goodness my mother donated the museum property to the Historical Society before she died, or we wouldn’t even have that level of preservation. I’m proud of Ericksville, and I want my son and the new generations to know what it was like in the days of the settlers.”

  Since Anna wasn’t close with her father, I wasn’t going to get much information out of her about his enemies, but Desi would be thrilled to hear she had no plans to sell the BeansTalk building. I wanted to leave right away to tell her, but I didn’t want to be rude.

  “I’ve been to the museum. It’s beautiful. Your mother made a wonderful gift to the town,” I said. The Ericksville History Museum was tucked away into a cozy white Craftsman on First Street. The exhibits were well-done and depicted the early life of Ericksville as a fishing and summer tourism destination. The colorful tulips bordering the white picket fence evoked the quintessential small-town feel and never failed to bring a smile to my face. “I’m not a native of Ericksville, but my husband’s family was among the first settlers as well.”

  “Oh, really? I’m sure I know them,” Anna said while sorting papers into piles on the desk. “Who are they?”

  “The Andrews family. They still own the Boathouse Event Center on the water.”

  “Oh, right, I didn’t know you were related to that Andrews family. I worked at the Boathouse awhile ago. Actually, Beth Andrews and I are still in touch. She volunteers at the Historical Society, and we held a fundraising event at the Boathouse last year. She and Lincoln are such good people. We need more businesses like the Boathouse in Ericksville to draw in the tourists without removing the small-town feel that makes it such a wonderful place to live.” Anna stopped shuffling papers. She held up a piece of paper, and her expression clouded over. “Wait, isn’t the BeansTalk Café property at 321 First Street?”

  “I’m not sure, but that sounds about right,” I said. “Why?”

  Anna moved her finger over a legal-looking document. “Because it seems my father had already started the process to sell the building.”

  Desi was going to be heartbroken. “Is it final? It would be horrible for that building to be torn down—it’s right next to the lighthouse. Tourists don’t come here to see condos; they come for the water view.”

  Anna sighed. “I don’t know. I could have done without this. I’ll have to have my boss review the paperwork. It doesn’t look like anything was finalized, so maybe there is room to wiggle out of the contract. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure this sale doesn’t go through.”

  13

  To avoid thinking about Mr. Westen’s murder and Desi’s predicament, I threw myself into cleaning house with more enthusiasm than I usually mustered for the task. I’d already done laundry, swept the front walk, and cleaned some grimy fingerprints off our stainless-steel refrigerator. Tackling the inner contents of the fridge was next.

  When had I last made roasted veggies and chicken? Judging by the furry quality of the food, it had been awhile since I ventured into the back of the shelves. I reached into the refrigerator with my rubber-gloved hand and pulled out the offending container of leftovers. I carefully avoided smelling the contents as I dumped the remains down the garbage disposal. Yuck. If Beth hadn’t volunteered to watch Ella, who knows how much longer it could have festered in there. I was finishing scrubbing out the vegetable drawer when I heard a knock at the door.

  I looked through the peephole and saw unruly hair and an eager face. What was that reporter from the beach doing here?

  “Hi.” I opened the door a crack. Before I could get “No comment” past my lips, words erupted from Niely MacDonald’s mouth like hot water out of Old Faithful.

  “Mrs. Andrews. Hi, remember me from yesterday? Niely MacDonald from the Ericksville Times. I’m so glad I caught you at home. I was hoping to ask you some more questions about the death of Samuel Westen.” She took a breath and glanced at her notebook. “Were you close? How long had you known each other? Did you see anything at the beach that seemed suspicious? Have you spoken with any of the Seattle media outlets yet?”

  “No comment,” I said, before she could start up again. For Desi’s sake, it seemed safest to not talk about what had happened. I attempted to shut the door, but Niely’s foot shot out to block it from latching. The door slammed into her foot with a loud thump.

  “Ow! Wait,” she cried.

  “I’m sorry,” I said automatically and moved the door an inch so she could extract her sneakered foot. “I said no comment.” I admit I didn’t feel guilty about the small amount of pleasure I derived from her grimace of pain. She leaned over and rubbed at her toes through the shoes.

  She stood and asked, “What do you think about the rumors that your sister-in-law was involved?”

  Apparently the “No comment” thing only worked in movies.

  “Look, anyone who thinks Desi could be involved is an idiot. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I opened the door a little wider and stepped out onto the porch. I removed the dish gloves to dry out my pruny hands.

  “What makes the police think it was murder? Or that Desi was involved?” I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting much information out of Tomàs about the case, so I might as well use the reporter while she was in front of me.

  Niely smiled like a cat who’d caught a mouse. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly, huh? Tell that to the pen she threw across the room at the last town council meeting. That thing was lodged so far into the wall, two janitors had to pry it out with a crowbar.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?” Although Desi had a temper, I couldn’t imagine her throwing a public fit. But she had been worked up after Mr. Westen’s visit to the Boathouse’s kitchen, and I knew she’d attended the town council meeting.

