A Burned Out Baker: Classic Diner Mystery #7 (The Classic Diner Mysteries)

by Beck, Jessica

  “Wow, she sounded mad,” Moose said.

  “Mad? She was homicidal if you ask me. Which Sandy do you think it might have been?”

  “It sounded like Sandy Hardesty to me,” Moose said.

  I looked at him in surprise. “How do you know Sandy Hardesty?”

  “Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean that I’m a hermit,” he said. “I meet people all of the time.”

  “I’m sure you’re just a regular social butterfly, Moose, but I really want to know.”

  “If you must know, she ran into me with her car in the grocery store parking lot last month,” Moose said. “I was in my old truck at the time, and you could barely see where she hit me, but we got to talking. I remember liking her. She had spunk.”

  “Maybe a little too much for her own good,” I said. “I wish we could record that tape.”

  “Can’t your magic phone do that for you?” Moose asked me with a grin.

  “Not directly, at least not that I know of, but I do know something that might work.” I dialed my home number, waiting for my own machine to kick in.

  “Hello? Victoria, is that you?” my husband asked after two rings.

  “Greg, what are you doing back home so soon?” Despite what he’d told us earlier, I wasn’t sure that he’d go straight home.

  “You and Moose were delivering the food, so I didn’t waste any time heading back here to catch a quick nap before I had to go to work again. The thing is, I can’t fall back asleep, despite my best efforts.” He paused a moment before adding, “Hang on a second. If you thought I wasn’t home yet, why are you calling me here?” he asked.

  “I’m trying to do something else. Do me a favor and hang up,” I told my husband.

  Before I could explain my odd request to him, he promptly did as I’d requested.

  I dialed the number again, and once more, my husband answered the phone. “Is this some kind of new game of tag that I don’t know about?” he asked me.

  “You never gave me a chance to explain my plan. I want to record something I found, but I don’t have any way to do it but to call the house and leave it on our answering machine.”

  “Then it’s not going to do you any good if I keep picking up, will it?” Greg asked good-naturedly.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “Call away,” and then, before he hung up again, he added, “I promise I’ll ignore you completely this time.”

  I dialed my home number yet again, and this time it made it all the way to the answering machine. When I heard my own voice ask to wait until the beep, I hit the Play button again, and I managed to record the message in its entirety before my own machine cut me off.

  After I disconnected the call, my phone rang in my hands.

  No surprise. It was Greg. “Did it work?”

  “Like a charm,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Do you care to explain to me what that was all about?”

  “How about a rain check?” I asked him.

  “That’s fine. Will I see you this afternoon?”

  “I’m sure you will at some point, but I might not make it back to the diner by the time you get there.”

  “Take your time. I’ll see you when I see you,” he said, and then we got off the phone.

  As I’d been chatting with my husband, Moose had been digging through some of the other papers. “Did you find anything else interesting while I was on the phone?” I asked him.

  “More than you can imagine. This seemed to be Barry’s favorite hiding place, because it looks like he kept all of his secrets here.”

  “Honestly, it’s not that bad a place to stash things you don’t want anyone else to find,” I said. “What are the odds anyone else would have uncovered this stuff if he hadn’t had a talkative contractor?”

  “Not good,” Moose said as he laid a note scrawled on lined paper on the desktop in front of me. “Victoria, check this out.”

  It was from Cliff Pearson, a man that I’d heard was on the dark side of the law, and after reading the terse note, there was not much doubt about who Barry’s mysterious backer might have been for the bakery. Evidently, expanding the bakery hadn’t been the only thing Barry had borrowed money for. The note said,

  I won’t tell you again. The next time you’re late with a payment, you’re going to get a reminder from me that you’re not going to like. This is your last warning. From now on, pay me on time, pay the full amount you owe me, or I’ll take it out of something besides your bank account. I’m not messing around here, Barry.”

  “Well now, that’s not very friendly, is it?” Moose asked me with a grin.

  “I wonder how much Barry owed him?”

  “I don’t know, but it appears that Cliff was pretty eager to get it back.”

  “At least the interest, anyway,” I said.

  “It sounds as though Barry wasn’t going to be able to pay it,” Moose said. “I’ve got to admit that if Cliff burned down the bakery, it was exactly the wrong thing to do if he expected Barry to ever be able to pay him back.”

  “Maybe he was sending a message to the other folks who owed him money,” I said.

  “That might work,” Moose said. “Take a photo of it, and let’s move on.”

  I did as my grandfather suggested, and then I put the note off to one side.

  “What’s this?” I asked as I picked up a stack of greeting cards bound together with a pair of rubber bands. After I removed them, I opened the first four pretty mushy cards, and a fifth that was anything but. Inside the last one, written in angry red letters, it said, “Stop playing games with my heart, or yours is going to feel real pain.”

  I showed it to Moose, who dropped it on the desk as though it had been on fire. “Where did he get these? That last message is pretty chilling.”

