“To be honest with you, I’m a little troubled by the fact that you’re making so much sense,” I said.
Moose frowned at my statement. “What’s that supposed to mean, granddaughter?”
“Maybe we’re both getting just a little too paranoid for our own good. Is it possible that we’ve been investigating murder for so long that we’re actually looking for evidence of trouble without having any basis in fact for our suspicions?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” my grandfather said a little grudgingly, “but you’re right more times than you’re wrong when you take away the benefit of the doubt with most folks.”
“Cynical much, Moose?” I asked.
“I’m just being realistic,” my grandfather said. “Tell you what. I’m going to run my theory past the sheriff.”
“We both know that he’s going to think that we’re just trying to downplay Barry’s slip at the diner last night.”
Moose pulled off to the side of the road when he got as far as he could before the barriers and shut off the engine. Before he got out, he turned to me and said, “Victoria, we both know that fall last night was staged. Neither one of us pushed the man down.”
“I realize that, Moose. I’m just saying that’s how it’s going to look to some folks who weren’t there.”
“Well, I’m not too worried about that. Barry isn’t going to get away with the fire or the extortion attempt. I’ll see him dead first.”
“Moose, you shouldn’t keep saying that. Somebody might actually believe you.”
He laughed, but there was a hollow ring to it. “Nobody who knows me would take that kind of talk seriously. I’m just frustrated by the whole mess, and I’m blowing off a little steam. There’s no harm in it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said as I got out of the truck.
“What do you mean?” Moose asked as he grabbed the urn of coffee and the extra paper cups.
As I got the food, I said, “I know that you don’t mean it, but it’s something entirely different if someone else overhears you say something like that. You need to tone down your words a little.”
He put the urn back down on the tailgate and looked hard at me. “Victoria, I’m not about to change my ways at my age. I’ve gotten through my entire life speaking what’s on my mind, and I’m not going to stop doing it now. If other people have a problem with it, then that’s just too bad, isn’t it?”
“It might be,” I said. “Do what you want, Moose. I’m just saying, it might make sense to calm down a little until we find out if Barry’s really going to sue us or not.”
“I guess I can see what you’re saying,” he said grudgingly as he picked up the urn again. “Maybe I’ll do as you suggest.”
What? Had I actually won an argument with my grandfather? If I had, it was a red-letter day. Moose might not always be right, but he was rarely unsure of himself. Maybe he was a little more worried about this mess than I’d realized.
“How much food did Greg make?” I asked as I struggled with the aluminum serving trays. “There’s enough here to feed an army.”
“Those volunteers have been working hard putting out a big fire,” Moose said. “They’re going to be hungry.”
“You don’t have a problem with me squandering our profits on this, do you?”
My grandfather shook his head. “Victoria, I’ve never been one to turn away a good cause. As far as I’m concerned, this is a part of what The Charming Moose is all about. Sure, I’ve always liked to see a profit as much as the next guy, but if we can’t do something good for someone just because we can, then I don’t want to be any part of it. Do you know what I mean?”
“I do, and I agree with you one thousand percent,” I said.
Chief Yates spotted us, and he walked over in our direction. “Wow, you didn’t have to do all this,” he said as he relieved me of my burden.
“Happy to do it, Luke,” Moose said. “How’s it going?”
“It’s mostly out now. We’re hitting any hot spots we find, but truth be told, it’s over.” He looked down at the trays he was carrying. “This is all going to be greatly appreciated. Thank you both.”
“You’re most welcome,” I said as I spotted a man walking alone among the ruins of the bakery. What had once been a fine old wooden building was now reduced to black charred rubble. The man standing directly in the center of the soggy mess wore a hard hat and sported a clipboard, and I noticed him bending down checking something out. “Who’s that?”
“Fire inspector from the county,” the chief said. “We were told to stand by, so that’s what we’re doing. Let’s get our people fed.” We all walked over to the men and women from the volunteer departments, and it didn’t take them long to scoop up the coffee and biscuits.
Wayne, his face smudged a little from the fire, said, “If you see Ellen, tell her I’m okay. She worries about me.” He added the last bit with a sheepish grin.
“I will. She wanted to come herself, but I needed her back at the diner,” I explained.
“Understood,” he said as one of his fellow volunteers called him over.
I overheard Moose starting to talk to the fire chief, and I listened to what they were saying.
“I can’t say, Moose,” the chief said. “I’m no expert. That’s why we have him out there,” he added as he gestured to the man inspecting what was left of the building.
“I’m not asking you to go on the record or anything,” Moose said. “I just want to know what you think.”
“And you won’t tell anyone what I tell you?” the chief asked.
“Luke, you have my word,” Moose said solemnly. That alone was good enough for anybody who knew my grandfather. His word was his bond, and he’d sooner rip off his own right arm than he would break a promise.
“It was intentional,” the fire chief said softly. “There’s no way this wasn’t set by someone hoping to burn this place to the ground. That’s my unofficial opinion, but I’d be stunned if the official one doesn’t match it, and that’s the truth. I’ve been doing this too long not to be able to spot such an amateur arson.”
