Ouna Bay Cozy Mystery Boxed Set (4-Book Bundle)

by Deany Ray

  “Oh, Rosalie.” I rolled my eyes. “You have the most romantic dates.”

  She sighed in contentment. “Don’t I, though? I am a lucky girl.”

  It took her almost twenty tries, but she managed to get us in through Ada’s backdoor. “Ta da!” She motioned me inside the kitchen with an elegant sweep of her arm.

  First, we checked the obvious places. But there were no notes on the coffee table where Ada might have sat to put her feet up and go over that day’s mail. There were no notes on the kitchen counter or the little table by the door where she might have easily put things down when she walked into the house after a day of turning her nose up at people and making her opinions known. We checked drawers, looked on her bedside table, and peeked beneath the couch.

  I sat down in Ada’s very tasteful chair that exactly matched the blue in her finely crafted couch. The notes, if they were there, wouldn’t be the kind of things that Ada would just leave out for any visitor to see. “Where would she put something she wanted to hide?” I asked.

  Rosalie pondered the question and I was hopeful that my best friend, of all people, might chance upon the answer. Rosalie was the very best when it came to losing things. And that meant that, some of the time at least, she was also very good at finding important objects in the unlikeliest of places.

  Suddenly we heard a noise. Shoot. It was the sound of the back door being opened.

  We froze in place.

  “Did you lock it back when we came in?” I whispered very softly.

  “Oops.” Her eyes grew wide. And I guessed that “oops” meant “no.”

  “Stupid rookie mistake,” she said. “Like I’m some newbie cop who doesn’t know the first thing about how to work a scene.”

  She also didn’t know to whisper.

  “Rosalie! Be quiet!” My heart was beating so hard that I was half afraid that the intruders would be able to hear the thudding in my chest.

  Could it be the killer? Or maybe Ada’s niece, in town to get the house in order? How in the world would we explain? Perhaps we were cleaning women who’d arrived without a mop? A neighbor who’d broken in to make sure there were no pets that needed feeding?

  I could hear muffled voices, which to my dismay were getting closer. I used my head to motion toward a tiny closet. Thankfully, we both managed to squeeze in, pressed against Ada’s sensible black coat and a tailored St. John jacket. My head almost touched the ceiling and Rosalie was wedged in tight against me with coats and Ada’s wool scarves tickling our faces.

  The voices got closer. In the dining room perhaps? Or maybe they were in the kitchen. I felt the unfortunate beginnings of a very ill-timed sneeze.

  I heard a man’s voice, and then a woman’s, then I heard papers being shuffled.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” I whispered.

  “Maybe the same thing we are.” Rosalie peeked out from the behind a coat. “Wouldn’t that be funny?” I couldn’t think of a time that I’d been less amused.

  “For Pete’s sake! We’ve looked everywhere!” I recognized the booming voice that was filled with anger and frustration. It was someone with whom I’d recently shared a tray of desserts instead of a seemingly mutual desire to break into the home of a murder victim.

  “Maybe she threw them out,” said a softer voice. Celia was there too.

  Please, just hurry up and leave, I thought as the tickling in my nose grew alarmingly more intense.

  “You promised we wouldn’t stay for long,” Celia said. “This makes me way too nervous.”

  “You’re right,” Burt said. “If anyone were to see us, we’d be in a fix. Even more than we are now. We’ve looked so let’s just go.”

  Thank goodness.

  I breathed a (quiet) sigh of relief. The tickling in my nose seemed to have gone away.

  “Five more minutes,” he said.

  For Pete’s sake. Please. Just go.

  Soon I heard his voice again, the booming tone replaced with a softer one that aimed to soothe. “Celia. You’re shaking! But it’s okay. We’re going now. I promise. And nobody’s seen a thing. Everything will be okay.”

  I closed my eyes. Everything will be okay.

  From behind the sleeve of Ada’s coat, Rosalie sent me a thumbs up.

