by Tonya Kappes
“Spencer came by here and got a cup of coffee after they all left from over there. Of course I asked him who killed Otis, but he didn’t give me no answer.” Her nose curled. “Since Emily is here, do you care if I go on home? This cold weather gets so deep in my bones and gives me a little creak here and there.”
“Sure.” I nodded, even if Emily wasn’t here, I’d have been happy to be here by myself. “Since tomorrow is Sunday and we aren’t open, why don’t you start coming in around ten or eleven instead of so early?”
“You trying to get rid of me?” She gave me the wonky eye.
“Heck no. I just want you to be happy and healthy.” I hugged her and she squeezed me back.
“We’ll see how I feel in the mornings.” She pulled back.
“Sounds good to me. Do you need a ride home?” I asked.
“Listen here, honey, I’m old but I can still drive.” She wasn’t going to let me get away with treating her as her age.
“Bunny Bowowski, I hope I’m just like you when I’m your age.” I gave her one last hug before I sent her on her way.
Later that afternoon while Emily insisted I leave for the day and let her lock up, though I believe she really wanted me to hurry up and talk to her father because she couldn’t stop talking about opening The Bee’s Knees Bakery, which just so happened to be an adorable name and the perfect addition to Honey Springs.
Using Emily as an excuse was a perfect reason to go see Evan Rich. It’d get me in the door to question him about Otis and Odd Ink, but not without a bag of Santa Kisses and a cup of Christmas Harvest blend.
“Roxy,” Evan Rich stood in his office, his voice echoed off the concrete floor of Honey Springs National Bank. “Come on in.”
He waved me in his office.
“I didn’t forget y’all.” On my way to his office I handed the girls behind the teller line their very own bag of treats.
There was a big Christmas tree in the middle of the open bank and a black grand piano next to it. The pianist played light Christmas carols that drifted throughout the bank.
“Please give your pianist a cookie.” I nodded and headed over to Evan’s office that was constructed of glass.
“Don’t tell me that Emily is already driving you crazy?” he asked and rubbed his bald head.
“No. The opposite.” I handed him the coffee.
“Thank you, Roxy.” Before he took a sip, he stopped and said, “I get a funny feeling that this is some sort of buttering me up coffee visit.”
“You’ve gotten to know me well,” I joked. “As a matter of fact I’m here to ask you about Otis Peavler. I’m assuming since you’re the only bank in Honey Springs, that he did all his banking here.”
“He did.” He nodded. “And I heard you might be doing some snooping around.”
“I guess my reputation precedes me.” I laughed and sat down on the edge of the chair in front of his desk. “Is there anything you can tell me that might help me figure out just why someone would want to kill him?”
He sat down in his chair and eased back. He stared at me for a minute. His eyes glazed over top my shoulders before he looked at me again.
“Every month Otis came in here and got out five-thousand dollars in cash. I’m not happy that I started to nose around a bit when I took over my position because I was curious. His house was paid off. His business was paid off. He did rent from Cane Construction, but he’s always had a thriving business. He had no credit cards and from what I knew of him in the community, he lived a pretty simple life.” He leaned up to his desk and started tapping on the keyboard of his computer. “He’s been doing it for years. So unless he’s hoarding five thousand a month, I have no idea what that money was for.”
He clicked a few more times before the printer went off from the credenza behind him. He plucked the papers from the top of the printer and rolled his wheeled desk chair back to face me. He put the papers on his desk and reached for the ink pen in the marble pen holder that proudly had his name etched on the front.
“Here.” He circled something on the paper. I leaned forward. “Here, here, and here are just four months. Just this month, it changed to six thousand.”
“Five thousand dollars. Six thousand?” I repeated to myself all four times he’d circled from the bank statement Otis had printed off. “Is that the grocery?” I pointed out the weekly charges.
