Cozy Christmas Crimes - A Cozy Christmas Box Set

by Tonya Kappes

  “Do you mind my asking where you’re staying?”

  “The Inn at Key West, but I’m leaving Tuesday to go home.”

  Marilyn thought that the woman’s accent was a dead giveaway, but wanted to find out for sure. “Where’s home?” she asked casually, trying to make it sound like she was just having a friendly conversation.

  “Texas…Houston.”

  “That’s nice,” she nodded. “Well, safe travels!” Marilyn said goodbye and watched Tammy leave in a small rental car, wondering why she would have lied about staying until the ambulance came. What purpose could that possibly have served?

  Chapter 10

  Before heading home, Marilyn pulled out her cell phone. Tiara hadn’t called her back yet, but an idea occurred to her and she found another number on speed dial.

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah,” the voice on the end of the phone answered gruffly.

  “It’s Marilyn…Marilyn Hayes from SubLime Sweets.”

  “Hey, Ms. Hayes, has there been any break in the thing with Fergus yet?” the young man’s tone changed perceptibly when he found out that Marilyn wasn’t a cop or a reporter.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure there will be soon,” she lied smoothly, having no earthly idea.

  Marilyn listened to the silence on the other end.

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here.”

  “Can you tell me what you remember from yesterday? Every detail, no matter how small…” she pleaded.

  “I don’t remember much, just that guy falling over and everyone sort of panicking,” the young man admitted, apologetically.

  “So you’d never seen or met Fergus Downey before?”

  “Nope.”

  “Tell me what happened when you and your dad walked into the shop?”

  “Tiara was talking to a guy and a new lady was behind the counter when we walked back to look at the ovens.”

  “Then?” She prodded the taciturn young man, feeling as though she was having to pull teeth to get an answer out of him.

  “We could tell what the problem was almost right away. We opened the one of the ovens up, and it was an easy fix. That sometimes happens with older ones, you know? Then we checked a couple of other things just to be sure. We heard a woman scream something—blonde short hair, old…”

  To Joe’s young twenty-something mind Tammy obviously appeared old to him…maybe it was just her lack of style that aged her.

  “…and then someone yelled about calling nine-one-one and… then an ambulance came.”

  “Did you call the ambulance?”

  “No, someone else did.”

  “You saw someone else calling?” Marilyn clarified.

  There was a pause.

  “No, I didn’t see them but…I don’t know how I knew. Maybe I heard them or something. I mean, obviously someone called, because they showed up.”

  “So the young guy who is perpetually on his cell phone doesn’t use his phone to call for help?” Marilyn thought, kicking herself for being so judgmental. “Right, of course,” she agreed, not wanting to spook him. “Is your father there, by any chance?”

  “I can have him call you back,” Joe answered vaguely.

  “If he’s busy I can wait,” she persisted, determined.

  “No, he’s not here, he ran out for a part before our next call.”

  Marilyn’s brow furrowed in frustration. “Ok, then yes, have him call me as soon as he gets home, ok?”

  Something seemed a little off. Joe seemed like the most natural candidate to call 911, the young man always had his nose glued to his phone. But, maybe he just assumed that someone else was doing it. If he didn’t see the call being placed, then it had to be Susan, Tiara, or Drew who called, and Marilyn would swear that Tiara wouldn’t have left that out of her story. It had already been established that Drew had stayed beside Fergus the entire time, which left Susan as the only person who could have called 911, if Tammy and Joe were telling the truth.

  Chapter 11

  After speaking with Tammy, and then Joe, Marilyn walked back inside the police station. Before she went back to Bernard Cortland’s office, Marilyn took a seat in the waiting area and pulled out an old envelope and a pen from her purse, writing down some notes for herself to try and make sense of things.

  Poison?? Natural cause of death??

  What kind of Poison?

  Who called 911? Susan?

  Why not Joe with phone and where was Joe when T. walking to B Room?

  Tammy just appeared at that moment??

  Larry the repair man?

  Susan?

  Drew?

  Stranger? Random act of violence? Something totally unknown?

  She carried the list in her hand, and was going to go back to Detective Cortland’s office when the sergeant at the reception desk stopped her.

  “Ma’am, you’ll have to wait in this area. You need permission and an escort to go any further.”

  Marilyn had clearly raised the desk sergeant’s ire by running back to the interrogation room unannounced, the first time that she had come in that evening. Not wanting to make a nuisance of herself, she did as she was told and waited, trying hard not to let her impatience show, while he called Cortland. When the detective instructed him to escort her back, Marilyn tried to keep the triumph out of her polite smile.

  “Do you know what the poison is yet?” she blurted, without even bothering to greet the detective, when the sergeant left, closing Cortland’s door behind him.

  “Excuse me?” he frowned, confused.

