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

by Beck, Jessica

  “He was a terror to me growing up, and I swore that I’d have nothing to do with him once I was out on my own.”

  “What did he do to you?” I asked. Moose’s voice had gone cold at the memory of past events. It was a side I rarely saw of my grandfather.

  He thought in silence for the longest time, and finally Moose shook his head, as though he were trying to dispel bad memories. “Let’s just say that my life has been a finer thing without him in it and leave it at that.”

  I knew not to comment further. My grandfather was devoted to his wife, his son, and me. He often said we were all the family he’d ever needed or wanted, and I took him at his word. Prying into his life with Martin wouldn’t do anyone any good. “So, what are we going to do, just start knocking on doors and asking folks questions?”

  “We have to be a little more subtle than that,” Moose said.

  I glanced at him and laughed. “I didn’t think subtlety was ever your specialty.”

  “I didn’t say that I knew how to go about it,” my grandfather conceded. “I just think we need to come up with a cover story. You’re good at that kind of thing. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Let me think about it while we drive,” I said.

  “Well, think fast. We’ll be at The Manor in a minute.”

  I considered different possibilities, and by the time Moose parked near the eight-unit complex on the outskirts of town, I had a plan.

  “So, what’s it going to be, granddaughter?”

  “We’re doing a background check on him,” I said.

  “For what purpose?”

  “It seems that Mike Jackson has applied for a new job that requires a certain level of security.”

  Moose looked at me skeptically. “You’ve met the man. What kind of job could that possibly be?”

  “I don’t know, we’ll probably need to be kind of vague. Do you still have that clipboard under your seat with the crossword puzzles on it?”

  My grandfather reached down under his seat and brought it out. I saw the newspaper crossword puzzle on top was halfway filled out. It amused me for some reason that my grandfather had used blue ink to work it. That fact alone proved just how much confidence he had in himself. “Are you going to ask them puzzle questions?” he asked as he handed it to me.

  I pulled the puzzles out and then rooted around in his dashboard for a minute.

  “If you tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to help,” Moose offered.

  “This should do nicely,” I said as I pulled out a few folded inspection sheets for the truck.

  “How does that help?”

  “These are going to be the forms we’re using for our questionnaire,” I said.

  Moose laughed. “Okay. We can give it a try, but how are you going to explain our attire? We’re both dressed a little casually for a pair of government workers, don’t you think?”

  “I’ll cover that once we knock on the first door,” I said, trying to show more confidence than I actually felt in my plan. I’d learned early on that if Moose and I acted as though we were entitled to do things, most folks went right along with us.

  I just hoped that it worked this time.

  “Hello, do you have a moment of time for us?” I asked as we knocked on the door beside Mike’s apartment. “We’re conducting personal interviews concerning your neighbor’s job application.”

  The pretty young woman somewhere in her early twenties answered the door with a puzzled expression on her face. “Why would you care about Mrs. Rosebaum, and who in their right mind would ever hire her? She’s got to be eighty years old.”

  “Actually, this is regarding Michael Jackson,” I said.

  “The dead singer?” she asked, now even more puzzled than before.

  “Your other neighbor,” I said patiently, pointing to his door.

  She nodded, finally putting the information together. “What do you want to know about him? Who are you, anyway?”

  “We’re with the government,” I said.

  “Okayyy,” she replied, looking at my faded jeans and Moose’s workboots.

  “You’ve noticed our clothing, haven’t you? Good. It’s a new policy we’re trying out to make people more receptive to speaking with us. On a scale of one to ten, one being completely uncomfortable and ten being happy to see us dressed this way, are you more or less at ease talking to us in casual clothing?”

  “Five, I guess,” she said, frowning still.

  “Very good,” I said as I pretended to note her response on the back of the truck’s inspection form. “Now, about Mr. Jackson.”

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “Is there anything you can tell us about him?” Moose asked, speaking for the first time.

  “He hits on me a lot, if that’s what you mean. The man won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Tell us more,” I said. If we could get her comfortable with us, we might be able to find out some things that Mike didn’t want us to know.

  “I mean, I guess he’s cute enough, but he’s like thirty or something. Ewww.”

  “Anything else?” Moose asked. I wasn’t sure the girl could hear it in his voice, but I knew that my grandfather was getting frustrated. It was time to push her a little harder.

  “We understand that his brother just died,” I said.

  The girl frowned again. “That’s what Mike told me this morning. He came over and said that he was going to be rich. As if that would change my mind about him. Well, maybe it would. A little, anyway. How rich do you think he’s going to be?”

  “What made him think he was going to be rich?” I asked.

  “He said he was inheriting a mint from his brother,” she said.

  “Did he mean the land the bakery was on?” Moose asked.

  “No, apparently Barry had something else that was worth more than that, and Mike can’t wait to cash it in.”

  This was brand-new information. It amazed me what men would say to impress women sometimes. “Did he give you any idea what it might be?”

  “He said it was his brother’s insurance policy, and now it was going to be his,” she said.

