Crime and Nourishment_A Cozy Mystery Novel

by Miranda Sweet

  Detective Bailey took a sip of his coffee and stared back.

  She went back over her story again. Detective Bailey was going to keep her there all day.

  “I…I loaded up the trailer, took down the tent, and dumped the coffee down the storm water drain,” she said. “There were fireworks going off, but not the official town ones. The sun had set but it wasn’t full dark yet. Almost all the other booths had been packed up by then. It took me longer because of the books.”

  “I see,” he said. “And then?”

  “And then I drove back to the bookstore, left the trailer in the back lot—”

  “Do you know if there’s a camera that covers the back lot, ma’am?”

  “You’d have to ask the property manager, Bob Fenton. I have his number somewhere around here—”

  She had almost said, in the back room, but then suddenly remembered that Jo was probably still there, spying on them. She started to look on the shelves on the wall under the telephone.

  “Never mind that,” Detective Bailey said. “What time did you leave for Mr. Snuock’s house?”

  “Ten twenty, I told you.”

  He made her go over the details again: When had she called Snuock to tell him she was coming to drop off the book? When had she driven past the front gate? When had Valerie come to meet her at the back door? On and on…

  By the time she had finished catching up to this morning, she was hoarse.

  Detective Bailey said, “Did you see your great-aunt this morning?”

  “No, I never made it home. She should be in soon.”

  “Did you see any of the other tenants this morning?”

  “Tenants?”

  “The other people who are renting from Mr. Snuock.”

  “I saw Josephine Jerritt this morning when she dropped off the pastries as usual. She was going to stick around for a while…but I think she’s gone.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “I don’t know. After you got here? At the same time? I think she didn’t want to intrude. Why? Is she a suspect? Am I a suspect?” Angie’s head was spinning.

  “Let’s just say you’re a person of interest.”

  “Do you know who did it? Do you have any actual suspects?”

  The detective shook his head. “I can’t talk about that, ma’am.”

  Of course he couldn’t. She was sick to her stomach. “You think Walter did it.”

  “We’re just collecting information, ma’am.”

  Angie could tell that he wanted to tell her to calm down and get a grip. Fortunately he didn’t; she might have lost it at that point. She took a deep breath.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Please don’t leave the island for the next few days without telling us. We need to be able to reach you at all times—keep your cell phone at hand.”

  “He was shot because it was the fourth,” she said suddenly then regretted it. But she was so tired. It was impossible to keep from blurting things out loud.

  Detective Bailey was suddenly more attentive than he had been the entire interview: “What makes you say that?”

  “The Fourth of July, with all of those fireworks going off. A mystery reader like me, you have to think—it would be the perfect occasion to shoot someone. Nobody would know that it wasn’t just fireworks, especially with the house all the way up on the hill like that. Nobody would have a clue.”

  #

  After Angie wrapped up with Detective Bailey, she checked the back room. Jo was gone. Neither the front nor back doors had bells on them; Angie hated to interrupt her customers just as they were getting sucked into a book, and had taken them off when she’d leased the store.

  She was completely out of time to return the trailer or to pick up cream. She managed to get the rolling bookshelves unloaded from the trailer and in the back door, but more than that would have to wait until Aunt Margery arrived.

  Which was in short order. Aunt Margery appeared at the back door, looking flustered and tired, but cheerfully willing to help finish opening the shop so Angie could get home and rest. She managed not to waste time picking Angie’s brain for details, other than that Angie and Valerie had seen the body. Angie gave her the phone and let her look at the photos she’d taken. She’d been so upset that half the photos were blocked by Valerie’s shoulder. Oh well. At least she’d taken a few good ones.