“Yes. If you stare at this long enough and analyze it, you’ll notice his routine doesn’t change much.” He flipped the page. “Let’s start at the beginning of this month. The first day of the month the bank is open, he comes in to get the cash. Every Sunday he uses his debit card at the grocery where he spends about the same about every week. This is the month I started to notice he’d been using Uber and when I asked him about it, he said that he liked being chauffeured around. But the price of it?”
“Wow,” my jaw dropped at the amount Otis had been paying Ricky all that money. “Jerk,” I muttered when I suddenly felt that Ricky had taken advantage of Otis.
“Were there any other strange charges?” I asked.
“It looks like he’d been to the doctor a few times up in Lexington. A neurologist. I asked him if he’d been feeling okay and he said he was healthy as a hog.” Evan shrugged. “When I’d heard he’d been murdered, I figured it was a robbery gone bad or something.” He took the papers and ran them through the paper shredder sitting next to the printer. He turned back to his desk, clasped his hands and placed them on top of the desk. “I’m not saying people with tattoos are bad people, or people who want to get tattoos are bad people, I’m only speaking from experience when I got my tattoo. Sometimes the tattoo artist doesn’t do a good job. Otis Peavler was old and probably getting a little shaky or something. The neurologist might’ve said he’d gotten that shaky disease.”
“Parkinson’s?” I wondered if what Evan was saying had any merit. Though I had Otis’s client list from that day, I’d not gone through it, figuring Spencer had.
“Yeah. So what if he messed up a tattoo, someone got mad and offed him?” Evan shrugged a little more with emphasis this time.
“Thanks.” I stood up and almost forgot about Emily. “Oh, Emily would like to rent the Odd Ink space and open her own bakery. I think it’s a great idea. Now that she knows she wants to stay in the area, there’s no reason for you to spend all that money for her to go overseas when she’ll make a great living here.”
“Bakery?” There was a worried look on his face.
“The Bee’s Knees Bakery. I think it has a ring to it.” I smiled and walked to the door, knowing I’d left him a little shaken with that bit of news.
“Rent?” He was only able to spit out single words as his brain wrapped around the Bee’s Knees.
“Yes. Patrick owns the building and since Emily won’t be able to purchase anything right now, I figured we could just rent it to her until she gets the business going and on her feet.” It was a brilliant idea that I’d not thought of until this very moment.
Patrick would be thrilled with the continuing income and I’d love to be there next to her.
“Anyways, Merry Christmas! What better present than to know that you’ve raised an amazing young woman who wants to give back to her community.” I walked out of his office and didn’t look back.
“You should’ve seen his face,” I told Patrick over a glass of wine in front of the fireplace that evening after he and Sassy had come over for supper. “I know that spending a lot of money to send Emily overseas to one of the best pastry schools was a stretch for them, but she’s so talented and she wants to open a bakery here.”
“Honey Springs could use a bakery.” Patrick grabbed the quilt and draped it around us, taking me into his arms. The warmth of the wood burner and the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree was enough Christmas cheer to last me all year long.
“That’s what I was thinking and,” I slightly turned my left shoulder to face him. “Wouldn’t it be great if you rented Odd Ink to her.
It’s right next door to the coffeehouse and I can still continue to make my specialties, buy some pastries from her, and she’s already got a business plan.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Really?” My eyes popped open.
“Of course. It’s our property,” he emphasized our. “Me and you are going to be one. There’s a couple of properties I own without the company involved and Odd Ink happens to be one of those.” He kissed the end of my nose. “Besides, I could never say no to you.”
“This is great. I can’t wait to tell her.” I leaned back into him and thought about how great it was going to be to tell her.
“Roxanne Bloom Cane,” he added his last name. “When is that going to happen?”
“Let’s get through the holidays and maybe look at spring.” It was the first time I’d given him a season, though I knew he wanted a date.
“Spring will be beautiful.” He wrapped his arms and the quilt around me.
We enjoyed the silence that took up most of the space in the cabin. Sassy and Pepper’s snoring caused us to laugh.