“Thanks,” Moose said. “I appreciate that.”
“Just remember, you didn’t hear it from me,” the chief replied.
Moose pretended to look puzzled. “Hear what?”
“Exactly,” the chief said as he took a sip of his coffee. “Here we go. Now we hear the official version,” he added as the inspector walked over to him in a hurry.
“Chief, I need you over here.”
“What’s up? Did you find the accelerant?” he asked.
“Something more than that,” the man said. “Call the sheriff, would you?”
“So, it’s arson after all,” Chief Yates said smugly.
“More than that, I’m afraid. I just found a body.”
The inspector looked shaken by the discovery, and the chief dropped his paper cup of coffee as he said, “You’re kidding.”
“Not about something like that. It looks as though we might have a homicide on our hands, as well as arson.”
“I’ll call Sheriff Croft right now,” the fire chief said as he took out his cell phone.
“Is there any way to tell if it was Barry Jackson?” Moose asked the inspector.
The man looked surprised to find Moose and me standing there. “There’s no way any identification will be made without dental records.” He looked sick as he said it, and I had to wonder if this was his first body.
Chief Yates hung up. “He was at a hit-and-run on Mulberry, but he’s on his way now.”
“Good. Until he gets here, we need to secure the crime scene.” The inspector was getting a little color back in his face, and it appeared that he was beginning to come to terms about what he’d found.
“Will do,” Chief Yates said, and then he walked over to his crew.
The inspector turned to us and said, “I’m afraid you’ll both have to back up a hundred yards. This is now an active crime sce
ne.”
“So, you don’t think it could have been an accident?” Moose asked him.
“I’m afraid that’s restricted information,” the man said.
Moose and I faded into the background, and my grandfather tugged at my arm. “Let’s go back to the diner, Victoria.”
“Don’t you want to hang around and see what the sheriff finds out?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t want either one of us here when he shows up.”
“Why on earth not?” I asked.
“Do you really want him putting us and the crime scene together in his mind?”
“No, not really,” I said as we walked back to Moose’s truck. “He’s still going to know that we were here, though.”
“How’s that?”
“The coffee and biscuits didn’t come from the bakery, and we’re the only other place in town that serves them,” I said.
“Then let him come to us, but why make it any easier on him?”
“You’re right,” I said as we got into the truck and headed back to The Charming Moose. “This isn’t good for us if that really was Barry Jackson in there.”
“I don’t see it being in our favor no matter who it was,” Moose said, “but you’re right. If it is Barry, we need to find out who did it. Otherwise, we both might be going to jail.”
“I’m all for avoiding that,” I said. “But how do we go about doing that?”
“We do what we always do,” Moose said. “We start digging and see what we turn up.”
Chapter 4
“Where are we going?” I asked Moose as he turned in the opposite direction from the diner. “You realize that our diner is back there, right?”
“I built the place, Victoria. Of course I know where it is,” Moose said. “We’re going to Barry Jackson’s house.”
“Now?” I asked incredulously. “How’s that going to look if we get caught there?”
“Not good,” Moose said with a grin. “That’s why we shouldn’t get caught.”
“I can see the logic behind your reasoning,” I said. “But even if we do find something useful there, how’s Sheriff Croft going to feel about us getting to it before he does?”
“We’ll worry about that when we come to it,” Moose said. “There’s something I need to check out before anybody else gets the chance.”
“You know something, don’t you?” I asked my grandfather as he sped up. At the rate he was driving, we’d be at Barry’s in less than three minutes.
“Maybe,” he said with that grin that told me he was indeed hiding something from me.
“Come on. Tell me,” I said.
“I might be wrong,” Moose said. “Then again, we might uncover something that was better left unseen, if you know what I mean.”
“I honestly don’t have a clue what you mean,” I said, getting a little frustrated by my grandfather’s reticence to talk.
“Be patient, Victoria,” he said.
“I’m going to remember that advice the next time that I know something that you don’t,” I said.
“I don’t doubt it for one second. We’re here,” he said as he approached Barry’s house.
“Shouldn’t we stop, then?” I asked as we passed it.
“Not if we’re going to circle around and go in the back way,” Moose said. “Barry’s car is gone, so I’m guessing that he’s not home.”
“That’s probably a safe assumption, considering what they found at the bakery,” I said.
“We don’t know for sure yet that it was Barry,” Moose said.
“No, but it makes the most sense. Who else would be there that time of morning?”
“The arsonist, for one,” Moose said as he pulled down the alley behind Barry’s house.
“I thought you believed that was Barry,” I said as he parked and we both got out.
“It’s the strongest possibility, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t have been anyone else. Victoria, we need to proceed cautiously here.”
“Don’t we always?” I asked as we crept through the yard. Instead of going straight to the house, though, Moose detoured over to an outbuilding. It was eight feet by twelve, and the architecture of it matched the house perfectly, down to the forest-green siding and the cream-colored trim. “Why are we going over here first?”