  “You said it was a chemical compound. Fergus died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and the doctors noticed something weird, and it must have been traceable in his blood since that was the major tip off right?”

  “That’s not information that is divulged to civilians. Particularly civilians who have relatives that are persons of interest in the case,” Bernard informed her, leaning back in his chair. “You talk to Tammy when you tore off out of here?” he accused.

  Marilyn nodded, her mind bouncing around in several directions.

  “She says she stayed until the ambulance got there but I don’t think she did…and Joe didn’t call 911. He didn’t sound like the thought of making the call even crossed his mind,” she thought aloud.

  “People react strangely sometimes, you never know what they’re going to do in highly stressful situations,” Cortland shrugged. “The uniforms are done at your house now, I could drive you over there if you’d like,” he offered.

  Marilyn caught herself gazing into his eyes. He looked tired, but still focused and intense.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked, too exhausted to pull any punches.

  “No idea,” he shrugged again. “Maybe I’d like to solve the case, so Miami can stay out of my jurisdiction in the future.”

  Marilyn nodded.

  “Whatever works,” she sighed, rising to go.

  Chapter 12

  When Marilyn came home, Tiara was sitting on the couch in sweat pants and a well-worn college t-shirt, her hair wet and smelling of shampoo. She sat down next to her silent daughter, who refused to look at her. Picking up the remote, Marilyn put the movie that seemed to have captured the young woman’s attention entirely, on mute. Tiara glanced over and her mother could tell that she’d been crying.

  “Well, here we are,” Marilyn regarded her daughter with concern. “The local detective, the nice, good- looking one, says you probably need a lawyer, and I think he’s right.”

  Tiara pressed her lips together, tears welling in her eyes and spilling over onto her cheeks.

  “You need to be honest with me, sweetie. The detective from Miami told me about the job that you turned down,” Marilyn said gently, without judgment or accusation, despite her bruised feelings.

  Tiara paled, her eyes wide.

  “He also showed me a paper you wrote for your Women’s Studies class,” Marilyn looked pointedly at her daughter, w
ho deliberately avoided her gaze. “And while we’re bringing up potentially important information, I’d really like to hear about the fight that landed you in jail, something about a beer bottle and a guy named Samuel Freed?” she finished, looking expectantly at the obviously uncomfortable young woman who seemed to curl into herself on the couch.

  Marilyn took a breath and squeezed Tiara’s knee. “But first things first, we need to really focus on what happened yesterday. Ok?”

  Swiping away a tear with the back of her hand, Tiara nodded.

  “What happened at the shop? Start at the beginning and please tell me if there’s anything else I don’t know. They might try to surprise me with it later if you don’t,” Marilyn sighed, shaking her head.

  Tiara still sat silently, wiping away her tears one at a time, with the sleeves of her tee-shirt. Her mother realized that it was going to take some prompting to get her talking.

  “Ok, just start from when I left, I took the pies and the keys, held up my phone, and walked out the door…then what happened?” she led, carefully.

  “Ok,” Tiara sighed deeply, tucking her feet up under her. “So the line of people was out the door and onto the sidewalk.”

  She blinked a few times, her eyes focused on her knees as if she were seeing the dramatic scenes playing out in front of her.

  “I had been making those stuffed strawberries.”

  “Did you see anyone else touch them?” Marilyn interrupted, leaning forward.

  “No, I didn’t see anyone go near them…but things were chaotic, you know?” she shrugged, still not looking at her mother.

  Marilyn nodded.

  “Anyway, Susan asked me if I wanted her to finish them but I said no…I asked her to put the newly made pies into the walk-in and start prepping more for when the ovens were fixed. I knew she couldn’t handle the cash register as quickly as I could, so it didn’t make sense to have her do anything else,” Tiara explained, impatient at having to re-tell the story yet again.

  She finally looked at her mother, who nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “Drew came in to talk, but I was busy,” she looked miserably at her mom. “He sat at a table by the front windows to wait for me while I dealt with customers, then I went over to the table to talk with him.”

  “Wait, did you have the tray of filled strawberries sitting on the counter?” Marilyn was struck with a realization. “What if someone reached over from the customer side to tamper with them…?” Marilyn mused, frowning.

  “I guess it’s possible, but I served them to other customers who are perfectly fine,” Tiara shrugged. “And anyway, why would one of our customers do that?”

  “Well, that’s the question isn’t it?” Marilyn said, sighing.

  “So I talked to Drew for a while, after I took care of the line of customers, then the repair guys came in, Larry and Joe, and went back to check on the ovens. The blonde woman who had to use the bathroom came in right behind them. I asked Susan to take over the front, because the blonde woman who came in was the only customer in the shop at that point. I was talking to Drew and I knew that it would only take a minute,” she added hastily, justifying her decision to talk with the handsome yoga instructor rather than run the register.