  I moved from hide-and-seek mode to a calmer, investigative state of mind. Had Burt written that note? Or Celia? What did the other notes say? And where had Ada put them?

  My heart rate had almost returned to normal.

  “Come on babe, we’re out of here,” I heard Burt say to Celia.

  Rosalie peeked out from behind the coat and pretended to wipe sweat from her forehead in a show of huge relief.

  We heard rushed footsteps heading past us toward the door.

  Burt and Celia were just outside the closet when Rosalie’s cell phone rang.

  Chapter Ten

  We froze.

  Then Rosalie reached to fish the phone out of her purse, as if she could really move in that teeny tiny space. Her arm got caught in the sleeve of Ada’s jacket. Then she tripped over a scarf, landing hard on my big toe.

  When the acrobatic show was finished, she held up her phone, triumphant. Then she frowned in thought. “Guess I should wait to take the call.”

  “You think so, Sherlock?” I asked. A fine detective, that one.

  Warily and slowly, Burt opened the door with Celia peering out from behind his massive back. They were shocked to see that it was us: me half covered up by Ada’s coat and Rosalie still on the floor. One of her legs was raised awkwardly against the wall with a coat hanger dangling around the ankle.

  “What the hell?” Burt bellowed.

  “Becky?” Celia whispered. “And you too, Rosalie? What are you doing here?”

  We had some explaining to do, for sure. But then, so did they.

  Rosalie crawled out of the closet and I limped out behind her. My toe had started to throb. The four of us stared at each other, waiting for someone to start.

  Surprisingly, it was the meekest one who stepped up to tell her story first. Celia clasped and unclasped her hands with the worry of it all. “We didn’t tell you the whole truth,” she said. “That day at the coffee shop.” She glanced at her husband who shrugged as if to say What can you do? We’re caught. Then he gave her a nod to go on.

  “You see, we’d made a deal with Ada.” She shook her head. “It’s not something that we’re proud of.”

  Burt raised his hand to interrupt. “But we didn’t kill anybody. Let’s make that clear right now.”

  Even the idea that we might think that brought Celia almost to tears. “Oh, no. We’d never do anything like that.” She looked from me to Rosalie, imploring us to believe her.

  And something told me that I could. Burt was gruff, but both he and Celia were soft hearted to a fault. They were the first to offer up hugs and dessert trays and any kind of help at all when people were sick or facing some kind of trouble.

  “What kind of deal?” I asked.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Burt said. “I guess you’ve heard that Ada’s number was up with the County Fair Committee. She’d messed with one too many people. No big surprise right there. I guess we shouldn’t have been shocked when she fell down dead. Everyone in the whole town would have liked to kill her.” His brows were knit in anger as if remembering some slight.

  Celia looked alarmed again. She placed a hand on his muscled arm. “That’s just an expression my husband likes to use. We didn’t really want to...kill her. We didn’t want to - and I swear we didn’t!” Her voice was even smaller than it usually was and her eyes were huge with worry.

  I touched her hand. “I believe you, Celia. Come. Let’s find a place to sit.” My toe was really hurting.

  We settled into Ada’s living room to hear more about the days that had led up to her murder.

  “So what was the deal you made with Ada?” Rosalie took out her notebook, then looked furiously through her purse. “Hey, does anyone have
a pen?”

  Burt looked confused, but pulled a pen from behind his ear, shrugged and handed it to Rosalie. “We’re not real proud of this,” he said. “But Celia has a cousin who’s on the Fair Committee. We told Ada that we could make sure she kept her job.”

  Celia finished his sentence. “As long as our cake won the contest.” She looked down at the floor, embarrassed.

  It was my turn to be confused. “But it’s just a contest. And you hated Ada. Why would you do that?”

  “The answer is simple,” Burt said. “We really need the money. The price of supplies keeps going up. And business has been slow.”

  “A couple of times this past year we almost couldn’t pay our bills,” Celia said. “Last year we won fair and square. And that gave business quite a boost. We remembered that lovely surge of customers.”

