Small Town Scary (Cozy Mystery Collection)

by Anisa Claire West

  For the next hour, we flipped through photo albums, reminiscing about the proverbial “good old days” as Aunt Patricia kept her snide comments to a minimum. Convinced that investigating my aunts and uncle was a dead end, I finally tapped Mrs. Dollner on the shoulder and whispered that we should go.

  “It was good to see you, Uncle Sanford. But I’ve got to get back to Espresso Magic. Penny’s been by herself there all day.”

  Laying a kiss on my forehead, Uncle Sanford bid me a silent goodbye and waved to Mrs. Dollner. As I left his apartment, I wondered if he had finally put his gambling days behind him. Other than for his sadness over Aunt Connie, he seemed pretty stable. Aunt Louise and Aunt Patricia, on the other hand, had acted like two drunken fools.

  In the crisp northern air, Mrs. Dollner commented, “There’s more than one black sheep in your family, isn’t there?”

  I smirked wryly. “Funny you should say that. Penelope and I have always been considered the black sheep because of our Gypsy roots.”

  “No, no. I meant your relatives, dear. All three of them.”

  “All of them?” I repeated incredulously. “They do have their vices,” I admitted. “But I think I need to steer the investigation in a new direction. I have to look into who else was on the farm yesterday. Maybe one of the stable boys poisoned the drink. Or a farm hand. I just know that I need to cast a wider net.”

  Mrs. Dollner shook her head with the slightest hint of condescension. “Listen, dear, I may not be a psychic like you. But I can tell you this: one of the people in that apartment killed your aunt. And it wasn’t me.”

  Chapter 6

  My heart stopped as Mrs. Dollner’s words echoed along the turn-of-the-season wind: It wasn’t me. Why had she even inserted herself in the equation? If I wasn’t so certain that the caramel coffee was the culprit, then I would have been more suspicious of Mrs. Dollner. Could my instincts be wrong? Could it have been Mrs. Dollner’s apple cider and not the caramel coffee that was tainted? My head spun as I reflected on how little I knew about Mrs. Dollner outside of the fact that she was a gregarious widow who dwelled in a tiny cottage at the edge of the forest. I didn’t even know her first name. She had never revealed it and refused to divulge it the only time I had asked.

  “What’s your first name, Mrs. Dollner?” I ventured out of the blue as she glanced at me with surprise.

  “Are we going on that merry-go-round again?” She murmured mysteriously.

  “Why is it such a big secret?” I asked, frowning.

  “Oh it’s not, dear. It’s just my little game of hide and seek. A girl’s got to have her fun! Even an old girl like me!” She giggled sweetly, obliterating any notions that she was capable of murder. Besides, Mrs. Dollner hardly knew my Aunt Connie. What motive could she possibly have for wanting the woman dead? Unless the poison was meant for someone else…

  “Are you ever going to tell me your first name?” I pressed.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” She shrugged playfully, but I was far from amused.

  “Okay, let me just drop you off at your cottage. I really do have to get back to work,” I stated emotionlessly.

  “Don’t be cross, dear! I’ll tell you one day,” she said vaguely as I started the engine and drove towards the forest.

  After depositing the irksome Mrs. Dollner at the doorstep of her cottage, I sped off towards Espresso Magic. Plunging into some good old fashioned hard work would take my mind off of everything. I could only imagine how many more cake and pie orders had come in since the morning.

  Swinging the door open, I rushed inside the shop, finding Penelope lost in a powdery whirlwind of sugar and salt. “Any luck?” She asked without looking up from her mixing bowl.

  “None,” I replied, shrugging off my cardigan and rolling up my sleeves. “Where are the new orders? I need to be busy right now.”

  “Take your pick.” Penelope pointed to a towering stack of order sheets.

  “We need to get a computer system one of these days,” I mumbled.

  “You think?” Penelope retorted sarcastically as I ignored her.

  “Do we have enough pumpkin or should I go to the market and pick up a few more?” I asked, business-like and formal.

  “I’ll make a run to the market. I’ve been cooped up in here all day. You stay here and start doing some baking for the Christmas cookie order,” Penelope instructed, snatching up her jacket and making a beeline for the door.

  “Christmas cookies?” I echoed. “You must be kidding.”

  “Nope. People have been asking for our iced gingerbread cookies and sugar star cookies and red raspberry tarts and you name it. Some people are already buying Christmas trees and decorating. They want some holiday cookies to get them in the spirit,” Penelope explained before dashing out the door.

  Hands on hips, I skimmed the endless orders, many of which were customized. My son is allergic to peanuts. My husband can only have Splenda. My mother doesn’t like margarine. I had a mild panic attack just trying to process all the information. As I was combing through the orders, the door swung open.