  “Okay,” Marilyn nodded, wanting to keep her daughter focused on actual events rather than her guilt over acting in a decidedly unprofessional manner.

  “The blonde lady asked to go to the bathroom and Susan didn’t know if that was allowed, so she checked with me, and I sent her back, telling her to watch out for the repair guy’s tools that might be on the floor. That’s when Fergus came in,” Tiara dropped her eyes back to her lap.

  Marilyn tried to mentally recreate the scene, just as it had happened. She closed her eyes as her daughter talked.

  “He said I was a genius…he loved the cream puffs, which makes sense, they are really good, but that hardly makes me a genius,” she said softly, sadly. Shaking her head as though to clear it, she continued. “I put together another full pie, four cream puffs on the sides, and four stuffed strawberries on top of the pie.”

  Marilyn opened her eyes. “Okay, which strawberries did you choose? The ones closest to you? Did you take them all in order?” her brow furrowed.

  “Yes, I took them in order. They were the strawberries in the row right behind the ones that I put on the two slices earlier,” Tiara nodded, looking her mother right in the eye.

  “And you’re sure they were from the same batch that you’d prepared?”

  “I’m absolutely sure. It had been there the whole time, I would have noticed if an entire tray had been moved.”

  “Alright,” Marilyn sighed trying to pull the vision back into focus. “You put four strawberries on top of Fergus’ pie. I’m assuming that the pie and the cream puffs had been in the display case the whole time?”

  “Yes, they were there the whole time,” Tiara confirmed. “Fergus took one of the strawberries out of the box and ate it. He seemed to enjoy it…it obviously didn’t taste bad or weird. I put another in his box to replace the one that he had eaten, and rang him up.”

  Tiara looked up to make sure her mother was still following.

  “Then, Fergus left, I went back to Drew, and the blonde woman screamed.”

  “What did she say when she screamed?” Marilyn asked.

  Tiara shook her head, frustrated.

  “I don’t really remember. I just remember the sound of her voice and the look on her face.”

  “What do you mean?” her mother probed.

  The young woman took a breath, letting it out in a heavy sigh.

  “Her voice was…hysterical. Her face was completely white and honestly, I thought something worse would be there when I turned around.”

  “So he didn’t look that bad?” Marilyn tilted her head to the side.

  “Oh no, he definitely did,” Tiara said. “It’s just…I mean he was obviously having some kind of an attack, but he was still alive…I didn’t just assume that he was about to die. But, then I’ve never seen anyone die,” her voice trailed off.

  Marilyn was quiet, leaning over to kiss her daughter’s still-damp hair. She’d been through a lot the last couple of days, it was clearly time to let the stressed out young woman rest. Tucking her into bed for a much needed nap, she sat at Tiara’s bedside, stroking her hair until her breathing became slow and even, indicating that sleep had claimed her at last. Gazing down at her like this, it was impossible to believe that this young innocent face had instigated a murder. She knew in her heart that her daughter would never do such a thing, now she had to prove it.

  Marilyn went back out to the living room, noting that everything was vaguely out of place. The police hadn’t created a mess like she’d imagined - everything had been put back, but nothing was quite as it should be. Sighing, she poured herself a glass of wine, and sat down on the sofa with her notes.

  Grabbing her laptop, she started seeking out information on every person who had been present when Fergus was poisoned. Everyone has a least somewhat of an internet presence – addresses, previous addresses, work accomplishments, marriage licenses, etc... Living in an age of easy-access information made it much less difficult to look into the details of people’s lives.

  She searched the names methodically, and finally happened upon something that made her heart pound and her hands shake. She tried to call Bernard Cortland, with whom she had begun to feel an inexplicable kinship, as if they were in this mess together, but was sent straight to voicemail. Undoubtedly, the hardworking detective was asleep after having gone two days without much rest. Marilyn left a message for him, then headed for her shop.

  To mitigate the effects of the gallons of adrenaline flowing through her veins, she broke into a light jog for the entire first mile, but ultimately ran out of steam, much to her consternation, and resorted to a fast walk. Adrenaline might enable some folks to lift heavy trucks off of others who were in distress, but it apparently didn’t give her enough s
tamina to run all the way to her shop. She chastised herself for not taking full advantage of her gym membership.

  Reaching her street she slowed abruptly. The crime scene tape was still up and there was a bored-looking officer stationed out front. Marilyn retraced her steps before the uniformed policeman could see her, then slipped into the alley behind her shop. Not seeing anyone, she crept slowly against the brightly painted back wall, all the way to a delivery door that she rarely used.

  Cursing to herself, Marilyn saw the lock on the closure that required the user to line up a series of letters and numbers in order to release it. She’d put it on so long ago that she couldn’t remember which series of numbers and letters she might have used. She quickly began a mental review of her list of usual passwords to see if anything like one of them might fit.