“Anything new with your snooping?” Patrick asked.
“Do you really want to know?” I asked.
“Of course. I told you I’d look into some things.” He unwrapped his arms when I jerked around to look at him. “All the guys that got tats from him said that he was gentle and good at his job. They said that people came from all over to get a tat from Otis.”
“That opens up the suspect pool to more people.” This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “But I did talk to Evan about Otis’s bank account. Otis took out five thousand cash at the beginning of each month.”
“So.” Patrick shrugged and he stood up.
“What was he doing with five thousand dollars cash?” I tugged the quilt around me.
“Maybe he pays cash for everything. Five thousand isn’t a ton when you own a house and have bills or a business with bills.” He walked over to the kitchen table and took his coat off the chair.
“Or maybe he was being blackmailed.” It wasn’t a thought I’d had, but I’d seen it in mystery shows before.
“Now your imagination is getting to you.” He shook his head and zipped his coat up. “I’m with Spencer. I think it was a client from out of town that had gotten upset with him, tore up the place to make it look like a theft and put him under the tree so he’d be found.”
“Spencer said all that?” He sure didn’t act like that when he came into the shop today.
“Along those lines.” He patted his hand to his thigh and gave a little whistle.
Sassy’s head and ears jerked up. When she saw Patrick standing at the door, she got up and rushed over.
“So this means that you don’t have to worry about Otis anymore. They obviously have some sort of evidence.” He held his arms out for me and I got up.
The quilt fell around my feet.
“I don’t know. There’s just so many unanswered questions about Otis and how he kept so many things secret.” It was one thing to solve his murder, but the sleuth that I’d become had really gotten me wondering what it was that Otis had been hiding all his life.
“I told you I’d look into it and I did. Now let’s just drop this.” His hands clasped mine and he drew me in for our goodnight kiss. “Seriously, let’s go get married tomorrow.”
I smiled and curled up on my toes, taking in a sweet kiss.
“Don’t forget to turn off the Christmas tree when you go or I’m going to have to tear up these walls and replace all the electric before you have Christmas supper.” Patrick warned before he and Sassy left.
Though I truly wanted to go to bed, I still couldn’t stop thinking about Otis. I’d spent the better part of the next couple of hours curled up next to the wood burner with Pepper in my lap staring at the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. Though Spencer thought that Otis was murdered by a client with whatever evidence he had, I still couldn’t let go of all the secrets that Otis had.
It wasn’t until I’d thought about where I’d be this time next year that the warm fuzzy of Patrick being with me sent me into a deep and restful sleep.
Twelve
“Praise the Lord, there’s a miracle taking place this Christmas,” Brother Mitchell joked from the front steps leading into the Honey Springs Baptist church. “Roxy Bloom is here.”
“Don’t mind Mitchell,” Jane, his wife, patted him. “Roxy, do you remember our children, Kelly and Kristine?”
The sixteen-year-old twins looked like they’d rather be somewhere different than standing there.
“Do y’all have any plans for your Christmas break?” I asked.
“Nothing so far. Just being with family.” Brother Mitchell spoke for them. “It’s so good to have you here. I bet you’re happy.” He looked directly at Aunt Maxi. She pinched a smile and nodded. “Who’s that man?”
“Roxanne got us something called an Uber today.” Aunt Maxi looked over her shoulder before she curled her lip into a smile. The twins laughed and Brother Mitchell and Jane gave them the parent look. “Said something about the weather getting bad.”
Her comment didn’t go without everyone looking up at the sky. The snow was falling a little heavier, just not sticking to the roads.
“If you only knew.” She smiled and dragged me inside. “You’re paa-thetic," she scolded me. “Coming in here like you really wanted to when I know you’ve got some ulterior motive that I’m not sure of...yet.”
“I said I wanted to take you Christmas shopping.” I shrugged and avoided all eye contact with her.
“Then why didn’t you drive us around. Who is that weirdo?” she asked about Ricky, who I’d had pick me up at the boardwalk and then headed to town to pick Aunt Maxi up.