  I looked through the stack, and I saw the name Susan written inside the rest of them. “That’s got to be Susan Proctor,” I said.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “The swoop of that S is unmistakable,” I said as I pointed it out to my grandfather. “She pays for lunch at the diner once a week with her credit card, so I’ve come to recognize that signature.”

  “Good enough. Take a shot of the signature on one of these cards,” Moose suggested.

  “Let’s do one of the good ones, and the angry one, too,” I said as I took the pictures. The battery on my phone was getting weak, a problem that I’d been having lately. “I don’t know how many more shots I’m going to be able to take with this.”

  “Then let’s make them count,” Moose said. He picked up four torn fragments of paper and pieced them back together on the desktop. “Victoria, you need to get this one.”

  “What is it?” I asked as I studied the reassembled sheet.

  “It appears that Rob Bester tried to buy Barry out at some point, but he clearly wasn’t all that happy about the offer, or why else would he tear it up?”

  “Do you think that’s significant?” I asked Moose as I took the picture with my phone.

  “I suppose that it could be,” my grandfather said as he looked around.

  “You know, Mom and I saw Rob at the fire this morning. He was standing outside the tire store with a garden hose watching the volunteer firemen.”

  Moose frowned. “It could be a coincidence. After all, if he’s innocent, he’d want to try to protect his property.”

  “It gives him an excuse to smell like smoke, too,” I said.

  “We’ll have to keep him in mind. Is there anything here that we’ve missed?”

  I started looking through the papers again, and I almost missed the final clue. There was a bank statement tucked in with a series of bills, and I didn’t know how those might help us find out who had torched the bakery and possibly killed Barry Jackson in the process. The statement said that Barry was extended over his credit limit, but what was really interesting was what Barry himself had scrawled on it. “G
et the money Mike owes you. Just because he’s your brother doesn’t mean that he can bankrupt you.”

  I took another photo as my cell phone died. “That’s it, Moose. I don’t have any more juice in my phone battery until I recharge it.”

  “It appears to be all that there is to see, anyway,” he said. “Should I shove this all back into the drawer and leave the release sprung so it will be easy to find?”

  I glanced outside and saw a squad car pulling up in front of the house. “No time for that! We have to get out of here now. Just leave it all on the desk!”

  My grandfather looked at where I was pointing, and we both hurried out of the building and rushed toward where we’d parked his truck.

  “That was too close for comfort,” I said as we got in and drove away before anybody could catch us there.

  “I know. It was great, wasn’t it?” my grandfather asked me with a grin.

  “Why do you look so happy, Moose?”

  “Victoria, we’ve got more solid clues to work with from the start than we’ve ever had before. Doesn’t that make you glad?”

  “I shouldn’t have to remind you that we don’t even know if Barry was murdered or not. There might not even be a homicide case here to solve.”

  “You heard the fire inspector. Someone died in that fire, and if it wasn’t Barry, then he’s our number one suspect. Either the information we found helps us find his killer, or it gives us a chance to name him as the murderer. Either way, that stash was a good find.”

  “It was,” I admitted. “First things first, though. We need to find out who was in that bakery when it burned to the ground.”

  “Leave that up to me,” Moose said as he started driving back in the general direction of the diner.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked, though I had a pretty clear idea of our destination.

  He tapped the clock on the dash of his truck. “Your shift starts in three minutes,” Moose said. “Where do you think?”

  “I thought I’d let Ellen handle things for the rest of the morning,” I said. “If I have to, I can always call Martha.”

  “You could, but maybe you’d better save all of that until we find out if we’re hunting for a killer, or a main suspect. Until then, we should go about our normal business, and that means that you need to work your shifts at the diner, like always.”

  “And what exactly are you going to be doing in the meantime?” I asked my grandfather as he pulled into The Charming Moose’s parking lot. I had a sneaking suspicion that Moose might plan on doing a little digging on his own without me, and that was unacceptable on several different levels.

  “I’m going to discreetly ask around and see if I can get that body’s ID,” he said.

  “And why can’t I do that with you?” I asked.

  “Because the man I’m going to tap for information isn’t going to say a word in front of you,” Moose said flatly. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the way that it is.”

  “Okay then,” I said as I opened the door and got out.

  “What did you just say to me?” Moose asked me as he leaned toward the open window.

  “I just agreed with you,” I said as I started to go in.

  “Victoria, don’t be that way.”

  “What way?” I asked as sweetly as I could manage. “What can I say? When you’re right, you’re right.”

  He looked even more troubled by that reaction. “I don’t like this, not one little bit. Whenever you’re overly pliant, it always spells trouble for me.”

  I laughed as I walked into the diner, but I didn’t say another word. I did happen to think that he was right this time, but it was a lot more fun making him wonder what I was up to than just coming right out and saying it. I suppose that I had said it, but in a way that the truth sounded completely unconvincing. It was one of my favorite ways to lie, not that I usually made a habit of it.

  The smile from our last exchange faded quickly, though, when I saw who was already in the diner, apparently waiting for me to get back.

