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

by Beck, Jessica

  “How did he take that?” Moose asked.

  “How do you think he took it?” Jasper asked, that wicked smile reappearing for a moment. “That’s when he left me alone and started going after Barry.”

  “How did the baker react to Rob’s proposal?” I asked.

  Evidently I’d gone too far. Jasper stared at me for a full ten seconds, and then he said, “If you want to know the answer to that, you’re going to have to ask Rob. Now, if you two don’t mind, I have a store to run, and a customer waiting to pay.”

  “That’s okay, Jasper,” Calvin Grishabor said. “Take your time. I’m in no hurry.”

  “Did anyone ask you for your opinion, Calvin?” Jasper asked.

  Moose and I got the not-so-subtle hint. “Thanks for your time, Jasper.”

  “If I could think of a way to charge you for it, I would have done it a long time ago,” Jasper said. He must have thought that he was the wittiest man ever born, because he started cackling insanely at his own joke.

  I happily followed Moose out of the store. “That guy is seriously nuts,” I said once we were on the sidewalk out front.

  “He’s not nearly as crazy as he seems to be,” Moose said. “That always was his favorite act.”

  “Then he deserves an award for it if he’s just pretending,” I said. “The real question is can we believe what he just told us?”

  “Victoria, Jasper ended up buying your cookies in the end, remember? Don’t you think it’s time you dropped that particular grudge? It’s not very becoming.”

  My grandfather had more beefs than the cattlemen’s association, so he had a lot of nerve chastising me for one of mine. Then again, he was probably right. “Okay, consider it dropped. I just have one question for you, though.”

  “Fire away,” he said.

  “How exactly did you persuade him to buy those cookies?”

  Moose frowned. “It wasn’t my proudest moment, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Now I want to know more than ever,” I said. “Come on, share.”

  Moose sighed, and then he explained, “I told him that if he didn’t buy your cookies, I’d make sure he wouldn’t be eating anything that didn’t come through a straw for a good long time.”

  “My hero,” I said as I grabbed my grandfather’s arm.

  “I was a bully about it, and I’m not very proud of the way I behaved,” Moose said, “but nobody crosses my favorite granddaughter, not then and not now, either.”

  I kissed his cheek as thanks, and then I pointed to Rob Bester, who was striding quickly toward us. “It looks like we’ve got some company.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t mind chatting with Rob a little about all of this money he suddenly has.”

  “Don’t you think he inherited it like he told Jasper?” I asked.

  “I knew Rob’s grandpa. That man never had more than two nickels to rub together his entire life. Wherever Rob got that money, it wasn’t from Willie Monroe.”

  “So, how should we handle this?” I asked as Rob neared us.

  “Let’s just come out and ask him,” Moose said.

  “Ask him what?” Rob asked when he got close enough to us to have a conversation.

  “Where’d you get the money you were trying to buy Flour Power with, Rob? And don’t try to tell me that Willie left it to you. The man stayed dead broke all of his life.”

  “That’s just what he wanted everyone to believe,” Rob said with a smile. “He salted away half a million dollars over the course of his life, and he left every penny of it to me.”

  “Half a million? That’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t even buy his bread at the grocery store; it had to be at the outlet where they sold old cakes and pies.”

  “How do you think he saved so much? He never spent a dime of what he made if he could help it.”

  “I just don’t believe it,” Moose said.

  “You can check with the courthouse if you don’t believe me.”

  “Take it easy,” Moose said softly, a hint of the danger to come if there ever was one. “There’s no reason to get upset.”

  “Come on, boys, you’re both pretty,” I said as I stepped in between them. While it was true that Rob was quite a bit younger than my grandfather, Moose was still pretty wiry, and I’d never known him to back away from a fight. “Okay, Rob, that’s wonderful that your grandfather was so thrifty, but that still doesn’t explain why you want to buy the businesses on either side of you.”

  “So, you talked to Jasper about me, did you?” Rob asked me with a disgusted look on his face.

  “It came up in our conversation,” I said. Moose had backed off a few paces, but he still wasn’t talking, which was maybe not all that bad a thing.

  “I just bet it did,” Rob said.

  “It still begs the question of why,” I asked him.

  He waved a hand around him. “The honest truth is that I’m not satisfied with this little store,” he said. “I want to tear it all down and build something truly spectacular.”

  “Just for selling tires?” Moose asked.

  If Rob was offended by the question, he didn’t show it. “Not just tires. I’m talking service bays for automobile repairs, and a new car lot on the other side. I’d be a full-service place, something that really mattered.”

  “Half a million wouldn’t be enough to build those dreams,” Moose said.

  “Maybe not, but I could get a good start on them,” Rob said. “Once I get the land the bakery was on, I’ll be on my way.”

  “There’s something else that you might not have considered,” Moose said. “Mike isn’t going to be able to sell you Barry’s land until the murder case is solved.”

  “What makes you think that?” Rob asked my grandfather.