  She probably should have mentioned them to the officers the previous night or Detective Bailey this morning. Maybe after she slept…

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have a number for Walter, so she couldn’t check on him. So she brewed coffee, shoved the rolling shelves into the back, and opened up for the day, reminding herself that this was not a smart day to leave the shop closed. In fact, she wasn’t sure when she’d have a day off. She intended to keep the shop open extended hours until the foot traffic died down a bit, then she’d start giving Aunt Margery days off, and then…well, she might not have a day off until September.

  The morning rush was actually a rush: there was a line for coffee and pastries. She set out a dish with a pile of quarters and a note saying that plain coffee was fifty cents, with another fifty cents for soy milk (sorry no cream today) and please leave a tip—she was too swamped with espresso orders to do anything else, and the last thing she wanted was to turn anyone away today, after all her hard work and money spent on fliers and custom coffee cups. She sold a few newspapers with the coffee. One of the patrons asked if she had any local advertising papers with garage sales. Another asked for a particular magazine. Soon the shop was buzzing with people sitting at tables—tourists doubled up with locals and chatting. Aunt Margery ran the register while Angie pulled shots and built drinks.

  She was hot and tired before it was seven, and smiling, despite her desire to lie down and sleep on the floor behind the counter.

  Some days were bad days, when she castigated herself for quitting the investment firm in Manhattan and leaving her obviously marked-for-success boyfriend—it would have been a compromised life, but an easier one...in some ways. Then there were days like this when she felt like she was bringing some good to the world and making a profit.

  Mickey strode past the window—his tall head bobbing over the top of the shelves—and glanced in at the pastry case, then disappeared. A few minutes later, Jo came in the back door with a tray of fresh donuts. “Fifty cents each,” she called. “Pay at the register when you get a moment. Nantucket Bakery down the street, a partner of Pastries & Page-Turners!”

  Laughter and cheering went up—and the donuts disappeared.

  Jo returned with additional trays of pastries while the people in the café area were still licking their fingers. A young boy, staring at Jo’s hair, told his mother, “That lady’s hair looks like green frosting.”

  “There’s a thought,” Angie muttered to her friend. “You should sell green frosted donuts and call them à la Josephine.”

  “Makes me sound French,” she said. “So…about the visitor you had earlier this morning?””

  Angie didn’t want to say anything out loud in front of the customers, so she nodded.

  “You’re all covered?”

  That must be Jo code for, “And you have an alibi for the time in question?” It wasn’t an idle question, either. Jo had lied for Angie a couple of times while they were in high school—without Angie finding out about it until later.

  “No,” Angie said. “Not covered at all.”

  “What?”

  A couple of customers looked up. Angie rang up a woman at the counter who wanted two Danishes and a caramel mocha latte. A lot of sugar, so early in the morning, but she was on vacation. Why not?

  “I was there, Jo,” Angie told her over the screech of the steamer wand in the milk pitcher. “I have to be, um, not covered. But it seemed like what he was really interested in were the other people I spent time with yesterday.”

  She finished the shot just as Jo shouted, “Who was that?”

  Now e
veryone was looking their way, including Aunt Margery. She had been almost suspiciously quiet and incurious this morning, as a matter of fact. Angie snorted and assembled the drink, stirring it carefully, then topping it with whipped cream, chocolate shavings, and a swirl of caramel—a drink she had done so often she could do it in her sleep, which she very nearly was.

  The woman sipped at her caramel mocha and smiled. Loudly, she said, “Thank you! Now I’m ready to drive back to Maryland.”

  Angie whistled and said, “Long drive. Are you sure you don’t want an extra shot?”

  The people in the café laughed and finally went back to minding their own business.

  “Walter,” Angie told Jo.

  “Walter Snuock?” Jo hissed. “You were with him yesterday? After everything his father is doing right now?”

  “He doesn’t like his father any better than you do,” Angie said.

  “Oh, he might say that. But where do you think his inheritance is coming from?”

  They both paused: Angie because the comment was in bad taste; Jo probably because she was wondering if a murder investigation would hold up an inheritance. She had that kind of mind, anyway.

