Lilah hesitated. She really didn’t want to talk about that night again, not with this woman. Even worse than reliving the moments of the murder was the terrible guilt that welled up inside her whenever she thought of the way that she had frozen seconds before Mark had been killed. She didn’t want to admit to this stranger that she had been such a coward.
“Please?” the woman said softly. “I need to know. I need to hear it from someone who isn’t a cop.”
“I saw it,” Lilah said, her voice quiet. She hoped that Gabby would get the message and not ask her anything more.
“Do you have any idea who was in the mummy costume? Please, it’s important to me.” The other woman’s eyes were wide and sincere, and Lilah relented a bit, realizing that this was probably even harder for Gabby, who had known Mark personally.
“I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t know. According to my friend, both of the mummies were last-minute substitutions. Mark was the one that made the arrangements, and I think if anyone else knew, they would have come forward by now. Everything happened so fast that night. It was dark, and I was on the other side of the path, in the orchard. Even if the person hadn’t been wearing a costume, chances are I wouldn’t have been able to identify them.”
“I understand,” Gabby said. Her eyes were brimming with tears again. “Thank you, Lilah. I think I’m going to head home now. I’m sorry for pressing you for answers like that. I don’t know if you’ve ever lost someone close to you, but all I can think about is what I could have done differently.”
Lilah understood. She watched sadly as the woman walked away, considering the emotionally draining conversation that she had just had. Gabby hadn’t come out and said it, but she had the sneaking suspicion that the woman had been more than just Mark’s friend. It would explain her dislike for Mrs. Perry, and how emotional she had been at the thought of the farm manager’s death. That raised a new question. If Mark Perry had been having an affair, did that make his wife a possible suspect in his murder?
Lilah jumped at the sound of a key in the door behind her and forced the thought out of her head. Mrs. Perry was back from lunch, which meant it was time for her to pick up her paycheck, and ask about how to rent a table in the shop’s small market area to sell cookies. Despite everything that Gabby had said, her gut told her that Mrs. Perry was just as she seemed; a sweet farmer’s wife who would never lift a hand against anybody.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
“Here you go. A double bacon burger with two slices of avocado, an egg over easy, and waffle fries on the side. Do you need anything else?” Lilah asked as she set the plate down in front of the burly trucker.
“Not right now. Looks good. Thanks.”
“I’ll be by in a few minutes to see how you’re doing.”
Trying not to think of how delicious that burger looked, she pushed back through the swinging doors to the kitchen and threw herself into a chair, looking hopefully at the clock. Forty-five minutes to go until her shift was over and she could get some lunch and go home. Today would be her first day running the little booth that she was renting from Mrs. Perry, and she couldn’t wait to set it up. Margie had stopped in earlier, and the two of them had spent a long time talking about logistics; how many cookies she should bring, how to store them, and what sort of allergy information she was likely to be asked about. She hadn’t realized that there was much more to selling cookies than just making them and setting them out on a plate, but none of it seemed too difficult to grasp.
It was a slow day at the diner, and time seemed to be inching by at half speed. So few customers meant that she spent most of her time trying to look busy while not making any tips, and trying to stay out of Randall’s way while he fiddled with one of the many ancient appliances in the kitchen that seemed to be constantly breaking. She preferred the busy days, when the tips just came rolling in and time flew by. Anything beat twiddling her thumbs, so she grabbed a mop and decided to tackle the kitchen floor, which saw more than its fair share of spilled food and drinks every day. The area by the deep fryer was especially bad, but Randall was currently shoulders deep in the cupboard beneath the fryer, so she’d have to save that spot for later.
Humming to herself and surreptitiously turning the volume up on the radio that was constantly playing in the kitchen, Lilah began to mop, swishing clean, soapy water across the floor, then scrubbing with the mop for a few moments before wringing it out and repeating the process. It was easy to lose herself in the music, and it wasn’t until she heard the jingle of the diner’s front door open that she remembered her single customer with a start.
Putting down the mop, she pushed through the kitchen doors, relieved to see that the man with the avocado burger seemed to be engrossed in his phone, and still had half a plate of food left and plenty of drink. She turned to the newcomer and was opening her mouth to tell him to sit wherever he wanted when she realized that the man standing by the register was Reid.
“I thought you might be working today,” he said, giving her his crooked smile.
“I work pretty much every day,” she pointed out. “What can I get you? I think the deep fryer’s down. Randall’s been working on it for about twenty minutes now.”
“That’s fine,” Reid said. “I think I’ll just get chicken club. Two of them, actually.”
“Coffee?”
“Just water, please.”
“All right. It’ll be just a minute. Sit wherever you’d like. It’s not exactly busy today.”
