The Wicked Waffle: Book 1 in The Diner of the Dead Series

by Carolyn Q. Hunter

  “Maybe it was easier to use the fake one. They could just throw it down at the right moment. Also, the killer could have gone to retrieve the boulder after the victim died. It would remove any evidence of the “murder weapon,” making it look like Ronda just drove off the road and killed herself,” Songa shrugged.

  “But Ronda didn’t die from the crash,” she continued. “She found herself upside down against a tree at the bottom of the grade, and realized that she was relatively okay. She probably crawled out through the shattered sunroof. Then the killer sees her crawl out and realizes they’ve failed in their plan. So, the murderer decides to take a more active role, and shoots her, hiding the body someplace where they think she’ll never be found. The diner is closed down, and seems as if it may never reopen.”

  “And then you come into town,” a ghost of a smile played across the Sheriff’s face.

  “Until I come into town. Exactly,” Sonja grinned.

  “You get nosy, and think that you see something inside the diner. Next thing you know we’ve found the body.”

  “Yep, and we’ve just thrown a wrench into the killer’s plan.”

  “And whoever he is, he used the same strategy on you last night.”

  “Or she.”

  “Or she,” The Sheriff nodded.

  The door to the conference room opened and Marie popped her head in. She had a chocolate chip stain on the corner of her mouth, and Sonja bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a smile.

  “Hey, Sheriff. Turns out there are blood stains on the coat Sonja found. Doctor Ballard just verified.”

  “Okay, we’ll need to send it in for DNA testing.”

  Marie nodded and closed the door.

  “Maybe we can match up that blood to a killer,” he mused.

  “A killer who isn’t my father,” Sonja added, raising an eyebrow.

  “Your father still had the gun in his car. So, we’ll be holdng onto him until this is all worked out.”

  “What?” Sonja was incredulous.

  “And I don’t want you to be involved in any more of this. No more snooping around. You’ve come close to getting yourself hurt, twice.”

  “The boulder and the shooting count as the same attempt,” Sonja corrected.

  The conference room door opened before the Sheriff could reply. This time, the second deputy, Danny Barnes, walked in with a plate full of waffles.

  “Barnes, we’re trying to discuss an attempted murder and homicide. Do you mind not waltzing in here with your waffles?”

  “Sorry, Sheriff,” Barnes said through a mouthful of waffle. “So what are you doing with this old prop boulder?” he asked, motioning with his fork at the Styrofoam rock on the table.

  “It’s evidence.”

  “Wait,” Sonja said. “Did you say prop boulder?”

  “Yeah,” Danny said between bites of waffle. “It’s just like the ones they use in plays over at the middle school.”

  * * *

  “Come on. Let’s get in there,” Sonja said getting out of the squad car once they’d parked at the middle school.

  “Look, I only let you come along so you could help identify.”

  “Identify a fake rock?” she chuckled.

  “Exactly,” Sheriff Thompson replied, not looking at her.

  Once inside, they asked for the drama teacher, and were directed to her room just at the end of the main hallway. Luckily, it was her “free” period.

  “Mrs. Crawford?” Sheriff Thompson asked, as he stepped in the doorway of the classroom.

  “Oh, hello Sheriff. What can I do for you?” she smiled from behind her desk.

  “We need to look at your prop inventory. Have you had any props go missing lately?”

  “Well, to be honest, Sheriff, we have props go missing all the time. Some student thinks a fake gun or sword looks cool and decides to borrow it, never brings it back. I, of course, have set up serious consequences for anyone caught taking props.”

  “You don’t keep a tight inventory?”

  “Well, it honestly isn’t up to date,” Mrs. Crawford motioned across the room, indicating the out-of-sorts state of the theater bookshelves filled with scripts, folders, binders, and seemingly random loose papers.

  “Have you had any larger props go missing, Mrs. Crawford?” Sonja asked. Sheriff Thompson gave her a ‘don’t talk’ look.

  “Larger? No, I don’t see how a student could get away with that. Someone would surely notice.”

  “Can we see the prop room, please?” Sonja asked.

  “Yes, as I was about to ask,” Sheriff Thompson interrupted. “Can we see the prop room?”

