“You’ve got yourself a date,” I said as we walked inside.
“Then I’m a happy man,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you pick the movie tonight?”
We usually took turns, and neither one of us ever forgot who was next in line. “It’s your turn, though.”
“What can I say? I’m feeling magnanimous. Besides, you’ve had a harder day than I have. Just take it easy on me, okay?”
“Don’t worry. If I pick a chick flick, it will be one you like,” I said.
“That’s all I’m asking,” Greg said. I made some popcorn and we put in a movie, something light and frothy that helped take my mind off murder. Many times I loved my movies like I did my books, preferring gentle escapes rather than dramatic reminders of how cruel the world could be. If I wanted realism, I’d watch the news. What I liked was something that took me out of my world into one where light, love, and laughter prevailed. Greg tended to enjoy action-adventure movies, and I watched them willingly enough with him, but I knew that on occasion he enjoyed my choices just as much. Life was hard enough without injecting a little joy and laughter into it now and then, and one thing was certain. I never felt weighted down after watching or reading something gentle that offered me a few smiles along the way, some tender moments, and a conclusion that satisfied the romantic in me.
By the time we finished our movie, I’d forgotten all about Barry Jackson’s murder. There would be time enough to tackle that again tomorrow.
Tonight, I just wanted to relish what a wonderful life I had.
“Chief Yates, what brings you by so bright and early?” I asked the fire chief the next morning a little after six AM. “You’re usually more of a dinner customer than a breakfast one.”
“To be honest with you, I didn’t sleep much last night,” he said. “Let’s start with coffee, and go from there.”
“I’m sorry that you had a rough night,” I said as I filled up a cup for him and slid it his way. “Anything in particular I can do to help? I know I’m not a bartender, but I can still listen to my customers’ woes.”
“It’s the fire,” the chief said after he took a sip of coffee.
“I’m sure it’s got to be tough on you,” I said sympathetically. “Every time it happens, it must take a little out of you.”
“Honestly, I never minded the fires themselves in the past. They’ve just been something that had to be controlled and contained, you know? I always thought of what we did as noble, you know? Does that sound too corny this early in the morning?”
“It’s not corny any time of day or night,” I said. “What you do is noble.”
“Maybe, but when we find a body, it takes all of that out of the equation. There’s nothing honorable about recovering bodies.”
The poor man looked tortured by what he’d found. “I don’t agree,” I said.
“Why not?” Was that a glimmer of hope in his eyes?
“Just think about how haunting it would be to the victims’ families if you never found their remains. They’d be troubled by the absence the rest of their lives. At least this way there’s some kind of closure.”
“That’s true,” he said. “I had a cousin who went missing, and it took seven years to declare him dead, even though just about everyone suspected that he went fishing in the ocean and never made it back to shore. His poor wife didn’t just have his absence to deal with, either. Everything was up in the air legally as well. It would have been a blessing if we could have found him, that’s for sure.” He stared into his coffee for a few moments, and then the chief added, “Not that there was any danger that Barry’s body wouldn’t be discovered. He was found sitting at his desk, about as obvious a place as we could have looked for him.”
“Do you think he was placed there on purpose?” I asked.
Chief Yates looked surprised by the question. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose it could have played out that way. One thing’s certain. Nobody was trying to hide the fact that Barry was dead.”
I thought about what he’d just said for a second, and I realized just how true it was. Whoever had set the fire at the bakery had clearly wanted Barry Jackson’s body found. Did that mean that the killer was someone who would directly inherit from the victim? If so, that would put Barry’s brother, Mike, on the hot seat. But he wasn’t the only one. If Rob Bester had killed Barry to get to his land, he’d need Barry found fast as well. Then again, if Cliff Pearson had killed Barry to send a message to his other clients, he’d need a quick discovery, too. That line of thought did reduce our list of suspects by two, though. There’d be no reason Sandy Hardesty or Susan Proctor would care if Barry were ever found or not if they’d set that fire. It was definitely an angle to pursue, and while I wasn’t ready to write the ladies off quite yet, it did give me more reason to look into the men’s motives, alibis, and opportunities.
As soon as Moose showed up, we were going after the three men on our list first.
Later that morning, I was about to catch my grandfather up on my new theory about the arson/murder when I stopped abruptly.
He looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Go on. Finish the thought, Victoria.”
“Later,” I said as I pointed over his shoulder.
Sheriff Croft walked through the diner door, and he didn’t look happy.
“I need to talk to both of you right now,” he said sternly.
“Would you like a cup of coffee first?” I asked as I poured some in a cup and started to hand it to him.
“Victoria, I’m not here for your coffee,” he said. The sheriff glanced around the diner and spotted an empty booth that was a little isolated. “Over there should be fine.”
“I’m not sure I like the tone of your invitation,” Moose said. I put a hand on his arm and shook my head. This wasn’t the time for either one of us to be truculent.