“Because unless I’m mistaken, this is where all of the secrets are hidden,” Moose said cryptically.
“What are you talking about?” I asked him as we neared the small building.
“I went fishing with a chatty contractor a few years ago,” Moose said. “The man wouldn’t shut up, and he kept scaring away all of the fish, so I never invited him back.”
“Okay,” I said. “I had a friend in high school who started to sing her sentences every time she got nervous.”
Moose stopped and looked at me oddly. “What has that got to do with anything?”
“Not a thing. I just thought we were sharing irrelevant stories,” I said.
“Victoria, there’s more to my story, if you’d let me finish.”
“Go on then,” I said, “because that’s all I have about mine.”
My grandfather shook his head, and then he continued. “One of the things this guy talked about was an outside office he built that matched the main house. It didn’t take me long to figure out he was talking about Barry Jackson, since he kept using different references to baking.”
“Okay, I suppose that’s a little relevant,” I admitted.
“Just wait. It gets better,” Moose said as he stood on the four-by-eight-foot porch. “He told me about a few secrets he’d been told to build into the thing.”
“If they were secrets, why did he tell you?” I asked.
“What can I say? He’s a pretty decent contractor, but the man can’t keep his mouth shut on a bet. Hang on a second. Yes, this must be it.”
I looked where Moose was reaching, and all I saw was a small medallion over the door, a decorative flourish that gave the tiny building a nice architectural touch. To my surprise, Moose reached up and grabbed it, turning it ninety degrees to the right. As he did, something clicked in place, and the front door opened of its own accord.
“How did you do that?”
My grandfather just grinned at me. “That’s just one of the secrets here.”
“How many are there?” I asked as we stepped inside the small eight-by-eight-foot room. The place was sparse, with a simple uncluttered desk under one window and a swivel chair under the other. The walls were blank slates, and the back wall itself had nothing but a coat of paint on it.
“There’s at least one more trick that I know of,” Moose said as he got down on his hands and knees. Instead of the molding going all the way across the floor where the walls met in the corners, there were small blocks of wood on each edge the molding butted into. In the center of each block was a turned wooden button, and as my grandfather pressed the middle of the one on the left, I heard another click, and the entire flat piece of molding along the back wall swung open slightly.
“What is it with people and their secret panels?” I asked, recalling our time at the pickle palace not that long ago with a chauffeur who had ended up being so much more than that in the end.
“That’s what clicked with me when we saw the burned-out bakery this morning,” Moose said with a smile. At least this secret panel wasn’t big enough to lead anywhere. It wasn’t even deep enough for a small cat to crawl into. As I looked at it a little closer, I saw that it was really nothing more than a hidden shallow drawer, and as Moose pulled it out, I saw a collection of papers inside. Evidently this was where Barry had stored anything important to him, and I couldn’t wait to go through the things that we’d just found there.
That’s when I had my first inkling that maybe my grandfather and I should wait for law enforcement. “Moose, should we be going through these papers before the police get a chance to examine them first?”
“Why shouldn’t we?” he asked. “Do
you honestly think that Sheriff Croft would have ever found this on his own? If it weren’t for us, this would have all probably been lost forever.”
That managed to make me feel a little better. “I see what you’re saying, but we still can’t keep what we find from him.”
“We won’t,” Moose assured me. “After we’re finished here, we’ll phone a tip into the station, or at the very least, we’ll leave this panel open so that they’ll find it themselves when they get around to checking this place out.”
“I like the second option better than the first,” I said. “One more thing, though. If there’s something interesting, we snap a photo of it with my phone, but we don’t take anything with us that might help the sheriff. Agreed?”
“Okay, I can live with that,” Moose said.
“Then let’s start digging,” I said as I reached for the top layer of papers.
I started to spread things out on the desk as Moose went for the chair. After he sat down and wheeled it over to where I was working, he grinned at me. “Hey, my knees are a lot older than yours are. I need to perch every now and then.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I said as I started looking at what we had. “Was there anything else in the secret drawer?”
“Just these papers and this,” he said as he put a handheld microcassette player down on the table.
“What do you suppose that’s about?” I asked. “I didn’t even see it.”
“It was buried under some papers. Let’s play it, okay?”
“Fine by me,” I said as I reached out and hit the Play button.
A woman’s voice, small and tinny, came from the tiny speaker and said, “Barry, I know you’re there, so stop screening your calls. It’s Sandy. Again. Why haven’t you called me back? You broke my heart, you know that, don’t you?” At that point, the woman cried a little, but then she quickly got herself back under control. When she spoke again, there was a new resolution in her voice. “If you think you can throw me away for somebody else like yesterday’s garbage, you’re dead wrong. I’m not going to let you get away with it. You’ll pay for what you’ve done to me. Don’t even think about trying to run away from me, either. There’s no place you can go where you’re safe from me, and when I catch you, I’m going to—” Evidently the time on the answering machine cut off, because Sandy was interrupted by a dial tone.
A Burned Out Baker: Classic Diner Mystery #7 (The Classic Diner Mysteries) Page 3