  “Certainly,” Mrs. Crawford said.

  She grabbed a set of keys from her desk, leading them out of the room and around to the back of the auditorium, to the prop storage room. A couple of students sat by the door, along with the three teens who had helped clean up the diner.

  “Hi, Miss Sonja,” Sam greeted her.

  “Excuse us, boys. We’re on official police business,” The Sheriff said.

  “We just wanted to say thank you again, about letting us move Game Night back to the diner,” he continued, undaunted by the Sheriff.

  Sonja smiled, “No problem.”

  “We were getting really sick of having to play in the church basement. It always smelled down there.”

  “Yeah, and we always had to listen to Pastor Williams practicing his sermons in the room above us. It totally ruined the game.” Dillon chimed in.

  “Well, in a few weeks it’ll be summer break and you can come play as much as you want at the diner,” Sonja assured them.

  “Sweet,” Sam and Dillon nodded, pleased.

  “Are we here for small talk or are we here to look at boulders?” Sheriff Thompson gave Sonja a pointed look.

  “Sorry,” she grinned.

  Mrs. Crawford opened the door to the prop room and let them in.

  “Is there a light in here?” Sheriff Thompson asked.

  The drama teacher flipped a switch on the wall, lighting up the storage room. Sure enough, there was an entire pile of fake boulders in various colors and sizes, sitting in the corner.

  “Looks like the same thing to me.” Sheriff Thompson said.

  “Me too,” Sonja agreed.

  “Are any of those boulders missing?” Sheriff Thompson asked, turning to Mrs. Crawford.

  “I couldn’t honestly tell you. We’ve had those boulders for probably ten or fifteen years. I’ve actually never counted them. In our inventory, we just have them listed as ‘boulders’”

  “Well, that doesn’t help us much, does it?” the Sheriff muttered, thinking.

  “I suppose not,” Sonja sighed. “I just wish we had something more. I feel like I’m on the verge of figuring this out.”

  “Well, fortunately, it isn’t your job to figure it out, it’s mine,” he reminded her sharply.

  Sonja looked at the time on her phone. “It’s already ten. I need to go help Pastor Williams move some things for the charity sale tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Sheriff Thompson said, sounding vaguely relieved. “I’ll give you a ride back to your car.”

  Chapter 15

  “Wow, there’s a lot of stuff down here,” Alison noted as she and Sonja stepped into the basement of the church. “And we’re supposed to move all of this out?”

  “That’s what Pastor Williams said. Everything that is boxed up right here, and then some,” Sonja made a face, not looking forward to the dusty chore.

  “I guess they had a lot of donations this year.”

  “No kidding. Let’s just hope most of it sells.”

  “Hey, look at all those old decorations back there,” Ally pointed, staring curiously.

  There were wooden pillars, fake palm trees, and even an entire manger made out of plywood—all for use during church events and holidays, Sonja assumed.

  “It smells down here,” Alison wrinkled her nose.

  Sonja had to agree. It was musty a
nd dark, with only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling was low and the room felt claustrophobic, and, just like the boys had described, she could hear every cough and mumble from Pastor Williams in his office above them. Sonja imagined that when he was practicing a sermon it could probably get pretty loud. It was no wonder the boys didn’t look forward to playing games down there.

  The two friends began grabbing boxes and moving them up the stairs and out the door. Vic and Alex showed up shortly after they started, and loaded the boxes into Vic’s truck and Sonja’s car. The basement storage room was looking more and more spacious with every trip.

  “Hey, check out this box!” Alison called, grabbing a container from the corner.

  “What is it?” Sonja peered over her shoulder.

  “I think it’s full of old photo albums from all the church events. Wow, this one has to be from the 80s or something.”

  Sonja glanced at the clothes in the picture and giggled. “Or at least, the early 90s.”

  Alison flipped through a few more pages.

  “Wait, wait! Hold on!” Sonja said, grabbing the album. She was transfixed by a picture that seemed very familiar. It was a picture of Belinda and her father.

  “What? What is it?” Alison asked.

  “Let me see this,” Sonja peeled back the cellophane cover keeping the pictures in place and pulled the photo out.

  “What are you doing?” Ally looked at her curiously.