  “It must have happened during the fireworks show,” Jo said.

  Exactly what Angie had been thinking.

  Another customer came up to the counter and ordered a dry cappuccino, to go. “How far to go?” she asked.

  “Just up and down the street,” he said.

  She made a face, considering. He was about sixty years old and had a Wall Street Journal under one arm. “All the tables are full, aren’t they?” she asked. “I can trust you to bring the cup back, right?”

  He smiled and she made the cappuccino in a proper cup, quickly making a feather pattern in the foam as she poured it. He smiled again, and a five-dollar tip might have made its way into the tip jar.

  “What do you think about breakfast sandwiches?” she asked Jo.

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “A little.”

  “Why didn’t you just give the guy a cappuccino in a to-go cup like he asked?”

  “Because people who ask for dry cappuccinos don’t want to-go cups. Not really.”

  Jo rolled her eyes. “I just know pastries and gossip.”

  “You have to get used to glancing people over and getting a feel for them very quickly.”

  “I suppose you know who the shoplifters are going to be, too.”

  “Sometimes,” Angie said smugly.

  “I think breakfast sandwiches would be a good idea for the bakery,” Jo hedged.

  “But not for the bookshop?”

  “You don’t have an oven. And wouldn’t you need to get different permits for that?”

  Angie opened her mouth then snapped it shut. She had almost said, now that we’re not getting a rent increase, I might have some extra cash lying around. Which was ghoulish. But there it was: one of the reasons that she logically had to be a suspect, even if she hadn’t been one of the two people to find a body.

  Which meant…the other shop owners had to be suspects, too.

  Like Jo.

  Would she have killed someone in order to protect the bakery and her brother?

  Angie wanted to say no. The murder had been well planned: otherwise, why use the fireworks for cover? Although, that was exactly the kind of thinking Jo might put into a job like this. Mickey? Angie wouldn’t have suspected him in a million years.

  Angie felt chilled; she couldn’t believe she was considering her best friend in this way. But to get to the bottom of any case one had to remain dispassionate and consider all suspects.

  Suspecting Jo hadn’t taken more than a few minutes.

  #

  Finally the coffee sales tapered off. The café wasn’t packed solid, but all the comfy chairs in the store were filled with customers contentedly reading books. Captain Parfait had poked his head out to check on a crying baby, but had otherwise stayed out of sight.

  Aunt Margery gave Angie a peck on her cheek. “I think I can manage from here. Go ahead and pick up the cream…then go home and take a nap.”

  “I have to drop off the trailer as well. Will you be all right?”

  Aunt Margery’s eyebrows went up: “Of course. You should be asking yourself that question…I’m sorry you had to find Snuock like you did.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  A shadow seemed to pass over Aunt Margery’s face. “No, it’s not.” Then it was gone, replaced by her usual resoluteness. “Now you go and take care of yourself. Get going.”

  Angie hesitated. “Aunt Margery, I have to know…have your friends told you what happened to Walter? Is he all right?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. He’s at his mother’s house. He’s been told not to leave town.”

  “They don’t think he did it,” Angie said. “That’s good.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Aunt Margery said. “Detective Bailey has always been one to keep secrets close to his chest.”

  Angie frowned at her.

  “Didn’t you know? He’s a local. Of course, he’s five years older than you. Lived here most of his life, but he was out at college while you were in high school…yes, that’s it. Children are so insular. If they weren’t in the same class, it was as if other people didn’t exist.”

  Angie couldn’t argue with that. “Bailey’s not a usual name around here, is it?”

  “It used to be. His parents came here to find their roots after a few generations away. It’s the housing prices, I suppose. They drive a number of people away.”

  Angie shook her head. Her great-aunt was distracting her with interesting information—she had to get back on track. “But Walter?”

  “Oh, yes, well. He has a motive.”

  “Just because you don’t like your father doesn’t mean that you want to murder him.”

  “It might, if he were cutting off your allowance.”

