A Freshly Baked Cozy Mystery Box Set

by Kate Bell

  “Oh,” she said, making a face. “So how did she die?”

  “We don’t know yet. There wasn’t anything apparent when we found her. Did you know her?”

  She shook her head. “No, but her husband worked part-time at the newspaper with Ed about fifteen years ago. We went out for drinks once, but Iris had to work if I remember right. He seemed like a nice guy.”

  “I thought he was a teacher at the high school?”

  “He is. I guess they needed the money because he only worked a couple of hours a day in the late afternoons,” she said.

  “How about her mother, Hilda Bixby? Do you know her?”

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “Didn’t she work at the Bank of Maine years ago?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. We didn’t ask.”

  “I think she did, and as I recall, I always thought she was a little bit off. Just kind of weird, you know? It seemed like there was someplace else she worked, too, but I can’t remember where,” she said.

  “Weird how?” I asked.

  “She would ask personal questions when she waited on me. Personal for a teller-customer relationship, you know? Like who my husband was, did I love him, and did we have kids and—I don’t know. It always seemed like she really wanted to know the answer. I don’t know her well though, so who knows?”

  “Well, that’s all I know about it,” I said. “And now, I’m going to figure out something to bake. Want to help?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. I am still trying to forgive you for going to Alabama for Christmas. I missed out on all those holiday treats,” she said, following me into the kitchen.

  “You’ll live,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Hi, Alec,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  “Studying for my PI license,” he said looking up from his book.

  “I don’t understand why you need to study,” I said, opening the refrigerator door.

  “Because the state of Maine has laws and regulations that apply differently for a PI than for a police officer and I’d like to not cross them,” he said, getting up and pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Lucy, there’s coffee if you’d like some.”

  Lucy got a cup out of the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “I think I know what I’m going to do,” I said.

  “Yes?” Lucy asked.

  “Yes. I think I’m going to write a baking blog and also, since I need to be baking all the time, I think I’m going to see if any of the local restaurants around here would be interested in selling some of my desserts. Otherwise, I’m going to eat far more of them than I need to,” I said. The idea had just occurred to me and it seemed like a good one.

  “Oh wow, who would have thought of you selling your pies at a local restaurant? What a novel idea!” Lucy said. Her words dripped with sarcasm.

  I gave her the evil eye. In September she had made the same suggestion to me, minus the blog. Reluctantly, I had baked up the perfect apple pie and taken it to Henry Hoffer to try, with the hopes that he would sell my pies in his restaurant, Henry’s Home Cooking Restaurant. Unfortunately when I went to check on how he liked the pie the next day, I found Henry dead. Someone had plunged a knife into his chest. Let’s just say I was a little soured on the idea of baking for his restaurant after that.

  But that was several months ago and his widow had taken over the restaurant. I was ready to try again. I had checked on her once after Henry’s murder and hadn’t been back since. The rumor around town was that she had redecorated, changed the menu, and really turned the restaurant around and was now doing a brisk business. It might be a good relationship if I could get my pies and maybe some cakes onto the menu.

  “So how does a blueberry sour cream pie sound?” I asked her.

  “It sounds like I need to stick around to see how this turns out,” she said with a grin.

  I took out some sour cream, blueberries, and eggs from the refrigerator and then moved to the cupboards.

  Lucy sat at the table across from Alec while I assembled everything.

  “So Alec, how do you like retirement?” she asked.

  “Well, I didn’t get much time off in the way of retirement, seeing as how we discovered a body less than a week after I retired. But other than that, I’m doing just fine,” he said.

  “At least there’s none of that police paperwork, right?” she asked. “And no annoying co-workers.”

  He sat back in his chair and nodded. “There is that. Not having paperwork frees up a lot of my time. Plus I can set my own schedule. What’s not to love about that?”

  I looked over my shoulder and saw her lean closer to Alec and whisper. “So Alec, when do you move in?”

  He smiled and glanced at me. “The way things are going, I’d say never.”

  “What?” she said loudly and looked at me. “What’s wrong? I thought you two were all cutesy-cutesy kissy-kissy together. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing is going on,” I said. “You know how I am.”

  “What? How are you?” she asked.

  “She’s old fashioned,” Alec supplied. “And I like old fashioned.”

  “Aw,” Lucy said. “That’s so sweet. See, you guys are cutesy.”

  “We are not cutesy, Lucy Gray. And this isn’t any of your business,” I warned.

  She gasped. “Okay, okay. I won’t pry. Much. But I expect to be informed of all the details, as they occur.”

  I rolled my eyes. “See what I got you into, Alec?”

  “I do see. Now I’m going to go into the other room so I can study,” he said, standing up and picking up his book.

  “Ah, are you saying I’m loud?” Lucy asked as he left the room.

  “Yup,” he called over his shoulder.

  She looked at me. “He’s so cute!”

  “I know!” I agreed. Alec was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.

  Chapter Six

  “I don’t know what she looks like. How are we going to know it’s her?” I asked Alec as we pulled up to Belmont elementary school.