  Burt shook his head. “And we gave in to temptation. Maybe if we got another boost, that would help us pay the mortgage. We worked through notes as much as possible. It just seemed more prudent than saying the words out loud. You know how things are around a place like this. Hard to keep a secret.”

  Celia nodded. “Little town with big ears.”

  “But then Ada got killed,” Burt said. “And I just couldn’t stand the thought that someone might find the notes. It might be pretty easy to get the wrong idea.”

  “And her niece will be here any day now. To get the house cleaned out.” Celia grabbed his hand. “We knew we had to hurry.”

  “But at least they know who did it now,” Burt said. “That was a huge relief. But we’d just as soon they didn’t find the notes. Then they’d start asking questions. And what if they found out?”

  Celia nodded. “Because bribing a judge to win first place would kill our business then and there.”

  Burt put his arm around his wife. “It’s bad enough that we had plans to cheat. But to be in a plot with Ada? That’s like making a deal with the devil. If people found out what we did, they wouldn’t buy a lemon square from Purdy’s Coffee Beans if it was the last little bite of sweetness on this earth.”

  “People can’t find out.” Celia gave us a pleading look.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” I said.

  Rosalie studied Burt and Celia. “It can’t be you,” she said. “It was in your best interest for Ada to live long enough to declare the winner. With Ada alive, your business might just boom again. But a dead Ada can’t do a thing to help bring in the customers.”

  Burt shook his head. “I guess we might have been the only ones in town who mourned the news.” Then he suddenly seemed to remember that we weren’t the only ones with questions. “So that’s our story. Your turn now. What business could you two possibly have in Ada’s closet?”

  I explained that I’d found one note and that we were hoping to find more. “I guess we’ve all done things that we aren’t proud of. But the café had become a ghost town. We needed things solved and quick.” I gave them a small smile. “You two know just what I mean.”

  Burt had grown suspicious. “But why break in a house to solve a crime when the police have figured it out and have the killer locked in jail?”

  Celia smiled. “Isn’t it wonderful? We sold out our brownies in an hour. The line was out the door.”

  “It is a relief,” I told them. “But I can’t believe that it was Marilyn who did it. I don’t think she’d kill a housefly that was buzzing in her face, let alone a person.”

  “Surprised the heck out of me when they arrested her,” Burt said. “But you don’t just accidentally mix cyanide into a layer cake.”

  “It’s certainly never happened to us,” Rosalie said thoughtfully. “You have an excellent point. But Becky thought if we found the other notes, they might point us to someone new. We looked everywhere.”

  Burt stood up. “Yeah. We pretty much gave up as well. We all best be getting out of here before that niece shows up.” He looked from me to Rosalie. “I’d like to keep this quiet. I imagine you would too.”

  Rosalie grabbed his little finger. “Pinkie swear!” she said.

  He gave her a gruff nod.

  We locked the door and took care to make sure that nothing looked out of place.

  “Well, that was an adventure,” Rosalie said as she got into the car. “But now we know the notes weren’t written by the killer. We can get back to cakes and coffee. Till the police need us again.”

  Exhausted, I simply mumbled “uh.” Which to Rosalie meant “yes.” But to me it meant that I was not convinced.

  We still had a killer to catch.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rosalie twirled as she filled a plate with muffins for a table in the corner. She adored nothing more than a café full of customers. We both were thrilled to have steady paychecks once again. But she also loved the chance to catch up on all the news and show off her latest outfits.

  The heels she was wearing that day did not lend themselves to dancing with a breakable plate piled high with delicate baked goods. But Rosalie was full of surprises; she seemed to manage just fine. The muffins and plate were both intact when she completed her happy spin.

  She took care of customers while I put the finishing touches on a caramel apple cake.

  I spied Dwight at a table by a window and walked over to ask him if there was news about Marilyn or the case.