  “Did you forget something?” I asked, assuming Penelope had returned.

  “Excuse me?” The deep swagger of Captain Davis’s voice filled the shop.

  “Captain Davis. I thought you were my sister.”

  He chuckled and deadpanned, “As lovely as your sister is, I’m very glad I don’t look like her.”

  “What can I do for you, Captain? Did you come to place an order? Or just grab a little coffee to go?” I suggested hopefully, tempted to shove the cocky chucklehead right out the door.

  “No, actually I wanted to talk to you about your aunt’s murder,” he said with exaggerated importance.

  “Okay.” I put down the order sheets and gave him my attention. “”But what could I possibly have to tell you now? The lab results won’t be back until at least next week, right?”

  “Correct. But I’m not so concerned with lab results in this case. I’m more interested in learning about the dynamics of your family. In other words, who had a vendetta against your aunt Connie?” Captain Davis blew the acrid words across the room as I wanted to reach into my purse and toss him a breath mint.

  Taking a step back, I replied, “The answer to that question would be no one. No one had a vendetta against my aunt Connie.”

  “That’s not the story I’ve heard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t reveal my sources of course, but certain people interviewed yesterday implicated your mother. Apparently, Denidra Locke has never gotten along with any of her in-laws,” he said accusingly as I inwardly steamed.

  “That’s because my father’s family has never accepted her!” I gritted. “Because she’s from Spain and has Gypsy heritage. And I know it was my aunt Patricia who implicated my mother, wasn’t it?” I demanded as the cop stood impassively. “Fine. You don’t have to tell me because I already know.”

  “Relax, Miss Locke. I understand this is your mother we’re talking about and it’s your instinct to protect her. But if you are concealing any damning information about Denidra, you know that’s illegal, don’t you?”

  “I’m not concealing anything!” I shouted as the glass display cases rattled with my rage.

  “I hope that’s true for your sake. Because believe me, there would be legal consequences if you’re lying.”

  “My aunt Connie was the nice one! If my mother had wanted to kill anyone, I’m sure it would have been horrid Louise or Patricia!” I blurted out and immediately regretted it.

  Captain Davis cocked a bushy eyebrow. “Perhaps the drink that Connie swallowed was meant for Louise or Patricia, then? Maybe Connie wasn’t intended to die at all,” he suggested gravely as I pressed my lips together to force myself not to make another damaging outburst.

  “What did you tell me when I was trying to solve Henrik Blark’s murder? That police work is based on facts and evidence, right? That police work is a science. So why don’t we let
science do its job and not jump to any radical conclusions,” I said stiffly, jutting my chin out in open defiance of the cop’s intrusive questioning.

  “Ah, using my own words against me. You are a smart one, Miss Locke,” he said with genuine admiration before lowering his voice to a sinister whisper. “But if science proves my ‘radical conclusions’ to be true, then you’re going to be in a whole lot of hot water. And so is your mother. After all, she was the one who hosted the dinner. She was the one who would have had access to every dish and every beverage that was served.” Sucking in a breath and standing up taller, he muttered, “Have a nice day. Black Friday, indeed.”

  ***

  The blackest Friday of my life passed away like a final breath, bleeding into a cloudy weekend of snow flurries and uncertainty. By Monday, things were back to normal at the shop, with the townspeople of Candlewick Falls returned to their 9 to 5 grind and orders for Christmas cookies dissipating…at least for the time being. I avoided my relatives like the plague, with the exception of my mother who I warned was a suspect in the captain’s eyes.

  “Kill Connie?! I would have killed Louise or Patricia if I wanted to kill anyone!” She had yelled indignantly over the phone, mirroring my ill-timed outburst to the captain.

  “I know, Mom. Just wait until the lab results come back,” I had tried to reassure her.

  But if my intuition was right, then the lab results would prove even more condemning towards my mother. All the way to my bone marrow, I felt that Mom’s caramel-laced coffee had been poisoned. Not Mrs. Dollner’s apple cider. And certainly not Aunt Connie’s smelly eggnog, unless by some quirk of fate she had been suicidal.

  Every day leading up to the lab results was a nail-biter, distracting me from my business and cloaking every piece of my life in misty gray shades. Supposing the coffee came back positive for some sort of poison as I keenly suspected…then how could my mother be exonerated? How could I prove that somehow, someone else had poisoned the coffee even though she was the one who prepared it?

  The unanswered questions twisted my stomach into wrenching knots until Captain Davis strutted his way into Espresso Magic on Thursday afternoon, exactly one week after Aunt Connie’s death.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” he drawled like a cowboy. If only I had a pair of boots with spurs, I could wipe that smirk right off his face from one strategically placed kick…

  “Hi Captain Davis,” I said casually as Penelope emerged from the kitchen to hear the news. Fully aware that our mother was a suspect, Penelope hadn’t enjoyed a wink of sleep in the past week either.