  “At last week’s town council meeting, Desi got into a shouting match with Samuel Westen about zoning down on the waterfront and threw a dry erase marker across the room before leaving. It ended up on YouTube. I’m surprised you haven’t seen it.” She tapped at her phone and held it out to me. “See for yourself.”

  I had never seen Desi so mad. She was a whirling dervish of riotous curly hair and swirling tie-dyed skirt as she rushed up the center aisle of the room to address the town council. When Mr. Westen gave her an answer she didn’t like, she threw a dry erase marker at the wall behind him, narrowly missing his head.

  Niely had exaggerated the force of the pen, but she hadn’t been far off the mark with the description of the incident. Mr. Westen’s expression when Desi threw the pen made my eyes widen. Even Mikey or Anthony would be hard-pressed to top that performance. I sobered. As funny as the video was, the display of anger toward Samuel Westen had rocketed Desi straight to the top of the police’s suspect list. I handed the phone back to Niely.

  “She was worse even than that Neanderthal developer guy. Is she always that dramatic?” She lifted the pen to her notebook, ready for any tidbits I could give her. “This is your chance to share Desi’s side of the story. If I can get my piece in today, we’ll be able to scoop the Seattle Times.”

  “I think you need to leave now. I need to pick up my son from school.” I opened the door but paused on the threshold. “Desi would never hurt anyone.”

  “Then how do you explain Samuel Westen being poisoned before he fell or was shoved off that cliff by his house? And a box of Desi’s signature brownies being found at his house? The police seem to think that makes her a pretty good suspec
t.” Niely flashed me another smile and shoved her business card at me before hobbling down the front steps to an aging Buick.

  I shut the door without another word and collapsed into an armchair in our living room. The stiff pillow of the formal brocade-covered chair dug into my back, but I hardly noticed. Mr. Westen had been poisoned. He’d been fine when I’d last seen him, so it must have happened after I brought him the brownies. Crap. I’d brought him the brownies. Did their whole case hinge on a box of baked goods? Now I really regretted being nice to him.

  I had to tell Tomàs I’d delivered the brownies to Mr. Westen. If the police knew I’d brought him the brownies, they would have to take Desi off the suspect list. But where did that leave me? It didn’t matter—the important thing was they would leave her alone.

  14

  Guilt over the brownie fiasco rattled around in my head like rocks in a tumbler. Before leaving to pick up the kids at school, I slugged down two Ibuprofen to quell the pain before the boys’ antics made it worse.

  My plan for preschool pickup was to get in and get out with the least amount of contact possible with Nancy Davenport. Unfortunately, I’d neglected to let the boys in on my plan. I herded Anthony and Mikey to the front door and was almost home free when Mikey remembered something.

  “Mom,” he said, tugging at my hand.

  “What?”

  He pulled me toward the back of the school and stopped in front of the classroom gerbils’ cage.

  “Isn’t he cool?” His face beamed. “His name is Spice and the other one is Sugar.” It seemed to me a gerbil was just a fancy name for a mouse, but the kids seemed to like them. I liked them just fine when they were stuck behind a layer of terrarium glass.

  “Oh, wow. Yep, he’s pretty cool.” I looked around the room and didn’t see Nancy anywhere. I still had a chance. “Well, let’s go.”

  “No, Mom, you need to talk to Miss Nancy. It’s my turn to have Sugar and Spice over the weekend, and she said she has to show you how to take care of them first.”

  He had to be kidding. I was supposed to purposefully have rodents staying overnight in my house? But if I didn’t take them, Mikey would be crushed and the PTA Queen Bees would have more ammunition against me. I looked at the wall calendar. It was only Wednesday, so I had a few days to figure out how to get out of this.

  “Uh…” I said. Mike looked up at me expectantly.

  “Honey, let’s talk about this later.”

  “No, now!” Mikey shouted. The other children stopped chattering to listen. “I want to take them home. You never let me take them home. Everyone else gets to, and it’s my turn now.” His face had turned bright red, and his lips were set in a firm line as he stared up at me.

  I stared back at him. What had gotten into my sweet little boy? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nancy making a beeline for us, her progress slowed by children playing on the floor.

  “Mikey, we’ll talk about this later.”

  Anthony tugged at my hand. “Aunt Jill? I have to go potty.”

  Judging by the wetness that seeped down the front of his pants, it was a little late. I grabbed a pouting Mikey, and together we took Anthony into the bathroom and changed him into his emergency pants.

  By the time we were finished, Nancy had her back turned to us, helping a child at the sink. I ushered the kids through the back door before she realized we were done in the bathroom. It wasn’t until the glass door thudded behind us that I began to breathe normally. Luckily, in all the commotion, Mikey seemed to have forgotten temporarily about his sharp-toothed would-be houseguests.

  I brought the kids to Tomàs and Desi’s house, stopping to buy a couple of pizzas on the way. Desi was the primary cook and grocery shopper in the family, and I would be shocked if there was anything besides condiments left in their fridge. I’d called to let Beth know I’d be late to pick up Ella, and she’d assured me she was happy to spend more time with her granddaughter. I waited until the boys were happily watching a Disney movie in the other room before I told Tomàs about Niely’s visit and the real origin of the brownies.