  “We’ll figure something out,” he said, shutting off the engine. He looked at me with those dark blue eyes and gave me a smile. “It’s called detective work.”

  I smiled back at him and wondered what our children might have looked like if we had met earlier. Him with his black hair and dark blue eyes and me with my red hair and green eyes. I pushed the thought away guiltily. I would never have wanted to miss out on being with my husband, Thaddeus, or the two beautiful children we had had. Life was as it was supposed to be.

  The hallways of the school were nearly empty. We passed a mother with her daughter in tow and a couple of adults that must have been teachers or admin staff.

  “See?” Alec said, pointing at classroom door number five. Beneath the number was the teacher’s name, Mrs. Johnson.

  “I see,” I said and we kept walking.

  We passed another man and six more doors and came to classroom number twelve and the name, Ms. Cross.

  Alec opened the door without knocking and a young woman at the big desk at the front of the classroom looked up.

  “May I help you?” she asked. She had a stack of papers on her desk in front of her and she looked surprised to see us.

  Ms. Cross was blond and fair-skinned and pretty. Model pretty. It was easy to see why Richard Rose had fallen for her.

  “Yes, we’re working with the police department,” Alec said and introduced us. “Can we have a few minutes of your time?”

  Janice’s face went pale. Paler than it already was.

  “Of course,” she said and forced herself to smile. “Sorry, I only have small people chairs.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” I said and grabbed two chairs from the closest desks and set them in front of her desk. Alec and I sat down and looked up at her. “Wow, talk about a different perspective.”

  She smiled at me and then turned to Alec. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’m assu
ming you’ve heard about Iris Rose?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. It’s so tragic. Really, she was such a nice person and a wonderful teacher. Her students are heartsick.”

  “They know already?” I asked. I don’t know what I expected, but it surprised me.

  “Yes, the principal broke it to them today. No details, of course. It would frighten them to know their teacher had been, well, murdered,” she said with a frown.

  “I’m sure it would. Are there counselors for them? In case they need to talk to someone?” I asked.

  “Definitely. We have two on loan from another district,” she said, glancing at Alec.

  “Ms. Cross, do you know of anyone that might want to hurt Iris?” Alec asked. He already had his notebook and pen out.

  She shook her head, wide-eyed. “I have no idea. Like I said, she was well liked.”

  “Did you know Iris’s husband, Richard?” he asked. Just like that. I expected him to beat around the bush, but he just threw it out there.

  Her face went white. She opened her mouth to speak, and stumbled over the words, then she closed her mouth and looked down at her hands. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “I do,” she said, looking up at me. “Richard and I had an affair. I suppose you already know that. It didn’t last long and it was a few years ago.” She looked up at him, her eyes wet from unshed tears and I couldn’t tell if it was because the affair had been short-lived or she was embarrassed it had occurred in the first place.

  “Who broke up with whom?” Alec asked, showing no emotion.

  “I broke up with him. I never felt right about it and I couldn’t stand the lie,” she said. “Plus, I went away to college.” She looked down when she said that part.

  “How old were you when the affair started?” Alec asked.

  “Oh, I was eighteen. I had just turned eighteen when we started seeing each other. It didn’t last long. Three months, and then I was off to college,” she said quickly.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if the affair would have continued if she hadn’t left town.

  “How did Iris find out about it?” I asked.

  She looked at a spot on the desk in front of her, quiet for a moment. “I guess she might have suspected he was running around on her,” she said, looking up at me. “Then when I got a job here, she came to help the new teacher decorate her class. And I had brought a box of items from home, a corkboard, art supplies, and pictures. And there was a picture of Richard and I in the box.”

  I gasped, horrified at the thought. “And she found it. Wow,” I said.

  She looked up at me and now the tears spilled down her cheeks and she grabbed for a tissue from the box on her desk. “She was a good person. She came to help out the new teacher, you know? She was the only one that did. I swear I thought I had gotten rid of all those pictures. I swear. The relationship had ended years earlier.”

  I nodded slowly. I could never imagine dating a married man, but to have his wife discover the truth, in such an “in your face” way? How devastating. I breathed in deeply.

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  She shook her head slowly. “She just looked at me with so much hurt in her eyes. She backed out of the room without saying a word.”

  Alec was making notes again and for once, I wished he’d stop. I wanted to hate this woman for what she had done, but she didn’t seem like a terrible person. Young and stupid, yes. But not a murderer.

  Finally, Alec looked up at her. “Is there anything else you want to tell us?”

  “No, not really,” she said, looking away.

  “When was the last time you saw Iris?” he asked.

  “At school on Friday,” she said. “Can you believe she brought me some construction paper? She’d found it on sale at a really good price and bought extra. She gave me some of it.”

  “She does sound like she was a nice person,” I said.

  “There are regrets you have in life. Things that you wish you could take back,” she said.

  “That’s for sure,” Alec said, nodding.