  I wasn’t aware that Barry had carried any insurance. Was Mike just doing some hollow bragging, or was there something else that we didn’t know about? “Did he go into any more detail than that?”

  “No,” she said. “I told him that I wasn’t interested, no matter how much money he had. Maybe that was a mistake. What do you think?”

  “You need to follow your heart,” Moose said. “Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?”

  She was about to speak when Mike Jackson’s door opened. I hadn’t counted on that, given all of the arrangements he had to make for his brother’s funeral. He was clearly on his way out, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw us. “What are you two doing here?”

  Before I could come up with a quick lie, the girl said, “They’re here asking questions about you.”

  He frowned as he looked at her. “What did they want, Mindy?”

  “They said you were applying for some big-deal job,” she said.

  “Well, they lied,” he said. “Mindy, do me a favor and give me a minute with them, would you?”

  “I don’t mind at all.” She started to go inside, and then she must have been having second thoughts about writing him off just yet. “When you’re finished with them, I just made a fresh pot of coffee, Mike.”

  “If I have time,” he said.

  Instead of putting her off, that seemed to spark her interest in him, or his newly promised money, even more.

  Once she was back inside, Mike said, “I don’t know what you two think you’re doing, but you’d better knock it off.”

  “We’re trying to figure out who killed your brother,” Moose said, the iron hard in his voice. “We’d think you’d want that, too.”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “That doesn’t explain why you’re both poking your noses around my business, t
hough, does it?”

  “Mike, the sooner we can eliminate you as a suspect, the sooner we can get on with the rest of our investigation,” I explained. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “Well, let me save you both the trouble. I didn’t kill my brother. Now go talk to someone else.”

  “But we’re not finished talking to you,” I said. “What’s this insurance policy we’re hearing about?”

  He looked at the closed door of the apartment next to his. “Mindy often doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but that’s never stopped her before.”

  “We weren’t aware that Barry had any insurance,” Moose said.

  “I don’t know if he did or not,” Mike said flatly.

  “That’s not what you told Mindy,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve said a lot of things to her over the past few months,” he said. “She acts like she’s not interested in me, but I know for a fact that she is. I thought if I hinted that I might be coming into some real money, she’d quit playing around.” Mike glanced at his watch, and then he added, “I don’t have time to stand around here talking to you. I’m late for an appointment.”

  “With Rob Bester?” I asked, taking a stab in the dark.

  “No, as a matter of fact, I’m headed over to the funeral home to make arrangements for Barry’s services.”

  I felt a little bad asking him such accusatory questions when he was going on that kind of mission, but our investigation couldn’t wait.

  “We won’t keep you, then,” I said.

  Mike started to walk away when Moose called out, “We’ll talk again later.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said as he disappeared.

  Moose whistled softly under his breath. “That man’s hiding something.”

  “I agree, but what?”

  “In the spirit of cooperation, you need to give the sheriff a call.”

  “Why, to tell him about what Mindy said?” I asked.

  “We need to find out if there’s an insurance policy the police don’t know about yet. It could be important, and besides, I’d really like to know.”

  I smiled as I pulled out my phone. “I wouldn’t mind knowing that myself.” I got the sheriff right away. “We just found out that Barry might have had an insurance policy, and Mike’s the beneficiary.”

  “Where did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Some girl named Mindy told us,” I admitted. “Is it true?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to uncover, and I’ve looked for one pretty hard,” he said. “Have you gotten anything else that might be useful?”

  “Hey, we just got started here,” I said.

  “Well, keep me in the loop,” he said, and then the sheriff hung up on me.

  “What did he say?” Moose asked me.

  “He’s not aware of any insurance policy Barry might have taken out, and he’s been investigating it pretty thoroughly.”

  “So, was Mike telling Mindy the truth, or was he just trying to impress her?”

  “I’ve got a hunch it was all for show,” Moose said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You saw her too, right?” Moose asked with a grin. “It wouldn’t be the first time a man lied to a pretty girl to gain favor with her.”

  “Have you ever done that in your long and seedy past?” I asked him with a grin.

  “As a matter of fact, I never had to,” Moose answered with a grin of his own. “So, should we talk to the famous Mrs. Rosebaum?”

  “I don’t see why not,” I said as I moved over to her door and knocked.

  Ten minutes later, we escaped with our lives. While Mrs. Rosebaum hadn’t noticed anything amiss about Mike Jackson, she did share a litany of her aches and pains with us. The only way we got out of there was when Moose suggested she get a full body scan at the hospital, which she readily believed was a great idea. Two other tenants weren’t home, or else they decided to ignore our knocks.

  “Well, that was less than productive,” Moose said as we got back into his truck.

  “Hey, you know as well as I do that’s what this business is about. You dig and dig, and most of what you uncover is worthless. That doesn’t mean that you still don’t have to do the legwork.”

  “I know. It’s just that I had such high hopes for solving this case quickly. After all, we found all of the clues we’ve been going on early on in this investigation.”