  “Did the lab results come back?” Penelope asked nervously.

  “They did.” Captain Davis left us dangling from a skyscraper.

  “And??” I prompted impatiently, my heartbeat going haywire.

  “And the autopsy results are in too. Cause of death is acute cyanide poisoning,” he announced with inappropriate pride. “I was right about the fact that your aunt had been murdered…and poisoned.”

  “Congratulations,” I muttered sardonically.

  “Cyanide is well known to be used as a form of pest control,” Captain Davis informed.

  “So what?” Penelope sniffed tartly.

  “Pest control is a key component of farming,” the cop emphasized. “Whether it’s rodents or insects, cyanide would be effective in ridding a farm of a whole host of pests.”

  Seeing where he was going, I interjected, “My mother and father live in Minneapolis now. They don’t tend to the farm anymore. They have workers who do that. So my mother wouldn’t have had access to any cyanide that could have been used to poison…”

  “Sure she would,” Captain Davis disagreed. “Your mother lived on that farm with your father for how long? Twenty or twenty five years? She’s got to know the place inside out. She could easily have used the cyanide as a murdering tool.”

  Adopting a different angle, I argued, “Doesn’t cyanide have a bitter taste? I mean, how could my aunt have drunk a lethal amount of cyanide and not tasted the bitterness?”

  “So now you’re questioning the autopsy results?” Captain Davis derided with one of his maddening chuckles.

  “No, I’m just asking a question…”

  “And I’ll give you an answer. You are correct. Cyanide does have a bitter taste and aroma. Some have said it’s like bitter almonds. But you know what else tastes bitter? Coffee does,” he said menacingly.

  “Coffee?” Penelope repeated weakly.

  “Coffee. The coffee in your mother’s pot and in the cup the victim drank from both tested positive for cyanide,” Captain Davis revealed, confirming my darkest fears and expectations.

  “Someone else poisoned the coffee! It wasn’t my mother!” I cried passionately as Penelope nodded wildly.

  “It had to be someone else!” She exclaimed, choking on a sob.

  “Maybe. That will be for the court to decide, though,” Captain Davis said gravely.

  “The court?” I asked with dread.

  “Yes. Your mother has been arrested on suspicion of second degree murder at her apartment in Minneapolis. She’s being driven to the county jail as we speak.”

  Chapter 7

  The words sounded like an encrypted computer language, garbled, complex, crazy. My mother was being taken to jail? Arrested? No, I must have heard the captain incorrectly. After all, he had been a guest at my mother’s dinner, as awry as the event had gone. Still, he had been in her home. How could he take such pleasure in informing me that she had been arrested for second degree murder? Incongruous wasn’t the word. It was malicious.

  “This is a joke, right?” Penelope whispered, her bottom lip trembling like a little girl who had just taken a spill on her roller skates and landed face first on the asphalt.

  “This is no joke. This is the law. Everyone has to abide by it. Even mothers who cook fancy Thanksgiving dinners,” he said with an ugly sneer.

  “Our mother does abide by the law!” I retracted my jaw, feeling a vein pulse with stress. “Wait a second!” I cried, suddenly realizing a very important detail that I had omitted. “I drank the coffee too! Why didn’t I die? Or even get sick?”

  “Well, you did start to feel nauseous…” Penelope reminded as I shot her a deadly glare. “No, Marisa is right! She didn’t get sick at all! How could the coffee pot be contaminated with cyanide and only one person was poisoned? It’s ridiculous! It’s impossible!”

  “Yes, scientifically speaking,” I grated. “It is impossible…unless…”

  “Unless what?” Captain Davis asked coldly.

  “Unless the murderer poured cyanide into the coffee pot after my cup had already been poured? That would explain why I didn’t become ill,” I reasoned.

  “And why would the murderer do that?” Captain Davis challenged, patronizing me by leaning his head to one side and smirking.

  “To target the victim! Obviously, Aunt Connie was the one who the murderer wanted dead. So she was the one who was served a poisoned cup of coffee.”

  “Then why would this mysterious murderer…who as far as I’m concerned is in police custody right now…pour cyanide into the whole coffee pot? More than one person could have been poisoned and there goes your theory of a targeted victim,” Captain Davis shaped his hand like a bird and made a flying motion towards the window.

  “Maybe the murderer didn’t give a damn about anyone else! One victim, two victims, ten victims, really what’s the difference to a murderer?” Penelope cried angrily, shooting back at the cop’s flippant attitude.