“I wanted us to have a day of pampering.” I followed her up to the front pew where she took her usual spot.
She wasn’t fooling anyone. And I was sure she wasn’t fooling God by sitting clear up in the front where everyone could see her. Which was what she was going for. No matter how much these gossipy women talked, they figured if they were in church every time the doors opened, they’d be saved from the tall tales they told, true or not.
“It’s strange to have some man driving us around when we can walk anywhere in about ten minutes.” She let out a deep sigh, her shoulders fell from around her ears and she started to read through the bulletin.
During the service, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the twins. They were sixteen and I wondered if either of them had considered getting a job. Maybe one of them would be the answers to my prayers.
After the hour-long service, I scurried over to the twins.
“Hi, it’s me again.” I remember how strange it was for me when I was a teen and weird women came up to me. “I was wondering if either of you wanted a job. I own The Bean Hive and I’m looking for some part-time help after school.”
“Are you trying to give my job away?” Bunny asked from behind me. “First Emily and now them?”
“No, are you joking?” I rubbed down her arm. “I think that maybe you and I both could use some help. You could start working until the afternoon when school gets out and one of these girls could come and work an afternoon shift to close.”
“I’d love to.” Kelly chimed in. “I love coffee. Kristine doesn’t.”
“Not that I wouldn’t love a job, I don’t think I’d love that job.” Kristine was sweet enough to tell me the truth.
“And you won’t find no better girls than these two,” Bunny agreed.
“Great.” I looked at Kelly. Her blue eyes sparkled at the thought of it. “Why don’t you come see me tomorrow after school.”
“I’m off for break. I can come around lunch,” she suggested.
“Perfect. I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you bright and early.” I hugged Bunny and interrupted Aunt Maxi from gossiping about her Secret Santa.
“Who on earth would give me such a thing.” She snarled and ran her hands down her tinsel hair while she wa
s talking to Alice Dee owner of the Honey Comb, the salon on the boardwalk where we all got our hair done.
“You’ve got to get it off your hair,” Alice warned. “It’s going to make it so dry.”
“It’s already dry.” Aunt Maxi’s lips pressed together. “I was just being nice.”
“You come and see me before Christmas because we can’t have you all dry in them Christmas photos.” Alice fingered through Aunt Maxi’s short hair. Then looking at me, she continued, “You could stand a treatment too. If you keep sticking it up in a ponytail, your hair is gonna break right off.”
“I’ll make an appointment for both of us. Right now, we’ve got to get shopping.” I rushed Aunt Maxi along.
“I think I got me some afternoon help,” I told her on the way of the church. “Kelly, one of the twins, is interested in an afternoon shift.”
“That’d be good. It’d give Bunny some relaxing time.” Aunt Maxi and I got into the car and she slid across to the other side. “I was in there yesterday and she was frazzled to death.”
“Now we are going to the grocery store.” Ricky threw the car in gear.
“Grocery store?” Aunt Maxi jerked back and looked at me.
“Yes. We always went from the church to the grocery store.” Ricky had no idea that I’d roped Aunt Maxi into coming with me so I wasn’t alone in a stranger’s car.
“What’s going on here?” She grabbed the back of the front seat. “Stop this car this instant.”
“We are going to the grocery store and then the nursing home.” Ricky stopped the car and turned around. His eyes were shadowed from the baseball cap he was wearing today.
“Nursing home?” Aunt Maxi screeched and I asked at the exact same time.
“I don’t belong in no nursing home.” She pointed her finger at me and shook it. “I don’t know what kind of shenanigans you are trying to pull here, but I don’t like it one bit.”
“Ricky was the driver for Otis Peavler after Otis lost his license.” It was time to come clean because I knew Aunt Maxi would’ve never gone along with snooping around. “I thought it’d be safer to take someone. Patrick would never like this and Mom would run and tell you, so I just figured.”