  Chapter 5

  “Hi, Sheriff. Did you come by to thank me for the coffee and biscuits this morning? You really don’t have to, you know. It was our pleasure.”

  “I heard that everyone appreciated that, but this is about something else. Where have you been this morning, Victoria?”

  Had he or one of his staff spotted Moose and me fleeing from Barry’s outbuilding? “I always take a break in the morning, and then I come back for my next shift.” I pointed to the clock near the register as I added, “See? It’s eleven o’clock, right on the dot.” I hadn’t exactly lied to him, but I wasn’t about to admit what I’d been up to with my grandfather. If he had anything on me, he was going to have to come out and tell me. I wasn’t about to trap myself if I could help it.

  Evidently he was just fishing. “Understood. Do you have a second to talk to me, or do you need to get straight to work?”

  “I’ve got time. Just let me tell Greg that I’m here.”

  “I’ll be waiting outside,” Sheriff Croft said.

  I ducked my head in the kitchen and saw Greg and my mother chatting. “I’ll be back in a second.”

  “To be honest with you, we didn’t even know that you were here,” Mom said with a smile.

  “Then you won’t miss me when I’m gone again,” I answered and waved at them both. Greg winked at me, and I returned it as I left. I loved that my husband required minimal explanation from me for the oddest behavior, and it had really come in handy since Moose and I had started digging into murders together. Greg was there to support me, just as Moose’s wife, Martha, was there for him. Neither one of them had a burning curiosity about our amateur investigations, but they each gave us all of the encouragement we ever needed.

  It was good being part of a family that knew how to complement each other.

  When I got outside, the sheriff was waiting for me, but to my surprise, Moose was with him, too. “Did you two start chatting without me?”

  “No. I wanted to, but Moose insisted that we wait,” the sheriff said.

  That was a point for my grandfather, and I felt a little bad about the way I’d teased him earlier. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “I don’t have much time, so I’m going to have to make this brief,” the sheriff said. “We just made a positive ID based on dental records. No real surprise; the body we found in the bakery was Barry Jackson. Normally I would have held on to that information a little longer, and I’d appreciate it if you two don’t tell anyone until I’m ready to, but what you did this morning was nice, and I thought it deserved something in return.”

  “You know that’s not why we did it,” Moose said, though in truth it had been at least a little part of my motivation.

  “I know that; that’s why I’m here. I figured that you two would have to dig into this, so I thought I might give you a little head start.”

  “What makes you think we’re going to investigate?” I asked as innocently as I could manage.

  “Let’s not kid ourselves here. In the eyes of a lot of folks, you two should be at the top of my suspect list. Barry threatened to sue you both and take away the diner the night before he dies in a fire at his diner. That’s motive enough in most people’s minds.”

  “What about yours?” Moose asked him warily.

  “I’m still looking at all of my options, but I’m pretty sure that neither one of you had anything to do with it.”

  Somehow it was reassuring to hear that. “Thanks for having faith in us,” I said.

  Sheriff Croft just shrugged. “Just so you’ll both know, I’ll deny it if you tell anybody that I said it. I just think that you both deserve a fair shake on this one, and I know standing on the sidelines and waiting for me to solve this case isn’t either one of your styles. Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

  “You know we can’t make any promises like that,” Moose said with a smile. I wasn’t all that certain that it was an appropriate response, but ap
parently the sheriff didn’t have any problem with it.

  “Remember, if you find something that might be useful to my investigation, I expect to hear about it immediately,” he said. It was the perfect opportunity for my grandfather and me to come clean, but we were saved from making that particular decision when he got a call on his radio. “Sorry, but I’ve really got to run now.”

  After he was gone, Moose looked at me intently. “You were about to tell him what we found, weren’t you?”

  “I was considering it,” I admitted.

  “Chances are that was what his call was about. He’ll find out everything that we know soon enough. The one good thing is that at least we can stop guessing about who was in that building when it caught fire.”

  “We still don’t know if it was intentional murder, though,” I said.

  “The fire chief clearly thought it was,” Moose said.

  “Should I ask Martha to take my shift so we can start digging around and try to find out?”

  “At this point I guess that it’s not a bad idea. Victoria, it won’t do us any good thinking that what happened to Barry was just an accident,” he said. “You know that my wife is always happy to help out at the diner, and this is important. We need to get to these folks before the police intimidate them all so much that they shut up and stop talking to anyone. If they don’t realize they are suspects yet, we might just be able to get something useful out of them.”

  “That sounds like a plan. I’ll call Martha, and you go tell Greg and Mom what we’re up to,” I said.

  Moose started to go inside, but then he paused for a second at the door. “I wasn’t going to do anything without you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I said with the warmest smile I had. “Sorry I teased you a little before.”

  “No doubt I had it coming,” my grandfather said with a laugh. “If not for that, then surely for something else. Make that call, I’ll spread the word inside, and then we can get cracking.”