by K. J. Emrick
“So,” Clarissa said to her grandmother when they were alone. “Jerry’s here?”
“Yes, he is.” It was the one bright spot in her night. On the island counter in front of her, she pushed through the framed photos and certificates that they had collected from that wall. The one she kept coming back to was her Chamber of Commerce award for dedicated service to the community. “I didn’t even have to call him. He just came over to surprise me right after you left. Of course, every officer in town is here now so even if he hadn’t tried to make a date night with me he’d still be here now.”
“True enough. You won’t believe what me and Hamish had to go through just to get in. And I know the officer standing at our front door!”
Cookie sighed. “Oh, Clarissa. Is this really all over town already?”
“Afraid so.” Clarissa sat in the stool next to her grandmother. “I can’t believe there’s been another murder right here in your bakery, Gram. Just think. When I first came to Widow’s Rest I thought it was the most boring place ever.”
Cookie put her hand over Clarissa’s. “Our life has been anything but boring, hasn’t it?”
“I’m just glad you were here for me,” Clarissa said in all sincerity. “I wouldn’t be where I am now if you hadn’t stepped in. I might have ended up dropping out of school and hating the world. Coming here, to your bakery? That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Mom might have trouble showing it, but she’s grateful for everything you did for us, too.”
That warmed Cookie’s heart to hear, but it didn’t really solve the problem of the moment. What to do about her bakery’s reputation?
Hamish reappeared in the arch of the secret doorway. “They’re coming up,” he said.
“Oh, good.” Cookie took a deep breath and then got up off the stool. “I’ll start putting the coffee together.”
“No, Mrs. Williams,” Hamish said, pointing back toward the doorway. “They aren’t coming up for the coffee. They’re coming up, um, with the body.”
It wasn’t two seconds later when Officer Jones came walking backward up the stairs and into the kitchen, holding two corners of a thick black nylon bag with a zipper top. He smiled awkwardly at Cookie as he and the officer on the other end maneuvered the body bag through the kitchen and out, through the front room, to the exit and the waiting coroner’s vehicle outside.
The rest of the officers came up behind them. The State Police in their gray shirts and black pants, and the Widow’s Rest officers in their crisp blue uniform shirts. The last one up was Jerry. In front of him, another officer in his civilian clothes was carrying a black duffle bag and a camera. As he cast a few glances out of the corner of his eyes at Cookie he couldn’t stop shaking his head. Cookie didn’t take that as a good sign.
The secret door got closed up tight again. One of the younger officers who Cookie barely knew held up a roll of yellow tape with the words “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS,” and tore off pieces to go across the opening. One strip, two, three. Then he nodded to Jerry and joined the others out in the front room. A moment later they all filed out, and then they were gone. Jerry was the only one who stayed behind with Cookie and Clarissa and Hamish.
“Well,” Cookie said into the awkward silence that followed. “I guess no one is staying for coffee?”
“No, Cookie,” Jerry told her. “We’ve got our work cut out for us on this one, sorry.”
His expression was hard to read, but it didn’t look good. “What… what do you mean you have your work cut out for you?” Cookie asked him, coming over to lay a beseeching hand on his arm. “Jerry, why is there a dead person underneath my bakery?”
Sucking on the inside of his cheek, he hesitated, doing that cop thing he did with her sometimes when he was more officer of the law than boyfriend… fiancé, she corrected herself. “I don’t know if I should tell you, Cookie.”
“Jerry Stansted, don’t you dare pull that on me!” She gently slapped his bicep but she had every intention of making the next one hurt if he didn’t drop the nonsense and explain himself. “This directly affects me. This is my home, this is my business, and this is my reputation we’re talking about so you had better just get on with it and tell me!”
“Besides,” Clarissa added in a casual way, “you know she’s going to get you to tell her anyway.”
She didn’t look at Jerry when she said it, pretending instead to be super interested in the photos of the bakery on the island. Smart girl, Cookie thought to herself. Every woman needed to learn how to guide the men in their life into doing the right thing. Men who couldn’t be pushed into something would often let themselves be led.
“Fine,” Jerry huffed. “You’re right, of course. Both of you, I mean. Cookie, we went through every inch of that basement. Here’s what we know so far. Those dates you found on the newspapers? They were the same on all of them. So, our victim has probably been down there since 1913, or so. We know the basement wasn’t sealed up before that, or the papers couldn’t have been put down there. And that date matches with the other thing we found.”
“What other thing?” Hamish asked, just as interested in the story as Cookie and Clarissa.
Jerry eyed him, but he must have figured that anything he said to the women would be repeated to Clarissa’s boyfriend anyway, so why bother keeping quiet now? “You remember, Cookie, that pile of rags we saw near the body?”
She tried not to picture the scene in her mind but there it was just the same, in all its vivid glory. “Yes. I didn’t look at them very closely…”
“Be glad you didn’t,” he agreed. “The, er, skeleton was bad enough. Those rags turned out to be his clothes. Shirt, pants, shoes. They were in pretty good condition all things considered. What that means is that our victim was stripped naked, then chained to that chair, and left to die.”