A few minutes later, she brought out his club sandwiches and a cup of ice water, pausing on her way to his table to drop off the other customer’s bill. When she got to Reid’s table and delivered his sandwiches, he surprised her by sliding one of them to the other side of the table.
“It’s for you,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s slow in here, and I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“How did you…? Oh.” Lilah sighed. “Margie.”
Reid had grown up in the house next to the older woman — the very house that Lilah lived in now, in fact — and she seemed to think of him as something of a son. She had long suspected that Margie was trying to set them up, and that Reid was an active participant in some of her plots. Her friend must have called Reid after she had seen how slow the diner was that day. Come to think of it, Lilah was pretty sure that she had complained to her about skipping breakfast when she had come in earlier. The older woman could be sneaky, that was certain.
Now she was trapped. She could be rude and go back into the kitchen and mop a stretch of floor that really didn’t need it while her stomach growled, or she could sit down and eat with him and likely get drawn into yet another awkward conversation.
The club sandwich did look pretty good.
“Thanks,” she said grudgingly, taking the seat across from him.
“How’s everything going?”
“The same as always,” he said with a shrug as he salted his sandwich. “Greg Motts — remember him? — turned in his two weeks’ notice the other day. I guess he’s actually going to open that toy shop he always kept talking about.”
“That’s great,” Lilah said, smiling. “I’m glad things are starting to look up for him.” She meant it. Poor Greg had lost both his girlfriend and his mother in the span of a few short weeks a little while ago. With one of the women in his life dead, and the other in prison, things hadn’t exactly been going well for him. It sounded like he was beginning to thrive now that he was on his own and had had some time to adjust to his losses.
“I hope he’s successful. It’s not always easy to start a new business, especially not in a town as small as Vista,” Reid said. “Anyway, how have you been holding up?”
She knew immediately that he was talking about the murder. She bit back a sigh. As predicted, he chose the one subject that she most wanted to forget about. “I don’t like thinking about it,” she said honestly. “I feel terrible, like it was all my fault.”
&
nbsp; “Me, too,” he said, surprising her.
“How would it be your fault?” she asked, puzzled.
“Well, I helped get a lot of those signatures, too,” he said. “If we hadn’t fought so hard to keep the hayride open, then Mark Perry would have gone through with that deal. He wouldn’t have rescinded.”
Lilah blinked, completely lost for a few seconds. When she realized what he was talking about, her eyes went wide. “You think it was that Don guy that killed him?”
“Don’t you?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” she admitted. “I mean, I did think it could have been him fleetingly, but I was too worried about Val right after it happened to give it much thought.” And then she had been too busy wallowing in her own sense of guilt to try to figure out who had killed him, but there was no way that she was going to admit that to Reid.
“Well, I think it makes the most sense. We heard that argument just hours before Perry was killed.”
“That’s true. Have you told anyone about it?”
“I gave a statement to the police,” he said. “It seemed like the right thing to do. From what we heard, Don definitely had a motive to kill the farm manager.”
Lilah nodded, but she wasn’t completely convinced. Did it really make sense to murder someone who owed you money? A dead man wouldn’t be paying back any debts, and from what she had heard, Don really wanted that money back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
* * *
Lilah drank a cold cup of coffee as quickly as she could at her kitchen table while Winnie looked on imploringly. When she was finished, she reached into the owl jar and tossed a treat to the dog, then retreated to the bathroom for a quick shower to wash the fried food smell off of herself before heading over to the Granger farm. She’d accidentally stayed longer than she had to at the diner. She had been so involved in her conversation with Reid about who the killer was that the end of her shift had come and gone without her even noticing.
The last thing that she wanted was to be late setting up her own table. The cookies that she had made over the last few days were in neatly labeled bags in her freezer, and she had a farm style tablecloth that she had borrowed from Val folded up and ready to go on the counter. Margie would be bringing her metal lock box when she came to pick Lilah up, so she would have somewhere to put the cash that she would hopefully be making from her sales, and she had even thought ahead far enough to buy a package of small paper lunch bags so people would have something to carry their cookies home in. She wasn’t necessarily expecting to make a lot of sales this first day, but she had her hopes that she would get a good number of repeat customers over the next few days. Even if she never sold more than a few cookies, at least she would be putting smiles on a few faces. The farm needed something to lift people’s spirits after all that had happened this season.
“Thanks so much for helping me, Margie.”
“After all you’ve done for me, don’t even mention it,” her friend said. The older woman put her hands on her hips and looked at the car. “You’re positive we have everything?”
“Yep, we’ve got it all,” Lilah said. “A tablecloth, the lock box, paper bags, platters, hand sanitizer, and enough cookies to feed an army.”
“Let’s get going, then. I’m eager to get you set up. I think your cookies are going to be quite the hit.”
