by Jessica Beck
“No one knew that we were stowing an ice sculpture in our freezer the day you murdered Howard Lance. Your drawings looked much more like the sculpture than actual swans, so I knew that you’d been in that freezer at the time of the murder.”
“Well, I’ll be. I never even realized what I was doing,” he said. “Don’t you worry, though. I’ll take care of that as soon as I get back to my office.”
“I told you the truth,” I said as some water slipped into my mouth. I choked on the brown filthy sludge, and spit most of it out. “The least you can do is come clean with me.”
“I’m afraid your days of being clean are over,” he said, chuckling a little as he did. Bob looked around, but evidently, no one else was out braving the elements in the middle of this storm, at least not on the shortcut I’d taken.
“It will have to be quick, but I’ll give you the highlights. Howard Lance came to me first with his little extortion plot, and I immediately saw it for the opportunity it was. He was a bit of a bungler, but I convinced him that I’d figure out a way to make us both rich.”
“Is the auto repair business that bad?” I asked him.
“It’s okay, but it’s never been enough, you know? Anyway, Howard decided to get cute and double-cross me. He stole my own receipt from my office, and told me I wouldn’t get it back until we finished our business arrangement. Cynthia paid up, but everybody else was being a lot more stubborn than she was. It was falling apart fast, so I figured out that the only person who could link me to the mess was Howard himself. He had to go, and after I took care of him, I reclaimed what was rightfully mine. The money was already gone, though.” Bob seemed particularly unhappy about that development.
“But why kill him at our diner?” I asked. Was that the sound of water rushing toward us? I knew that gullies could fill up quickly during storms, and this was turning out to be a doozy. Maybe it would be strong enough to sweep Bob away as well. That was the only way I was going to have a fighting chance.
“I was going to kill him in the alley to make you all look guilty, but just before he got there for our little ‘meeting,’ I checked the back door on a whim and found that it was unlocked. When Howard showed up, I told him that I’d found the real receipt for the diner inside, and that if we had that, we’d own you people. He believed me, and when I peeked inside, the kitchen was deserted. I lured him into the freezer, mostly so we’d be out of sight from the cursed window pass-through. At first I was going to lock him in and be done with it, but who knows how long it would have taken him to freeze to death? It was too risky, so when Howard leaned forward to look for your receipt, I took care of him.”
“That was an awfully big risk,” I said as the rushing water grew louder.
“Hey, I did what I had to do. Anyway, that’s it. I’m sorry to have to do this, Victoria. I’ve always liked you, but this just can’t be helped.”
I fought him with the last bit of energy I had, but he had his full weight on me, and the positioning made it impossible for me to fight back.
It looked as though I was about to die.
Chapter 17
I wasn’t just going to give up, though, no matter how hopeless the situation seemed to be. With everything I had left, I struggled to hold my head above the water around me. I wasn’t fighting Bob anymore. I was struggling against the rising water.
Steadily, resolutely, almost as though it were all happening in slow motion, my head went lower and lower into the water. My ears were under, and as it crept up my cheeks toward my nose and mouth, the sounds around me took on a surreal feel, as though the world was being muted.
And then, as suddenly as a lightning strike, Bob’s full weight was off me and I was able to raise my head again. It was disorienting at first, but I finally managed to sit up when I heard Greg’s voice as he held my head against his chest.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said softly, rocking me against his chest.
“I got through on the phone after all?”
“It took me a few minutes to figure out that you were saying Briar Road,” Greg admitted. “I called the sheriff’s office, and they patched me through to him and Moose. We got here at nearly the same time. Moose and the sheriff took care of Bob, so I could get to you. Did he hurt you?”
I felt the bruising on my shoulders and chest where his knees had pinned me down, and the water still in my ears. My back ached from the impact on the ground, and my stomach was strained from where the seatbelt had bitten into me.
But I was still alive, and that was more than I had any right to expect.
“You know what? I’ve never been better in my entire life,” I said as I hugged him fiercely.
“Let’s get you up and out of here,” Moose said.
“We’d better wait for the paramedics,” Sheriff Croft said as he put one hand on my shoulder.
“What do you think, Victoria?” Greg asked me softly.
“Better safe than sorry,” I said as I heard the sirens of the ambulance coming closer. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could even stand with the help of three strong men there. “I don’t know what I would have done without you all,” I said.
“I’m just glad you didn’t have to find out,” Greg said, stroking my muddy hair.
The sheriff knelt down and said softly, “I owe you one, Victoria. You managed to hang on until we got here, and you figured this entire mess out before I did.”
“That’s because you didn’t have all the clues that I did.”
“You weren’t holding back on me, were you?” he asked as he looked sternly at me.
I shook my head slightly, and that’s when I felt a major headache coming on. “Let me ask you something, Sheriff. Would you have known what drawings of swans meant?”
