Cherry Filled Charges

by Jessica Beck

“That was quick. Didn’t he answer?”

  “I never got a chance to call,” I said as I showed her the angry line on my wrist. “Do you have any disinfectant?”

  “Did you get that from my railing? I’m so sorry. I’ve been meaning to have it fixed, but I keep forgetting. This is all my fault,” she said as she got a small first aid kit from one of her kitchen drawers.

  “I should have seen it. I guess I was a little preoccupied.”

  “I feel so bad,” she said as she sprayed the wound. “Do you want a Band-Aid?”

  I looked and saw that it had drawn very little blood, and it had already stopped bleeding. “No, I think I’m good. At least I got a tetanus shot last year.” I saw the look of concern on her face. “Grace, I’m fine. Really. I do worse things to myself in the donut shop every week.”

  “Yes, but this was on my property. If you want to sue, I’m okay with it.”

  I had to laugh. “I think I’ll live. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to call Jake.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked me, clearly still upset about the incident.

  “It’s nothing more than a scratch. Would you stop apologizing?”

  “I can’t help it. At least let me buy you a treat to make up for it.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. How about more ice cream?”

  “That sounds great,” I said, and then I added, “You know, the cold cup might help ease the pain of my gash after all.”

  “It’s nowhere near being a gash, Suzanne,” she said with a laugh.

  “That’s what I keep telling you,” I said. I went back outside and decided to make that call after all.

  Just my luck, my husband picked up on the second ring. “Hey, stranger. I was wondering if I’d hear from you today. How goes the case? Are you two making any progress?”

  “Some,” I admitted. “How are things there?”

  “I’m heading home,” he said with a sigh. “I should be there in an hour.”

  “Is that a good sigh, or a bad one?” I asked him.

  “I’ve done all I can for the moment. We’ll talk about it when I get home. Distract me while I’m driving. Tell me what’s been going on there.”

  I gave him a brief summary of what we’d been doing, and then I hesitated a moment before telling him about the attack the night before.

  He was too good an investigator not to pick up on the pause. “Suzanne, what are you not telling me?”

  “Something happened, but the important thing to remember is that I’m fine,” I said, trying to calm him down before he had a chance to get too concerned.

  “Now I’m really worried. Talk to me.”

  “Grace, George, and I were making chocolate cake last night at Grace’s place. George broke her last egg, so I came over to the cottage to grab ours.”

  “Do I even want to know why you three were having a bake-off?”

  “It’s not important,” I said. “Just let me tell this, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Anyway, everything was fine until I was leaving the cottage. I was locking the door behind me when the egg carton started to slip. I leaned over to grab it, and somebody hit me from behind.”

  “What? Are you okay?”

  “I just said that I was,” I told him. “Don’t get worked up about this, Jake. It’s okay.”

  “Who did it?” Those three simple words, one short sentence, held more malice in them than I’d ever heard my husband use before. I pitied my attacker if Jake ever found them.

  “I don’t know. They hit my shoulder instead. It staggered me, and by the time I turned around, whoever did it was gone.”

  “What did they use?”

  “Chief Grant found a large branch near the cottage,” I said.

  “Hang on a second. The chief knew about this?”

  “Naturally. I had to call him, didn’t I?”

  “Sure, why bother letting your husband know what was going on,” he said, clearly unhappy about being the last one to know.

  “You were busy with Paul, Jake. Don’t be mad.”

  He took a few deep breaths, and then he said, “I’m not angry with you, Suzanne. I just wish you’d called me.”

  “What would you have done if I had?”

  “I would have broken every traffic law getting to you last night,” he admitted.

  “I knew I’d be fine,” I said. “The chief had patrols come by all night. I stayed with Grace, and Phillip stood guard on the front porch the entire time. He even walked me to the donut shop this morning. In fact, he’s coming back in a few hours to stand watch again.”

  “Does everyone in town but me know what happened?” he asked wearily.

  “Like I said, there was nothing you could do, and your family is important.”

  “Suzanne, let’s get something straight. You are my family, you and you alone. My sister and her kids are important to me, but you are vital. If anything like this ever happens again, you have to let me know immediately. I should be able to decide what I do, not you.”

  He was hurt; I could hear it in his voice. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  “If I’d been attacked, would you have wanted to wait a day to find out?” he asked me.

  “I said you were right, Jake. The horse is dead. Dismount.”

  “Okay. Just don’t take any more chances until I get there, all right?”

  “Grace and I are going to the store to get some ice cream, and then we’re going to watch a movie,” I said, deciding it on the spot.

  “That sounds safe enough,” Jake said.

  “Forgive me?” I asked meekly. I hated having my husband mad at me, especially when it was clearly my fault.