  “Simple. It’s because you can’t profit from murder in this country,” Moose said.

  “But I didn’t kill Barry Jackson,” Rob said.

  “Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. Who knows? But what if Mike did it? That would still tie up the land for next to forever.”

  “He didn’t do it, either,” Rob said, though he sounded a little less confident of it now.

  “If he didn’t, then who did?” I asked.

  Rob looked to the left and then to the right before he spoke again. “There’s someone else you haven’t taken into account, someone with dark ties around town.”

  “Are you talking about the money Barry owed Cliff Pearson?” I asked sweetly.

  Rob looked shocked that I already knew about his big revelation. “How did you know about that?”

  Before I could answer, Moose said, “There’s a lot we know about what’s been going on around town lately, Rob.”

  “Yeah? Like what?” He seemed keenly interested in what my grandfather had to say, but if that was the case, his wish was going to go unfulfilled.

  “If I tell you that, I might hamper the official investigation.”

  “Since when were you two official anything?” Rob said with a slight grin.

  “As a matter of fact, we had a conference with Sheriff Croft at the diner about this case this morning,” Moose said with a smug little smile.

  “Well, either way, I’m not going to let it stop my plans,” Rob said. “After all, I’ve done nothing wrong. If I can’t expand my business here, perhaps it’s time to pick up and move somewhere else.”

  “Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Moose answered.

  Rob looked around, and his gaze centered on the burned-out bakery. “You know what? The more I think about it, the better I like it. That could have just as easily been my shop burned to the ground.” Rob shivered a little as he said it, and then he added, “I don’t even want to think about that. Poor old Barry. He deserved better than what he got in the end.”

  “We can at least all agree on that,” Moose said, and then he turned to me. “Come on, Victoria. We have more work to do.”

  “It looks like we got a hit,” Moose said when he glanced at his phone as we got into his truck.
/>   “What are you talking about?”

  “One of my nibbles bit,” Moose explained. “I’ve got a message on my phone from Sam Brody.”

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  My grandfather looked at me before he started the engine. “Victoria, Sam borrowed money from Cliff Pearson, and he’s willing to talk to us about it.”

  “Sam?” I asked incredulously. Sam Brody ran an ice cream place in town, and my husband, Greg, and I went there every now and then. I couldn’t imagine the benign old man needing to borrow money from someone like Cliff Pearson.

  “Sam,” Moose confirmed. “Listen, he’s willing to talk to us, but we can’t be judgmental at all, okay?”

  “Sure. That’s fine with me,” I said. “How did you know that he owed Cliff money?”

  Moose tapped his temple. “It’s truly amazing all of the things I know, young lady.”

  “I just bet it is,” I said, smiling ever so slightly.

  Moose started the truck, and as he pulled out, I asked him, “Are we going to the ice cream shop?”

  “No, he’s not open today. He told me that he’d meet us at his house.”

  “What are we waiting for, then?”

  As we drove to Sam’s place on the outskirts of town, I asked Moose, “Why do you think Sam needed to borrow money from Cliff? Does he gamble? Or is it worse than that?”

  “Does it really matter?” Moose asked.

  “It does to me,” I said.

  My grandfather shrugged. “I don’t suppose it will hurt to tell you. Sam’s granddaughter needed an operation, and her folks couldn’t afford it. Sam offered to pay, but the bank wouldn’t let him take out another mortgage on his house or his shop, so he did the only thing he could think of; he went to Cliff.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “What, that he borrowed money from a loan shark?”

  “No, that his granddaughter needed an operation. How is she now?”

  My grandfather grinned at me. “She’s doing fine, the last I heard,” he said.

  “That’s good. At least it was worth it.”

  “It’s not up to us to say whether it was one way or the other.”

  I studied Moose a moment before I spoke. “You would have done the same thing for me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Victoria, there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do to make you well if you were sick, as long as it was in my power.”

  “Right back at you,” I said with a smile. To my grandfather, and to me as well, our family was everything.

  When we pulled up in front of Sam’s place, my grandfather frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “That’s not Sam’s car,” he said as we slowly got out of the truck.

  “That’s right,” a voice said from the shadows of the deck. “It belongs to me.”

  I looked at where the voice had come from and saw Cliff Pearson moving toward us, and from his expression, it appeared that he wasn’t all that surprised to see us there at all.

  Chapter 12

  “You were expecting someone else?” Cliff asked us as he reached us. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Moose asked him, taking a step forward as though he were trying to shield me from the loan shark. “Where’s Sam?”

  “What do you think I’m doing here? Sam called me, of course.” I had some seriously dark thoughts about the ice cream man at that moment, but before I could speak, Cliff continued, “Don’t blame him. It’s one of the requirements that I ask of all my friends.”

  “Is that what you call your victims?” I asked him heatedly.

  Cliff studied me for a moment before he spoke, and I could feel the anger radiate in the man’s gaze. “I don’t make anyone come to me. They all do it of their own free will.”

  “When there’s nowhere else for them to go, maybe,” I said.