With the two main attractions still shut down, the farm wasn’t nearly as busy as it normally was on such a nice day. The parking lot wasn’t even half full, and there were only a couple of customers in the line for cider and donuts inside the small farm shop. Mrs. Perry smiled and waved at Lilah as she and Margie walked in. Lilah returned the wave, but her smile was only half-hearted. Ever since meeting Gabby, who she suspected had been having an affair with Mark, she had been unable to shake the nagging thought that Mrs. Perry could be the killer. Her conversation with Reid earlier hadn’t done anything to help that. While he was convinced that Don had done it, she thought that Mark Perry’s wife had a better motive. Nothing was more dangerous than a woman scorned.
Margie stuck around just long enough to help her set up the table, then she had to go to one of the various clubs that she attended in town. Lilah felt self-conscious sitting alone at her little table, filled with doubts about whether she should be doing this. Why had she thought that her cookies were good enough to sell? She hadn’t been baking that long. All she had done was follow some recipes, and try to add a unique flair of her own to the cookies when she could. She hadn’t done anything that the average person with too much free time on their hands and a basic ability to follow directions couldn’t do.
Lilah forced her concerns down as her first potential customer approached. The woman, her two children in tow, peered at the selection of cookies.
“Are they all homemade?” she asked.
“Yes, I made them all myself,” Lilah said.
“The no-bakes look good. Can I have a chocolate one? Kids, you can each pick out a cookie, too.”
Lilah packed up the chocolate no-bake cookie, a regular chocolate chip cookie, and a dyed orange sugar cookie frosted to look like a Jack o’ lantern. She handed over the bag and took the lady’s money, then watched the family walk away, stunned at how easy her first sale had been.
She made another couple of sales in the next hour, but what really made her day was when one of her customers came back a few minutes after buying his first cookie and told her how good they were, then bought three more to take home to his wife and kids. She no longer felt foolish for thinking that she could sell her cookies; instead, she found herself planning out what to try making next. There was a whole world of cookies out there, and the possibilities seemed endless.
Her good mood lasted nearly until closing time, when someone that she recognized walked into the little farm shop. Don, the man who had gotten so angry at Mark for rescinding the sale of the haunted hayride props, ignored her cookie table completely and walked straight up to the register, where Mrs. Perry was seated. The widow sat up straighter as he approached.
“It’s been long enough,” Lilah heard him say. He made no effort to lower his voice. “I gave you some time after your husbands passing, as is proper, but he and I had a deal. He owed me money, and that doesn’t change just because he ain’t around anymore. I need that cash.”
“Like I said before, Mr. Hinkle, I’ll be happy to get you your deposit back just as soon as you show me your receipt,” the older woman said.
“And I told you I lost the receipt. My youngest daughter got a hold of it. You know how kids are.”
“I’m sorry, and I know it must be frustrating, but I can’t just hand over a couple hundred dollars without any proof that that’s the amount that my husband owed you,” she told him.
“What are you tellin’ me? That I’m not going to get that money back?” Don leaned over the register threateningly, but Mrs. Perry kept a straight back and stared him down.
“I’m happy to refund you whatever amount you can prove was owed to you, Mr. Hinkle,” she said with a note of finality in her voice. “That is my final answer.”
Don glared daggers, but he seemed to know that there was nothing he could do. Mrs. Perry had an air of confidence that even her husband had been lacking, and Lilah got the feeling that she would be a hard person to bully.
“I’ll be back,” the man said at last.
“Good, we love return customers.” She smiled sweetly at him. Without another word, he turned around and slammed his way through the door. Mrs. Perry seemed to deflate as she glanced over at Lilah.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “He’s been bothering me on and off for days. I don’t think I’m being unfair, do you?”
“No,” Lilah said. “Well, I mean, I completely understand your point of view. But he did make that deal with Mr. Perry.”
The older woman raised her eyebrows. “How do you know that?”
“I overheard it while I was in the corn maze on my first day,” sh
e admitted.
“Hmm. That might change things,” Mrs. Perry said, looking out through the glass window in the door through which Don Hinkle had just left. “If he’s not trying to pull the wool over my eyes, then maybe I should just give him the money.”
Wishing deeply that she had just stayed out of it, Lilah turned her attention to reorganizing the display on her cookie table. She didn’t particularly like Don, but she wasn’t sure that she completely trusted Mrs. Perry, either. She definitely didn’t want to get in the middle of a money feud between them. Either one could be the killer, and Lilah had never been a fan of fifty-fifty odds.
CHAPTER TWELVE
* * *
“It’s chilly out tonight,” Val said, pulling her witch’s hat down tightly on her head. “It’s that breeze, combined with the humidity from the fog machines. It makes it clammy.”
Killer Halloween Cookies: Book 2 in The Killer Cookie Cozy Mysteries Page 5