  He finished chewing a bite of his sandwich, then he shook his head. “She still swears she didn’t do it. Of course, I know that she’s the killer. But I have to say, I feel pretty bad for her. She cries all the time. It’s the most pitiful thing I’ve ever seen. I almost wish that I could sneak one of those cupcakes in to her.” He eyed the pastry case.

  “Yeah, that breaks my heart,” I said. I wondered how it must feel to be locked in jail for a heinous thing you didn’t do. And to know that your name was coming up in conversations all over Ouna Bay.

  Dwight picked up his sandwich. “I’m not supposed to say nice things about the inmates.” He frowned an official looking frown. “Being police and all. But it’s not like she took out the most beloved person in our town. Who knows why she did it? But a sweet lady like Marilyn?” He looked around and lowered his voice. “Must have had a real good reason to do the thing she did.”

  Or didn’t do, I thought. I grabbed a nearby pitcher and refilled his water glass.

  Dwight shoved a whole half of his sandwich in his mouth. As he chewed, he read a headline in his copy of the Ouna Bay Gazette. “She’s worried about what her mama will think when her picture gets splashed across the paper. And you know what she told me? That before this whole thing started – Ada dropping down dead and all – she was really hoping that she would get her photo in the paper. She’d made her cake so pretty, and she was hoping that reporter with the camera would stop by and take a picture.”

  His words brought back a memory. I remembered something that might just be a clue. And I was horrified at the thought of who might have poisoned Ada.

  But could it be? No way.

  I picked up some dirty napkins from an empty table and turned back toward the kitchen. I shouldn’t spin wild theories. I had a cake to finish.

  But then I paused, still shocked by the picture forming in my mind. It did, after all, make a gruesome kind of sense. I knew what I had to do and I had no time to waste.

  Rosalie appeared beside me and gave Dwight’s shoulders a massage. She put a dessert-filled plate down on the table. “A cupcake for my cupcake before he goes off to save the world.”

  I was too stunned by what I’d figured out to even roll my eyes. “Can you handle things here for a little while?” I touched her on the arm. “I need to run an errand.”

  “Sure.” She raised a questioning eyebrow, but was too preoccupied to care about the answer. She made kissy sounds as she smoothed down the bit of hair that always seemed to stick straight up on the top of her boyfriend’s skinny head.

  ***

  I broke several traffic laws to get to the police station as quickly as I could.


  I asked for the deputy chief. Roger was my cheating ex-fiancée, but perhaps he could help me now.

  As he shut the door to his office, I got to the point before I was even settled into my chair. “You’ve made a mistake. A big one. The woman you have locked up is not the one who did it.”

  “Marilyn, you mean?”

  When I nodded, he leaned forward in his chair. “Look, I know she seems way too sweet to have done a thing like that. I’ll be the first one to admit it - She’s not your typical felon.” He sighed. “We’re usually the heroes when we lock up a criminal. It doesn’t often happen that people love the killer more than the murder victim. But everywhere I go now, people are telling me to be sure that we treat Marilyn Cobb real gently. People ask if they can bring her homemade dinners.” He leaned back. “Heck, I think some people want to throw her a parade. But, Becky, she killed a woman. And no matter how aggravating the victim could sometimes be, that’s no defense for murder. The evidence on this one is as straight forward as it gets.”

  “I know all about the evidence. But Marilyn was set up.”

  He spread his hands in a gesture that I recognized as a reluctant invitation to continue. Back when we were dating, Roger had grown used to hearing my elaborate theories on all kinds of things. He knew that once I had my mind made up, he might as well just hear me out.

  “I think you’re wrong on this one,” he said, “but tell me who it is that you suspect.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was Lynn Fowler.”

  He furrowed his forehead in disbelief. “From the Ouna Bay Gazette?”

  “That sounds crazy, I know, but listen. Lynn told me a story about how Marilyn refused to let her cake be photographed.”

  He shook his head. “That hardly sounds like a scenario that would lead up to a murder.”