  “Then thank goodness that I’m there, right? Victoria, you just said it yourself. What would they do without me?”

  “And you help them all out of the goodness of your heart, is that what you’re saying?” Moose asked him pointedly.

  “I’m a businessman,” Cliff said with a shrug. “I deserve a return on my investment, just like a bank does.”

  “Maybe so, but I’m willing to bet that your return is a lot higher than theirs,” I said.

  “Have you ever looked at a bank’s year-end report? They make me look like an amateur.”

  “We’re not here to debate the morality of your business,” Moose said. “We’re looking for a killer.”

  “I told you before, I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “And yet we don’t believe you,” I said. “Shocking, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve had about enough out of you, Victoria,” he said as he raised one bony finger and pointed it straight at my heart.

  I started to reply when Moose put a hand in the air. As much as it went against my nature, I decided to keep my comments to myself, at least for now.

  “Let’s keep this civil, shall we?” Moose asked him. “Cliff, why are you here?”

  “I told you to leave me and my business alone when you dropped in at the bowling alley. Surely you haven’t forgotten our conversation so soon.”

  “We remember it,” Moose said. “But that doesn’t mean that we agreed to do anything you requested.”

  “I can see that,” he said. “I’m a fair man, no matter what you two might think. I’m willing to give you one last warning to butt out. This is it. The next time you hear from me, it won’t be nearly so pleasant for either one of you. Do I make myself clear?”

  “We understand what you’re saying. Now you need to listen to me. If you raise a finger against me, my granddaughter, or any member of my family for that matter, there’s no place you can hide that I won’t find you, and you won’t like it when I do.”

  He shrugged slightly, and then Cliff Pearson said, “That’s all that I came to say to you.” He walked past us, and he was close enough for me to smell the expensive cologne he was wearing before he got into his car and drove away.

  I hadn’t realized that I was holding my breath until he was gone. “That was intense,” I said.

  Moose shrugged. “I’ve dealt with bullies before. The only way to respond to them is to not back down.”

  “What if he calls your bluff?” I asked my grandfather as we got back into his truck.

  “Who said I was bluffing?” Moose replied, and we drove mostly in silence for a few miles.

  If war had just been declared, I liked our odds. After all, we had Moose on our side, and that man was a force of nature, especially when he was angry.

  I just hoped that it didn’t come to that.

  Our lives were, for the most part, peaceful and tranquil, and I hated the thought of anything intruding on that. Then again, I knew in my heart that Moose was right.

  If we let one bully back us down from our investigation with a threat, then we might as well not even dig into the crimes that occurred around us.

  And that was something that I absolutely would not stop, at least not as long as me, or any member of my family, was in danger in any way, shape, or form.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked Moose.

  “I thought we could swing by the diner,” my grandfather said.

  “I doubt that we’re going to find any clues there,” I said.

  “Who said anything about looking for clues? I thought we might catch lunch.”

  It had been quite a while since breakfast, but we needed to solve this murder as soon as possible. “Can we really afford to take time off to eat?”

  He looked at me askance as he drove. “Victoria, we’re not going to be able to do ourselves any good at all if we’re starving. Besides, I think better on a full stomach, don’t you?”

  “There’s not much that I don’t do better when I’m full,” I admitted.

  “So then, a quick bite it is.”

  “And after that?” I asked him.
>
  “Then it’s straight back to crime fighting, I promise.”

  It would be good to see Greg again, if only for a few minutes. I was spoiled, and I knew it. Most married couples didn’t get to see each other during the workday, and that was one of the reasons that I loved running The Charming Moose. It didn’t hurt that my husband was one of the best grill jockeys in the county, and that he was usually never more than a few steps away from where I was working.

  “Okay, that should be acceptable. After all, I could eat something right about now,” I conceded.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, and a few minutes later, we pulled into the diner parking lot.

  We didn’t quite make it inside before someone approached us, though.

  It appeared that lunch was going to have to wait after all.

  “Sam, what are you doing here?” Moose asked the ice cream man as he approached us.

  “I had to come by and apologize,” the older man said as he looked at us in turn. “I didn’t want to call Cliff, but I really didn’t have any choice.”

  “It’s okay, Sam,” Moose said. “We understand.”

  “How’s your granddaughter doing?” I asked him.

  Sam glanced quickly over at Moose. “You told her?”

  “It came up in conversation,” my grandfather answered.

  “I wish you hadn’t said anything,” Sam replied solemnly.

  “Yeah, well, there are a lot of things that I wish for.”

  Sam just shrugged, and then he turned to me. “She’s going to be fine. Victoria, I know what you must think of me, but I didn’t really have any choice.”

  I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “I think it’s wonderful what you did for her.”

  Sam blushed a little from the attention, but he looked pleased nonetheless. “Well, I just hope that I can pay Cliff off soon.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked.

  “No, but thanks for offering. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you both that I was sorry.”

  Moose put a meaty hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. See you later.”