“Ew, gross,” Clarissa said, putting a hand up over her mouth. Hamish wrapped his arm around her shoulders and let her lean into him.
“Yeah,” Jerry agreed with a sideways smile. “Gross is as good a word as any. That’s not all, though.”
“There’s more?” Cookie couldn’t imagine it getting any worse than this.
“I’m afraid so. When we were bagging up those clothes we found a faded business card. It was about as yellow as those newspapers but being wrapped in a pocket of the shirt kept it a little more intact.”
“A business card?” Somehow, that was the strangest thing that Cookie had heard today. “The victim’s card?”
“Exactly,” Jerry said. “Museum quality. We could read it clear as day.”
“And?” Cookie asked, anxious to hear the rest of it.
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, his eyebrows arching high. “And, you’re never going to guess who it belonged to.”
Chapter Three
“Let us all give a big round of applause for the only living descendant of our town’s founder.”
The mayor’s voice rang out over the loudspeaker and across the manicured lawn of the town park. It was an open space ringed by trees that Widow’s Rest had always maintained for people to take leisurely strolls in or walk their dogs or just have someplace to hang out in. Standing on a wooden platform that had been constructed specifically for today’s celebration, wide enough for the microphone podium and the row of ten chairs behind, Quinn Fieldberg was definitely in her element. The town’s new mayor loved a crowd. Especially when she got to stand in front of an enormous American flag backdrop to address the sea of people.
Photographers snapped pictures, and the whole thing was being recorded by cameras and cellphones alike. Quinn was smiling from ear to ear.
It was a mixture of local residents and visitors from across the state and beyond that watched her now. Smiling and holding out a hand toward the stage to her left, Quinn waited for an old man to stand, and wave. “Our oldest living resident, Mister George Merriam!”
The centennial was in full swing now in the middle of the next morning, after the discover
y at the Kiss the Cook Bakery. When Cookie had woken up this morning she’d been excited for the events that were lined up around the celebration. That is until she walked downstairs with Cream and saw that secret door behind her kitchen wall again.
Not that there wasn’t enough going on to take her mind off last night. The high school marching band from the nearby town of Morton had played the Stars and Stripes and that song by Lee Greenwood, and In the Good Old Summertime. Widow’s Rest had never been big enough for its own high school. The kids in town, including Clarissa, went to the school in Morton. A lot of the younger kids were running around the park now, throwing frisbees or footballs, or playing tag. The sun was warm and the breeze was gentle, and the crowd of people watching the mayor give her speech were in a fine mood as they drank lemonade and laughed with each other.
Cookie had put on her favorite dress this morning, the purple one with the black flowers around the hem, and her floppy-brimmed sun hat. Jerry was wearing black dress pants and a pressed white shirt. It was a perfect day for a date, just the two of them together.
Instead it felt more like a trip down Alice’s rabbit hole.
The old timer on the stage was stooped and weathered, his balding head mottled by age spots and his long fingers thin and gnarled. As he waved to everyone around him with one hand, basking in the roar of applause, he leaned heavily on his cane with the other. His three-piece suit hung from his shoulders and his striped red tie was several decades out of fashion. Cookie didn’t feel the least bit hypocritical calling George Merriam an “old-timer,” considering he was in his early nineties. Even someone her age could consider that old.
“You’re sure?” Cookie asked Jerry for the tenth time. “That business card in the shirt pocket of the dead man belonged to George’s grandfather?”
“There’s no doubt,” Jerry whispered back. Neither of them wanted anyone else to know about this, although considering the number of officers on both the local and state level who already did the hope that it would stay quiet for very long was a slim one. Clarissa had heard about it before the body was even taken out, after all. “The card had his grandfather’s name on it. Old Jozebus Merriam. There can’t possibly have been two people with that name in the history of the whole entire world, let alone right here in Widow’s Rest.”
Cookie had to agree with that, at least. Watching George Merriam up there on the podium now though, waving and smiling at the crowds here to honor him and the town, she couldn’t help but feel incredibly sad. “We should tell him, don’t you think?”
Jerry shook his head like he’d been expecting her to say that. “Not until we have a positive identification. That’s the order from the chief. Rick wants to keep a lid on that for now. Sure, the business card is for Jozebus and his meat-cutting business, and under the circumstances I have no doubt about who the body in your cellar will turn out to be. My stunning deductive reasoning skills are not proof, though. We’ll wait for the guys at the state lab to do their work. Facial reconstruction and DNA testing.”
“They’ll need a sample to compare the DNA to, won’t they?” Cookie thought that was how it worked. At least, in all of her mystery novels that was what happened. “So, won’t you need to go to George and take a sample from him to compare? He’s the only living relative Jozebus has. Asking for a hair and spit sample will sort of tip him off, won’t it?”
“It would, except that it turns out the state already has a sample to go on. George over there was still serving in the military in 1992 when the Department of Defense began collecting blood samples for a DNA database from its soldiers. From what I understand it’s enough for the state to compare his profile to the profile of our…” He hesitated as he looked around at the people nearby. “To our friend downstairs, and determine if they’re related.”
Cookie nodded, although her attention was on the crowd of people as well. “Does it feel like everyone is watching me today?”