“We’re happy to talk with you, though,” I said quickly before the sheriff could react to Moose’s comment. “Right, Moose?” I asked him pointedly.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. I had a rough night.” There was a bit of hesitation in his voice as he said it, but I had the feeling that he’d understood the need to pull back some.
“You’re not the only one. I understand, though,” the sheriff said as the three of us took our places in the booth, my grandfather and me on one side and Sheriff Croft on the other.
“I’ve got to admit, that was cute what you two did,” the sheriff said as he looked hard at both of us.
“What exactly are you referring to?” I asked him.
“Don’t play coy with me, Victoria. I know that it was the two of you.”
Moose started to say something, but I pinched his leg a little before he spoke to remind him that we needed to cooperate, at least for the moment. When he did speak, his tone of voice was mollified. “Sheriff, we really are baffled about the subject matter. What exactly was it that we were supposed to have done?”
“The secret drawer in Barry Jackson’s office,” he said. “Tell me that wasn’t the two of you, poking and prying where you don’t belong.”
“I resent that,” Moose said flatly.
“Resent it all you’d like. Just tell me that it isn’t true.”
“Sheriff,” I said, “even if we did find this mysterious drawer you’re talking about, why are you so upset about it? Would you have been able to find it on your own if someone hadn’t left it open for you?”
He looked sharply at me. “I’ll take it that is a confession, then.”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” I replied, allowing a little snap in my voice as well. Sometimes I got a little defensive when I was accused of something, especially when the accusation was based on the truth.
He’d had enough of our verbal sparring. “I’m going to ask you both straight out right here and right now. Did you open that drawer?”
I was weighing the best way to answer when my dear sweet direct grandfather said simply, “We did.”
“How did you
even know about it being there?” the sheriff asked, clearly a little surprised by my grandfather’s confession. “That wasn’t something you could just stumble across without having a clue that it was there in the first place.”
Moose grinned and mentioned the builder’s name who had disclosed the secret location to him.
The sheriff smiled a little as he shook his head. “Why am I not surprised? That man couldn’t keep a secret to save his own life.” The smile faded as he asked, “I need to know one more thing. Did you take anything from that drawer, anything at all?”
“No,” I said before Moose could. “Not a single thing.”
The sheriff frowned at his hands for a moment before he spoke again. “So, you’re trying to tell me that you stumbled across a pot of gold full of clues, and you didn’t do anything about it?”
“We took some photos, and I recorded the message Sandy left him,” I admitted.
“How did you manage to do that?” the sheriff asked, honestly interested in what I had to say.
“I took some photos with the camera in my phone,” I said.
“I suppose you recorded the answering machine message with it, too.”
I smiled at him. “I couldn’t figure out how to do that.”
“So then, what did you do?”
“I called my home answering machine and recorded it there,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ll give you credit. That was resourceful of you.”
“Sheriff, I assure you that Moose and I didn’t take a thing out of that drawer. We even left it open for you to find. Tell me you would have had a clue that it was there without us.”
“We might have found it,” the sheriff said grudgingly.
Moose wasn’t having that. “We all know that’s not true.”
“I guess what I’m really asking is why you didn’t call me when you found it,” the sheriff said, and it was clear there was a hint of hurt in his voice. So that was why he was angry. Sheriff Croft wasn’t necessarily upset that we’d found Barry Jackson’s stash.
He was unhappy that we hadn’t called him to tell him about it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was my fault.”
“Victoria, it was our decision,” Moose said, refusing to allow me to fall on my sword for the team.
“You should have called me,” the sheriff said softly.
“We thought you would find it faster than you did, but that’s no excuse,” I said as contritely as I could manage. “We’ll tell you everything in the future.”
He looked at Moose, and my grandfather nodded. “We will.”
That seemed to clear the air a little. “Good. Now tell me, what do you make of what you found there?”
He was actually asking us for our opinions on his case! I doubted he was just being polite; the sheriff wasn’t known for his manners. He was clearly just as overwhelmed by the flood of suspects as we were.
“We have some theories,” I admitted.
“There are plenty of those floating around,” the sheriff said. “Would you care to be a little more specific than that?”
I looked at Moose, who nodded slightly, and I started to tell Sheriff Croft everything that we’d been thinking, including my latest theory that whoever had killed Barry Jackson had wanted his body to be discovered, the quicker the better.
“Who knew that a baker could cause that many folks to want to see him dead?” the sheriff asked after Moose and I finished filling him in on our theories.
“He seemed to have more than his share of enemies, didn’t he?” I asked.
“It’s hard to believe,” the sheriff said. “So, what’s next on your agendas?”
I wasn’t about to hold back, not after the scolding we’d just received. I just hoped that my grandfather was okay with my disclosure. “We’re going to talk to Mike Jackson, Rob Bester, and Cliff Pearson,” I said. “Unless you’d rather we didn’t.”
“No, go ahead,” the sheriff said.
“Seriously?” Moose asked.
“Why not?” Sheriff Croft asked. “I’ve already spoken with them all this morning, and no one was in the mood to talk to me at all. Maybe you’ll be able to get something out of one of them that I can’t.”