  “Oh, you know what?” she suddenly said. “I just remembered. There was construction paper scattered on the floor in the hallway when I came in on Monday. The same construction paper Iris bought.”

  “A lot?” I asked.

  “Maybe around twenty-five to thirty sheets? And some crayons. I thought maybe one of the kids had made a mess and got scared and left it there without telling anyone. Some kids are really shy and they’re afraid to tell anyone if they think they’ll get in trouble.”

  Alec looked at her, thinking. “Where at in the hallway?”

  “I’ll show you,” she said, standing up and leading the way.

  We followed her out into the hallway.

  “There,” she said, going to the stairwell and pointing down. “At the bottom of the stairs.”

  A rope hung across the stairs, with a sign that said no admittance.

  “What’s down there?” I asked.

  “Classrooms that we don’t use. I guess at one time the school had so many kids enrolled that they built classrooms in the basement. The teacher’s lounge is also down there and that’s why I figured one of the kids was down there when they knew they shouldn’t have been. Some kids panic when they do something they know is wrong and I figured they just left the paper and crayons.”

  “You don’t mind if we have a look?” Alec asked.

  “No, help yourself,” she said and Alec unhooked the rope and we started down the stairs. Janice flipped on a light so we could see and followed us down. There wasn’t anything unusual at the bottom of the steps.

  “The paper and crayons were laying here,” she said, pointing to the floor.

  Alec looked around the area, then took his phone out and took pictures. I couldn’t see anything worth taking pictures of, but he was the professional. Across the hall was the teacher’s lounge and I walked over and pushed the door open.

  The lounge had an assortment of tables, chairs, and a sofa and overstuffed chairs. One wall had a row of cupboards with a microwave on the counter and a refrigerator in the corner. There was nothing exciting in here, but I remembered thinking the teacher’s lounge was some mysterious hall of adulthood that I was afraid to enter when I was in elementary school. I could see a kid sneaking down here and getting scared of being caught, then leaving everything behind if they heard someone approaching.

  Alec joined me in the lounge.

  “Nothing exciting,” I said with a shrug.

  He walked around, looking at everything and opening cupboard doors. “I think you might be right about that.”

  We left the lounge and Janice was waiting just outside the door. “Okay?” she asked.

  Alec nodded. “Thanks for all your help,” he said. “If you think of anything, will you give me a call?” he asked and handed her a business card.

  “Yes, I will,” she said, and headed back down the hall.

  “Those are your police detective business cards, aren’t they?” I asked as we walked down the hall.

  He smiled. “I have a lot of them. Besides, I never said I was a detective, I just said I was working for the police department.”

  Chapter Seven

  Janice went back into her classroom and as soon as she was out of sight, Alec pulled me down another hallway.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Iris Rose’s classroom has to be here somewhere,” he said, looking at the names on the door.

  We kept walking and finally found it at the end of the hall. “Voila,” I said. “You’re so smart.”

  “I prefer to call it experienced,” he said.

  “And it looks like someone’s home,” I whispered. The door stood ajar and the light was on.

  Alec pulled the door open and we were surprised to see Richard Rose sitting at Iris’s desk. His eyes opened wide when he saw us.

  “Hello Mr. Rose,” Alec said.

  He gave us a sad, lopsided smile. “Hello, Detective, M
rs. McSwain.”

  “Allie,” I offered. We approached the big desk. “How are you doing?”

  He sighed tiredly. His eyes were red and swollen and I couldn’t help but feel he couldn’t have committed the murder. He seemed like he was genuinely grieving his wife’s death.

  “I came to clean out Iris’s classroom. Mrs. Decker, the principal, offered to do it for me, but I wanted to do it,” he said. There were three empty paper boxes next to the desk and from the looks of it he hadn’t gotten started yet.

  “I’m sure that’s a very difficult job,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “Harder than I had imagined.”

  “Would you like some help?” Alec asked.

  I looked in his direction. I knew he wanted a look around the place in hopes there would be something that would give him some clues to her murder.

  Richard opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. After a moment, he said, “I suppose it might be helpful.”

  I walked over and picked up two of the empty paper boxes and handed one to Alec. The classroom was done in winter scenes with four corkboards displaying posters featuring cartoon characters reminding students to use their manners, don’t do drugs, and grammatical parts of a sentence. I smiled. The best part of elementary school had been when the teacher decorated the classroom for holidays and the changing seasons. Christmas was over and Valentines was still over a month away, so Iris had chosen winter scenes. I loved the green and blue plaid mittens and red sled cutouts. I thought Iris probably had a pretty happy classroom. The children would miss her.

  “Do you want me to take down the cutouts?” I asked looking over my shoulder at Richard, who was still sitting behind Iris’s desk.

  “No, those can stay. There are some personal pictures on that one board. We went out into the woods and took pictures of as much wildlife as we could find and she brought them here for the kids. That day holds a lot of memories for me. I’d like to have them,” he said sadly.

  “You got it,” I said and went over to the board and began unpinning the pictures.

  “Are these pictures of other teachers?” Alec asked from his side of the classroom.