“Swans? No, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Did you hit your head when you went down?”
Greg got it, though, and almost immediately. “Bob was in the freezer. That’s the only way he would have seen the ice sculpture, and that’s how you figured out that he had to be the killer.”
“I knew there was a reason I married you,” I said with a smile.
“You mean you love me for my mind and not my rugged good looks?” he asked, grinning down at me.
“Let’s just say that I went for the package deal,” I said.
“Victoria, I need to get a statement from you, the sooner the better,” the sheriff said as the EMTs approached.
“Can it wait until she gets checked out first?” Moose asked.
The sheriff looked at me, and then at my husband. “That will be fine. You coming with me, Moose? There’s only going to be room for the two of them in the ambulance.”
“In a second,” he said, and then turned back to me.
“I’m so sorry about your truck,” I said. “How bad is it?”
“Oh, it’s completely totaled,” he said with a dismayingly broad grin.
“I thought you’d be upset,” I said.
“Victoria, you’re more important to me than a thousand trucks, and a hundred diners, all of them with my name on them. I love you, kiddo.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
That was about all the time I had for conversation as the EMTs moved in and got me strapped to a stretcher. I thought that it was a bit of overkill, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse the attention.
I wasn’t sure which felt better, finishing the rigorous exam and finally being able to clean myself up, or being surrounded by my family. Dad nearly cracked my ribs when he hugged me, and Martha wouldn’t stop crying, even after learning that I was safe.
Then, something occurred to me. “If you’re all here, who’s running the diner? Surely you didn’t leave it in Ellen and Jenny’s hands.”
“We shut the place down for the rest of the day,” Greg said.
I sat up on the examining room bed wearing the scrubs the hospital had loaned me and looked at my family. “As much as I love you all being here, you’ve completely
lost your minds. Go back and open up. I’m fine.”
“Can I at least stay here with you?” Greg asked.
I was about to speak when Moose said, “Sure you can. I’ve been itching to get back on the grill for a while now.” He looked at my dad. “What do you say, son? Care to lend me a hand?”
“I’d like that,” he said, and I watched with delight as Moose put his arm around his son.
“What about me?” my mother asked. “I like to cook, too.”
“All three of us will do it,” Moose said with a booming laugh.
“I’ll take the register,” Martha said, and we were all surprised yet again by her willingness to return to her former duties at the diner.
“Then let’s stop lollygagging around here and get back to work,” Moose said.
They each took turns saying goodbye, and after they were gone and I’d given my statement to Sheriff Croft, Greg asked, “Are you ready to go home?”
I nodded as they made me get into a wheelchair before they’d allow me to leave. “I want to grab a quick shower and change, and then I’d like to go back to the diner, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Mind? I doubt I could keep you from the place even if I tried.”
I touched his hand lightly as I said, “You understand, don’t you?”
“Hey, home is where the heart is,” Greg said, “and for us, that’s The Charming Moose.”
And that, among a thousand other reasons, was why I loved my husband as much as I did.
Home, The Charming Moose, was exactly where I needed to be.
If you enjoyed A Chili Death, be sure to try the next in the series,
A Bad Beef, COMING SOON!
Chapter 1
It’s important to understand that we had to fire Wally Bain, and if that made us suspects when he was murdered the next day, we had no way of knowing it at the time. The Charming Moose prided itself on providing good diner food at a fair price to the folks of Jasper Fork, North Carolina, and Wally had not lived up to his part of the bargain in supplying us with fresh fruits and vegetables from his farm when they were in season.
Sheriff Croft had that ‘tough lawman’ look on his face when he walked into The Charming Moose. Dressed in his police uniform, he took off his cap as soon as he came in.
“Victoria, I need to know about the fight you had with Wally Bain yesterday.”
“What happened, did he come crying to you about it?” I asked. “You should have seen the last load of spinach he brought us. It was wormy!” The season for Wally’s supply schedule was just about finished, and we hadn’t been happy with his offerings for months. We were on a yearly contract with him, and this delivery had been the last straw.
“So, did you fire him?”
“Technically, we told him that we weren’t renewing his contract for next season, but yeah, we fired him.”
“How’d he take it?” the sheriff asked.
“About what you’d expect from him,” I said. “He wasn’t happy about it, and when he started yelling at me, Greg and Moose came running.”
“So, the three of you ganged up on him?”
What was the sheriff’s problem today? He was on edge, something that usually couldn’t be used to describe him. “Is he saying someone hit him? We never laid a finger on the man, and if he told you otherwise, he’s a liar. Bring him in here, and I’ll say that to his face.”
“I’m sorry to say that I can’t do that,” the sheriff said. “Someone murdered him on his farm sometime between midnight and noon.”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
A Bad Beef, COMING SOON!