  Angie frowned. She vaguely remembered something about that. “What was that all about, anyway?”

  “Alexander accused Phyllis of conceiving Walter with another man. Then refused to accept the results of the DNA test she had done for him.”

  “What?”

  “The real issue appeared to be that he thought she was cheating on him.”

  “Cheating on him? Back then?”

  “Back then, and now.”

  Angie’s face was pinched in confusion. “But they’ve been divorced for years.”

  “Oh, I know Agnes, it’s all some kind of crazy, but that’s Alexander Snuock for you.”

  Several of the customers were very fixedly looking at their books without turning the pages: most of them were tourists, so Angie supposed the story wouldn’t travel very far, but still. She said, “We should talk about this later.”

  “We should.”

  Angie’s mind was reeling as she left the shop. So Mr. Alexander Snuock was such a control freak that he kept tabs on his ex-wife’s love life, and insisted that she not have any lovers or else…he’d go as far as disinheriting their son, asserting Walter might not even be his. Hadn’t he even considered how much something like that would hurt Walter? Why not just cut off Phyllis’s alimony—she must have reaped quite a package from Snuock; although, as Angie thought about it, the alimony was probably wrapped-up tightly in legalities, impossible to touch. Still, what a madman.

  #

  While Angie was out running errands, her phone rang with an unrecognized number from out of her area code. She almost let it go to voice mail, then suddenly pulled over to the shoulder and changed her mind.

  “Hello? Angie Prouty speaking.”

  “Angie? This is Walter.”

  She was so startled that the car jerked forward. She put the car into park, set the brake, and turned off the engine.

  “Walter! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I wanted to check on you,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” said Angie. “The police have told me to not leave town an
y time soon, but that’s about it. I’m fine. How are you?”

  Walter drew a ragged breath. “Okay, I just said I was fine, but—”

  “But you’re not,” she said. “You need food and a sympathetic ear, and I’m not a terrible cook. Let me call Aunt Margery and make sure she’s all right, and then you can come over to my place for lunch and sanity.”

  “I don’t know if I need lunch,” he said, “but some sanity would be nice.”

  In twenty minutes he was wolfing down a French omelet with crusty bread and a simple, mustardy salad with farmers’ market tomatoes. She made him a second omelet, and that one disappeared in short order, too.

  “I didn’t realize I was so hungry,” he said.

  “That’s grief for you,” she said. She’d been here when Mickey and Jo’s father, Hank, had passed—almost exactly a year ago. She was no pastry chef, so she couldn’t have run the bakery for the twins even if she had wanted to. Somehow, Dory had stepped into place for them, mindlessly and robotically making breads and pastries as her children made the funeral arrangements. Angie had kept them all fed, spending more time organizing all the sympathy casseroles than actually cooking herself. All three of them had eaten like wolves for weeks straight. Some people didn’t eat when they grieved, but not the Jerritts: they burned at both ends and ate like it, too.

  “They’re doing an autopsy,” Walter said.

  “Walter, they’re not telling me anything that I didn’t see with my own two eyes. Was it a burglar?”

  He shook his head. “Whoever did it didn’t force his way in.” In a choked voice, he added, “They walked me through the house to see whether anything was out of place. I saw them. The same books that you picked out for me.”

  It hit her how it might have seemed to him. She said, “Sorry. I do that—once I bother to spend time researching a particular area of books, then I recommend the living daylights out of them. To everyone. Because at least I know they’re good books. You just happened to be looking for the same ones.”

  Walter sighed and took a drink of water, starting with a sip—then gulped the rest of the glass down. She poured him another one and he drank that, too. He seemed bereft. She wouldn’t let herself think of him as a suspect. Sure, she could argue he had a motive, but his motive fit too perfectly—an angry and rejected son who stood to lose his inheritance—and he was too smart; he knew he’d be the first person people would suspect. So it just couldn’t be him.