  “For all of the good that it’s done us,” I said. “Do you think the businesses we need to visit are open yet, or should we track down some leads about Cliff Pearson’s clients?”

  “I don’t see why we can’t do both,” Moose said. “Why don’t you sit in the truck, and I’ll make a few phone calls out here.”

  “Why can’t I hear who you’re going to call?” I asked. I hated being excluded from any part of our investigations.

  “Because I don’t want you to think any less of the folks I need to call in order to get more information. There’s no reason in the world that you should think badly about any of our customers.”

  “Moose, I’m not that judgmental,” I said.

  “Victoria, I wish that I didn’t know everything I do about some of our diners. Trust me, you don’t want to know some of the sordid things that I know.”

  “Okay, I can see that,” I said. He was right, too. I didn’t want to treat any of our customers any differently just because I knew things about what they’d done in the past, for whatever reason. Maybe when I got to be Moose’s age I’d be a little more forgiving than I was now. Besides, it was almost like a need-to-know basis, and I definitely didn’t need to know everything that my grandfather did.

  Moose talked for ten minutes, and I was about to wonder if he was ever going to finish when he finally hung up and got into the truck beside me.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “I have a few feelers out,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”

  I couldn’t get him to say anything more, though I tried.

  “Then it’s on to the businesses beside the burned-out bakery, then,” I said. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a little more luck there than we have so far.”

  “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” Moose said with a grin.

  Chapter 11

  “You want to talk to me about Barry Jackson? Sorry, but I make it a habit not to speak ill of the dead,” Jasper Jenkins said when Moose and I asked the plumbing supply shop owner about his neighbor.

  “How about Rob Bester, then?” Moose asked. He and Jasper had known each other forever, and we’d decided, or more appropriately, my grandfather had decided, that he be the one who did the talking with Jasper. I didn’t even fight him very hard on it. Jasper was on my bad side, and he had been since I’d been in the Girl Scouts. I could understand even then that not everybody liked our cookies, but when I saw him hiding inside as I rang his doorbell, he wouldn’t even get off the couch to talk to me. Moose had gone back with me later and Jasper had bought some cookies after all, but it had left a bad taste in my mouth ever since, and whenever I saw Jasper waddling around town, I called him Cookie Man under my breath. I knew that it wasn’t very mature of me. I was a grown woman, for goodness’ sake, and yet I still held that particular grudge.

  “He’s as bad as Barry was,” Jasper said.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Jasper, is there anybody in town that you like?”

  “I can tolerate your grandfather in small doses,” Jasper said.

  Moose shot me a look, and I decided to go back to my silence and let him continue. Otherwise, I knew that I was going to snipe at Jasper about those cookie sales long ago, and that wouldn’t do any of us any good at the moment.

  “Talk to us, Jasper,” Moose said. “We won’t repeat what you say to anybody else.”

  “What do I care who you tell?” Jasper snapped. A few folks inside the store were shopping for plumbing supplies, but after a quick glance in our direction, they went right back to their shopping. After all,
nobody wanted to get on Jasper’s bad side, as big as it was.

  “You want to know the truth?” Jasper finally asked, lowering the decibel level of his voice a little. “They were the worst neighbors a man could have.”

  “Why is that?” Moose asked.

  “When Barry first bought the bakery, he came around with a gift basket introducing himself. What a joke that was.”

  “I think it sounds nice,” I said, despite Moose’s earlier warning.

  “Yeah? Well, I hate all those sickeningly sweet treats, but especially cookies. I thought you already knew that, Victoria.”

  I was about to respond when my grandfather reached out and grabbed my arm. After a moment to compose myself, I said, “It was still thoughtful of him.”

  “Maybe, but it was the first and last time he tried to get on my good side. When his bakery started doing poorly, do you know who he blamed? Me, that’s who.”

  “Why would he do that?” Moose asked.

  “Because I wouldn’t let his overflow customers park in my lot. I even had one of them towed one time.” The malicious smile on his face was downright creepy. “That taught him a lesson, you can bet that it did.”

  “So, what do you have against Rob Bester?”

  “He thinks that he can buy my building just because he inherited some money from his grandpa. Well, I don’t mind telling you, he’s wrong!”

  “He did?” Moose asked. “When did that happen?”

  “Not more than a month ago,” Jasper said. “I told him when he came sniffing around that he’d have to kill me to get my place, and you know what the man said to me?”

  “What did he say?” Moose asked him.

  “He told me right where you’re standing that there were more ways to buy somebody out than going at them directly.”

  “What did he mean by that?” I asked, forgetting myself for a moment.

  “He had the nerve to tell me that if I wouldn’t sell, he knew someone who could give me a little nudge in the right direction,” Jasper said.

  “I bet that went over real well with you,” Moose said.

  “I told him that if he ever threatened me again, I’d make sure it was the last time he ever threatened anybody. I also told him that I don’t make threats; I just make promises that I always keep.”