  “Jill, calm down.” Tomàs leaned his arms on the kitchen table and rested his forehead on his hands. He looked up. “Well, this explains a lot. I didn’t think Desi would have brought him any brownies after that dust-up at the town council meeting, but with the baby and all, I didn’t want to ask.”

  “So she’s clear now?”

  “The team that’s investigating isn’t sharing everything with me, but a buddy of mine said Westen was poisoned by Digal, some sort of heart medicine. They don’t know how he was poisoned though. Samples from the house are still in testing.” He stood and grabbed a light jacket. “This is such a mess. Even with the brownies coming from you, I don’t know if that will get them off Desi as a suspect. I have to admit, she did come at him at the council meeting. But she’d never kill anyone. Can you watch the kids for a bit? I’m going to go down to the station and let them know about the brownies.”

  I nodded, relieved to know this was out of my hands and Desi would appear less guilty to the police than she had before.

  “And this will clear her?” I twisted a paper napkin between my fingers.

  “No.” Tomàs frowned. “That’s the trouble with poison. It could have been planted in his kitchen weeks ago, and he just now consumed whatever it was. Or someone could have spiked his coffee the morning he died. We won’t know anything until the lab reveals how Westen was poisoned. But this will help. At least they won’t have a direct link between Desi and the murder.”

  After he left, I cleared the pizza boxes and the shredded remains of my napkin from the table. I’d hoped Desi wouldn’t be a suspect after the truth was known about the box of brownies, but it didn’t sound like it would clear her. I prayed she wouldn’t find out she was still a suspect. She needed to keep the baby nice and safe for many more weeks. To hedge my bets on prayer, I planned to continue digging into Mr. Westen’s affairs on my own. A man as nasty and disliked as he was had to have skeletons in his closet that would lead the police away from Desi.

  15

  Adam had a client dinner in Chicago on Saturday, and he’d be there for the next week, leaving me to be a single parent for awhile. Beth and Lincoln had volunteered to take our kids and Anthony on Friday night, so when I woke up on Saturday morning, I had the house to myself. After turning on the coffee pot, I plucked the newspaper off the hydrangea bush that still bore a hole from last weekend’s newspaper. On the deck, I kicked back in a patio chair and savored the aroma of life-giving coffee from the mug I clutched in my hands. As I pulled the paper out of its rain resistant plastic bag to start the crossword puzzle, my cell phone vibrated on the glass-topped table.

  “Hello,” I said. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Jill?” Gena’s voice came over the line. “I had to call you from the phone in my hotel room because my phone is dying, and I think I left the charger in the rental car downstairs. It’s always such a pain to get anything out of the car, what with the valet parking and all.” She paused, “Are you ok? When we spoke last, you hung up so abruptly and you didn’t call back. This is the first chance I’ve had to check in with you.”

  “Gena, hi.” With everything that had happened in the last few days, I had completely forgotten to call her back after Goldie discovered Mr. Westen’s body. “Sorry about that. You’ll never believe what happened.” I told her about the murder and the police suspecting my sister-in-law.

  “Yeah, I heard about it on the news. I never thought I’d see sleepy little Ericksville on CNN, much less find out that it is the scene of two murders. But it never occurred to me that you were involved with any of it.”

  “Wait, two murders?”

  “Your neighbor and the guy in that condo fire.”

  I opened the newspaper and saw the headline on the bottom half of the front page. “Man killed in arson fire.”

  “They showed the high-rise condo building on the news. Wait, hold on.” Gena
muffled the phone, and I could hear her instructing someone to put her tray on the table. “Sorry about that, room service just came with my lunch. Where was I? Oh yes, that condo. It’s huge! How the heck did they get approved to build that in Ericksville? It towered over everything else in town. No wonder someone set fire to it. It’s a shame they would allow that monstrosity in such a cute little town.”

  “You know, I thought that at first, but I talked with the owner about it and they have a great vision for it to help revitalize downtown,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee. I could hear Gena doing the same on her end. “So what exciting locale are you in now? You know I like to live vicariously through you. I haven’t been out of the Northwest in over a year.” I purposefully omitted the detail about the marketing job at the condo complex. I wanted to give the job she had referred me to a fair chance, and the condo job wouldn’t be a long-term thing anyways—if it even got started.

  “In Baltimore. This heat is stifling.” She crunched on something away from the phone. “Sorry about eating on the phone, but I’ve got to get to the airport in an hour, and I wanted to eat something first. Did you give any more thought to the job I mentioned before? You’d be so perfect for it.”

  “I’m sorry, I haven’t had much time to think about it. This week has gone by so fast.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve been to three major cities in the last week. I’d give anything to be home right now.”

  I looked around me. It was pretty nice sitting on my deck in the early morning, with my garden blooming below and the waters of Puget Sound shimmering in the distance.

  “So how much travel does this job you mentioned involve?” I felt both excited and queasy at the thought of business travel.

  “Not as much as my job, but I would think at least a week a month.” Dishes clanked against plastic in the background. “Would that work with the kids? Can Adam watch them when you’re gone?”