  “Yes,” he said. “What kind of ice cream are you getting?” It was his way of lightening the mood and letting me know that things were good once again between us.

  “I may not be able to decide,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get a sampler pack.”

  “Do they make those?”

  “Well, not specifically, but what’s wrong with getting four or five choices?” I asked with a laugh.

  “Nothing that I can think of. Save a little for me.”

  “I’m not making any promises. Jake, don’t speed home. I’m really fine.”

  “Now I’m the one who isn’t going to make any promises. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  “I can’t wait,” I said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  After we hung up, I stood there on the deck looking into Grace’s wooded backyard. It felt good leveling with Jake about what had happened, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t keep anything like that from him ever again.

  My wrist brushed against the wood of the rail again, missing the nail this time but still stinging a bit. It reminded me of a scrape I’d gotten in my kitchen three months before. The edge of a cutting tool had caught me unexpectedly, leaving a long, thin, angry line that had taken weeks to go away. The dough cutter’s long, flexible steel blade had caught me at just the right angle.

  In fact, it was the same implement that I’d been searching for in vain in my kitchen earlier.

  Had Emma actually moved it, or had something else, something far more sinister, happened to it?

  I got my phone out and started searching through the pictures I’d taken of the crime scene. At the moment I wasn’t interested in the shots of Simon Reed’s body. Instead, I checked out some of the other images I’d taken of the kitchen. It was hard to see until I used my fingers to zoom in to the image so I could get a closer look.

  The dough cutter was gone!

  I’d blamed Emma for moving it, but I knew that I’d put it back ea
rlier the morning of the murder when I’d last used it, and there was a very limited number of people who had been in my kitchen since I’d shut it down earlier.

  In fact, only three people had been there that I knew of: Simon Reed, the killer, and me.

  Everything started tumbling into place as I realized that Simon hadn’t died as easily as it had first appeared. If the knife wound hadn’t been immediately fatal, I could see him whirling around and trying to find something to defend himself with. The dough cutter had been within his reach, and I could visualize him striking out with it in a desperate attempt to defend himself or, at the very least, mark his attacker so we’d know who had murdered him.

  I’d seen an angry mark much like mine earlier, and I suddenly had a strong suspicion who the killer was.

  Shalimar had had random scratches on her hands, but I believed that they had come from a cat, exactly as she’d explained.

  However, Clint Harpold had scratches of his own, but there had been something different about his arm.

  There had been a single long wound there as well.

  That explained why he’d been wearing long sleeves on such a warm day.

  He didn’t want anyone to see the evidence of Simon’s counterattack, and he couldn’t exactly put the dough cutter back on the shelf after Simon was dead. No doubt he was worried about his DNA being on the blade. No, unless I missed my guess, he’d taken it with him and thrown it away in a dumpster somewhere, maybe at Baxter’s.

  Either way, now I knew where we needed to start looking.

  “What’s going on? How did he take it?” Grace asked as she joined me on the back porch.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “I know who killed Simon. Now all we have to do is prove it.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense! Who killed him?”

  “Clint Harpold,” I said.

  That’s when I heard a rustling noise coming from the trees.

  “Get inside!” I screamed at Grace as I saw Clint bounding toward us with a gun in his hands.

  She tried to do as I told her, but before either one of us could escape, Clint was on us.

  He pressed the gun into my back, and I could feel the barrel dig into the skin through my thin T-shirt.

  “That’s a good idea. Let’s all go inside,” Clint said.

  I knew that if we did that, he’d be able to kill us at his leisure. If we stayed where we were, we might at least have a fighting chance.

  “Why did you do it, Clint?” I asked him as I touched Grace’s arm lightly. I shook my head gingerly, and she caught on right away that we had to resist going inside at any cost.

  “Simon had everything that I should have had,” he said bitterly. “He had Shalimar in the palm of his hand, and he just threw her away as though she didn’t matter. Then I saw him make a pass at Emma, and I followed him into the donut shop to confront him about it. He needed to stop acting like a kid and grow up. She deserved someone better.”

  “Like you?” I asked, and the barrel dug in a little deeper. It was close enough to my bruised shoulder to cause me to wince in pain, something he didn’t seem to mind all that much.

  “What’s wrong with me? Shalimar could do a lot worse. Simon laughed at me! He called me a loser, and he made fun of the Lazy Eye, too! He started saying all of these horrible things about my lack of talent, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed a knife from the rack and I stabbed him!”

  “He fought back though, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t see the dough cutter coming,” Clint admitted. “You spotted that, didn’t you? I knew you were getting close, so I had to stop you from figuring out I did it. If you hadn’t ducked at the last second, I wouldn’t have had to worry about you anymore, either.”