I was about to say something when Moose cut me off. “We appreciate your confidence in us.”
“One thing, though,” the sheriff said seriously. “If you find out anything, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem to you, you share it with me, and I don’t mean tomorrow or the next day, either. Got it?”
“We do,” I said, and Moose nodded.
“Good. I’m glad we cleared the air,” Sheriff Croft said as he stood. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pair of ladies to interview this morning.”
“Good luck with them,” I said, and then the sheriff left The Charming Moose.
My grandfather and I continued to sit there after he was gone.
“Can you believe what just happened?” Moose asked.
“Which part, the scolding or his willingness to let us dig into Barry’s murder?”
“The scolding was expected, and don’t think he’s giving us a green light out of the goodness of his heart. He’s stumped, Victoria. That’s the only reason we’re getting some room to operate here.”
“I don’t care why he’s doing it, I’m just glad that we can dig without worrying about running afoul of the law.”
Moose grinned at me. “Afoul of the law? Have you been reading Nancy Drew again?”
I laughed and swatted at him playfully. “Move over, you big lug. I need to take care of a few things here before we start interviewing suspects again.”
“Happy to do it,” he said as he stood. “Don’t worry about coverage at the front. Martha’s already on her way.”
I smiled at my grandfather as I headed back to the kitchen to tell Mom what we were up to. Once my grandmother showed up, we could start digging into the murder a little more.
Hopefully this time we’d have a little more luck than we had so far.
But that was the thing about our investigations. No one could predict what the final trigger was that revealed the killer’s identity.
Until that moment came, we just had to do our best to ask as many questions as we could, follow every lead that came our way, and more important than anything, to stay alive.
Chapter 10
“I have an idea,” Moose said as we left the diner half an hour later. “Since the sheriff has already spoken with the men we want to talk to today, why don’t we approach our investigation from another angle?”
“I’m listening,” I said. Sometimes Moose had great ideas that were just a little too unorthodox for ordinary law enforcement officers, but they almost always paid off whenever we pursued them ourselves.
“We need to speak with the people closest to our suspects before we tackle them again,” Moose said.
“Do you mean like their family members?” I wasn’t exactly sure how that was going to work, since, as far as we knew, Mike Jackson had lost his last remaining relative when Barry had died in the fire.
“No, I was thinking more along the lines of proximity,” Moose explained. “We can try interviewing the business owners around Rob Bester’s business, folks who live near Mike Jackson, and anybody we can come up with who might be doing business with Cliff Pearson.”
“Moose, do you honestly believe that we could know anybody who might have anything to do with Cliff’s business?”
“Victoria, people get in financial trouble all of the time. I’ve got a hunch that at least a few of our customers here at the diner owe Cliff money.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “You never borrowed money from him, did you?”
“Never,” he said flatly. “I’m surprised you even had to ask.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said, quickly apologizing.
“Don’t let it bother you,” my grandfather said as he patted my hand. “As a matter of fact, I got into a ti
ght spot when I first opened this place, and I’m ashamed to admit that I had to borrow from someone a lot worse than Cliff Pearson.”
“Moose, you didn’t,” I said.
“I’m afraid that I did. Believe me, I was desperate when I went to Martha’s dad and asked him for a short-term loan. It was one of the worst things I ever had to do in my life.”
“Seriously? Why was that so bad? My great-grandfather was a warm and fuzzy puppy, at least what I remember about him.”
“That’s because he liked you,” Moose said with a grimace.
“How could anyone not like you?” I asked with my broadest grin.
“I know, right? It never did make sense to me, either. After all, I’m a likeable fella.”
I knew some folks in Jasper Fork who might disagree with that assessment, but I wasn’t about to bring up any names. “Then again, you did marry the man’s only daughter.”
“True enough,” my grandfather said. “It was sin enough in his eyes, that’s for sure.” Moose slapped his hands together and added, “Let’s forget about my dark past and focus on our current investigation. What do you think of my idea?”
“I think it’s golden, and for what it’s worth, I fully approve of you,” I said as I kissed his cheek.
“It’s something I count on every day,” he said with a smile as we left the diner in pursuit of new information about our pool of suspects.
“So, who do we tackle first?” I asked Moose as we got into his pickup truck.
“Well, the business folks we need to talk to might not be open yet,” he said as he glanced at his watch, “and I’ll have to make a few calls before I know who to tackle about Cliff Pearson.”
“So Mike Jackson it is,” I said. “I can’t imagine anyone killing their own brother.”
“Unfortunately, it’s been happening since Cain and Abel,” he said wistfully.
“Are you talking about your own brother?” I asked him as he drove to Mike Jackson’s apartment complex. I had met my great uncle Martin only once, for my great-grandmother’s funeral. As a matter of fact, I’d been startled as a child to find out I even had a great uncle.
A Burned Out Baker: Classic Diner Mystery #7 (The Classic Diner Mysteries) Page 9