Jerry snorted. “I’ve seen the way people are looking. At both of us. News travels fast around a small town, that’s for sure. They’re just curious. Don’t worry about it.”
“I kind of have to worry about it,” she griped. “If people decide my bakery is bad luck again, and they decide to stay away, what am I supposed to do then?”
His arm snaked around her waist and pulled her in tight. Maybe there was a bit more waist there for him than she would have liked, but he managed it easily enough and without any complaints. “Don’t worry about anything, Cookie. Your town won’t turn on you.”
“They have before.”
“Well, that was a little different, wasn’t it?”
She pursed her lips, but did lay her head down against his shoulder. “Maybe so, but the result could be the same.”
“Don’t worry. If anything happens to you and that bakery of yours, I’ll still be here.”
“That means a lot, Jerry, but I’m still worried.”
Leaning his head in close, he breathed through her hair, inhaling her scent. “What I mean is I’ll always take care of you. I’m not just with you for the free food, you know. I want to be a husband to you, and a step-grandfather to Clarissa, and all the rest that goes with it.”
Cookie relaxed a little in the crook of his arm, and watched as George finished his few words about what a great a place to live Widow’s Rest was. When he was done he went slowly back across the stage to sit down next to his wife. They were about the same age, George and… what was her name? Batina. Right. Very old, the two of them, and still very much in love. She took his hand and helped him back down into his chair, and they smiled at each other.
That was the kind of love everyone dreamed of, Cookie told herself. A love you could grow old with. Someone who would always be there for you even after your eyesight had dimmed and your skin had lost its smooth luster and intimacy came down to holding hands on a stage while you were sitting in uncomfortable folding metal chairs. She looked up at Jerry. He was the kind of man she could build a life with. In another thirty or forty years, that could be them, to be sure. He’d just said as much, hadn’t he?
Of course he had. She knew that he meant his promise to take care of her if the bakery fell apart. That was nice. It was sweet. She didn’t want to be taken care of though. She wanted to work at the business she’d built up for herself through hard work and a talent for baking that was partly inborn skill and partly training from her mentor, Fran Hazelton. If the town turned against her baked goods again, now that there had been a second suspicious death at her shop, she’d be devastated.
“The opening ceremonies are about to break up,” Jerry said into her private thoughts. “We should get over to the picnic area.”
Cookie noticed people drifting that way already as the mayor wrapped up her remarks by encouraging everyone to sample the locally made foods that were laid out on the tables under the maple trees at the edge of the park. “To the picnic area, hmm? Do you want to sample my goods?” she asked Jerry, putting a hint of double entendre into her comment in an effort to lift her dampened spirits.
“What I really want is to talk to George for a few minutes and get a sense of what he knows about his grandfather before this becomes an official investigation.” Then, as they started walking along with the crowd, he kissed the top of her head. “We can talk about sampling your goodies later.”
She felt her face flush with a smile. Then she noticed several faces turned to catch a glimpse of her, and whispered conversations that followed, and she went right back into her funk.
Then her morning got worse.
Stepping out of the crowd next to her, Benjamin Roth materialized in one of his impeccable blue suits. The cut of it suited him just so, and the color of the coat and pants were offset by the black vest and tie. He was a tall and almost elegant man, more so for the gray at the temples of his coiffured hair. Cookie had always considered him infuriatingly young for his age. Especially now that his artificial tan had been replaced by a real one. He had gotten married to her
very good friend Jessica a couple of months back and she was making him actually get out and do things with her. It had been good for both of them, and she was happy for Jessica.
That didn’t mean that Cookie wanted to like this shark of a man.
“Well, Cookie,” he said, in a tone that could have taught the Devil a thing or two about being smooth. “I hear there was more trouble at your bakery. So sorry to hear that.”
“Of course you are,” she answered him, barely keeping her runaway tongue from adding a comment about what a soul-sucking leech like him could do with his sympathies. Instead, she put on her best smile and kept walking with Jerry. “What brings you out today, Benjamin? Here to celebrate the town’s birthday, are you?”
“Of course,” he said, returning Cookie’s smile. “As one of the town’s most prominent citizens I feel I have a duty to be seen at functions such as this. I was actually just over speaking with your boss, Jerry. The chief of police and I have our weekly golf game tomorrow, you know.”
“I’ve never been much for golf,” Jerry answered off-handedly.
“Of course not.” Benjamin shook his head. “Perhaps if you learned to play the game, you’d be further along in your career now.”
He kept that tight smile on his face, but the insult was clear in the gleam behind his blue eyes. Jerry’s arm tensed around Cookie as he kept his face turned staunchly forward. She knew that Jerry couldn’t care less about moving up the ranks, or working his way into something like the chief’s position. That was one of the main reasons why he was still a patrol officer at his age. He was looking forward to retirement in the next few years after a long career of helping people.
“Well,” Benjamin sniffed when Jerry didn’t rise to the bait he’d laid out. “I’m glad I found you here this morning, Cookie. I want to renew my offer to purchase your bakery.”
Inwardly Cookie groaned. She should have known. “I thought we’d moved past this Benjamin. My bakery is not for sale.”