  “Are you telling me that you killed a man just because he wasn’t treating a girl you liked very nicely, a girl that isn’t even interested in you? This all came to be because you were jealous of what someone else had?” I asked him incredulously. How much had Clint built it all up in his own mind? Did he really see a scenario where he ended up with his volatile waitress? Was that why he’d hired her? It surely wasn’t for her abilities. It was insane on the face of it, but then again, he wasn’t being particularly rational at the moment. I’d expected that kind of behavior from Shalimar and Sherry, but not Clint!

  “Shalimar is going to love me sooner or later,” he said angrily. “But she kept talking about getting back together with Simon, that it was finally going to happen, and I couldn’t let it! Besides, Simon had it coming. He’d been on my back since culinary school, and he got exactly what he deserved. I’m not telling you again to move it. I’m sick of talking about it. Get inside!”

  He pushed me with the gun, and Grace started to go in despite my warning.

  “Don’t do it!” I said loudly.

  I’d been talking to Grace, trying to get her to stop and fight, but Clint must have thought I’d meant him.

  “Nobody’s ever going to tell me what to do again,” he said icily.

  He started to move the gun in Grace’s direction.

  It was the moment I’d been waiting for.

  As soon as the weapon was out of my back, I shoved myself backward as hard as I could.

  The gun fired as Clint went tumbling back over the railing.

  Unfortunately, I went right over with him.

  Chapter 21

  As I was falling, I realized that the gunshot had missed Grace and had pierced the gutter above our heads. She’d have to have that patched before the next rain, but at least she was safe.

  For the moment.

  It hadn’t been that far a fall, just a few feet, but it had managed to knock the gun out of Clint’s hand. My shoulder exploded in pain as I landed on him, but I had to ignore it for the moment. I scrambled around to grab the weapon before he could, but Clint rebounded quicker than I thought was possible. As we fought for the gun, I could tell almost immediately that I was losing the fight.

  And then Grace joined in.

  She must have leapt off the deck the moment we were falling, because a split second later, it was two against one. As Clint and I struggled to get control of the gun, Grace went straight for his throat.

  It was an effective technique, and I felt Clint’s grip start to slip a little.

  It wasn’t much, but it was all that I needed.

  I got control of the weapon, and Grace let go of the killer’s throat.

  “Get up,” I said as I stood, moving back a few paces in case he tried to lunge out and fight me for the weapon again.

  “Make me,” Clint said as he lay there in the grass, panting heavily as he tried to get his breath back.

  “Do as she says,” a strong, familiar voice said from behind me.

  It was Chief Grant, but what really caught me off guard was who was with him.

  Evidently Theodore Reed had been nearby all along after all.

  Chapter 22

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “I’ve been watching out for you since I took off,” Theodore said. “I knew that whoever killed my brother wouldn’t be able to ignore you for long.”

  “That was you in front of the shop this morning, wasn’t it?” I asked as the chief took the gun from me before handcuffing Clint.

  “I didn’t want you to see me,” he admitted.

  “I have a question,” Grace said. “Why didn’t you help us just now instead of running away?”

  “He had a gun!” Theodore said. “I went to get help. What more could I have done?”

  “You could have joined the fight,” Grace said.

  “And risk getting shot? I don’t think so,” Theodore said, and then he turned to go.

  “You’re as bad as your brother,” Clint said in disgust. I cou
ldn’t believe that the killer was taking my side of the argument.

  “Whatever,” Theodore said as he started to leave again.

  “You’re just going to let him walk away?” Grace asked the chief incredulously.

  “I don’t have any choice. He didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, he did come and get me.”

  “And left us to face Clint alone,” I said.

  All the chief could do was shrug. “Let’s go, you,” Chief Grant said as he pushed the killer toward the street.

  “Did you really think you were going to get away with it?” I asked as they walked away.

  “If you two meddlesome hags hadn’t butted in where you didn’t belong, I probably would have,” he said, spitting out the words with sheer hate.

  “I take that as a compliment,” I said.

  “You would,” he replied.

  “I’m so happy you’re okay,” Jake said as he wrapped his arms around me an hour later at Grace’s place. He must have broken, or at the very least bent, the speed limit to get there so quickly, but I was glad that he had. Being in his embrace again, I let the tension leave my body as I nearly collapsed against him. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d been holding in until I let it all go.

  “Me, too,” I said, finally pulling away. “How are things with Paul?”

  “It’s not important,” he said, pulling me in again.

  I resisted. “Of course it is. He’s family too, Jake.”

  “Like I said, you’re all I really need in the world. We’ll deal with the other stuff later. All that matters at the moment is that you’re safe.”

  “As much as I’m enjoying your arms wrapped around me, could you ease up a little?” I asked. “My shoulder’s still pretty sore.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said, loosening his grip slightly. “Suzanne, what am I going to do with you?”