  “Seeing if it has a label on the back.” She flipped the picture over.

  * * *

  Sonja carried the last box upstairs, loaded it in her mom’s sedan, went back inside the church, and knocked on Pastor Williams’ office door. When there was no answer she knocked again. There was still no answer, so she tried the knob, and when the door opened, she slipped inside.

  The office was quiet, deathly quiet.

  “Please be open,” she whispered, approaching the filing cabinet. She wasn’t going to take anything, she’d just have a little look - she needed to check something.

  The cabinet was locked.

  “Darn it,” she whispered.

  Sonja had another idea, and moved quickly behind the Pastor’s desk, opening the top drawer. It mostly had pencils, pens, erasers, and paper clips organized in a plastic divider, but there was one little slot that contained a set of tiny silver keys. She picked them up and headed over to the cabinet, slid one of the keys in, and turned it. It worked! Quietly as she could, she opened the top drawer, the one she had seen the Pastor sorting through just the day before, and sure enough, there was the manila folder.

  Reaching in, she pulled it out just far enough to peek through the papers without disturbing them too much. All of them appeared to be building permits, just as she had suspected, but none of them were in the Pastor’s name. They were all in Ronda Smith’s name. She finally came to the paper she was looking for. It said, Birth Certificate, at the top. And the name on it was Belinda Smith born to Cynthia Williams and . . . Patrick Williams. Pastor Williams.

  “Sonja?”

  Sonja jumped like she’d been shot, shut the cabinet as fast as she could, and turned around to face Pastor Williams.

  “Pastor Williams,” she said breathlessly, her heart racing and her mind blindly grasping for explanations.

  “What are you doing in my private files?” he asked, eyebrows raised in disapproval.

  Sonja wanted to disappear into the floor, but instead blurted out, “You’re Belinda’s father!”

  “Oh, you saw that?”

  “And all those building permits, they’re in Ronda Smith’s name,” she tried not to sound accusatory.

  Pastor Williams sighed.

  “Yes, that is all true, I’m afraid. Ronda was taking the church from us, from our community. She was going to rip it down to put up an apartment building.”

  “And you allowed her to do it. Because she knew you were Belinda’s real father. She was blackmailing you.”

  Pastor Williams nodded, “She found the birth certificate, up in the mansion. She used it to blackmail Leonard Smith out of his estate and then me out of my church.”

  “Is that why you killed her?”

  Pastor Williams shook his head. “I didn’t kill Ronda. I was here all night, practicing my sermon,” he said easily, as beads of sweat popped up on his forehead.

  “Were you?” Sonja challenged.

  “The boys can attest to that. They were in the basement playing their games while I was up here. They would have been able to hear me up here practicing,” the pastor smiled, looking rather smug.

  “Or were they actually hearing this?” Sonja said, moving over to the desk and pressing play on the tape recorder. Pastor Williams’ voice echoed out of the speakers, as he rehearsed the sermon. She pressed stop and stared at him.

  “You can’t prove that’s what happened. There’s no evidence to say I was anywhere near Ronda or her car,” he shrugged.

  “Or her car?” Sonja asked. “How did you know the murder took place near her car?”

  The color drained from the pastor’s face.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, and there is evidence saying you were at the crime scene. Your coat, which is covered in your blood and most likely Ronda’s blood, was buried in the dirt near the river.”

  “My blood?”

  “Yes. You cut your hand on the broken sunroof of Ronda’s car - retrieving that file of incriminating papers perhaps?” she arched an eyebrow, no longer the least bit intimidated by the man’s status.

  “I cut my hand moving boxes for the sale. I already told you that,” Pastor Williams had gone from pale white to an angry red and a vein pulsed on his forehead.

  “Sheriff Thompson is having the blood that was on the coat tested, and I’m sure it’ll match yours. Maybe we could even link it to the blood on the sunroof.”

  “You have quite a vivid imagination, young lady,” his eyes darted around the room.

  “I got suspicious when you were going through all those papers yesterday. I didn’t know what it meant at the time but it looked like you were digging through the mess, searching for something, not organizing. Now I realize that you were probably making sure that the birth certificate that Ronda was using to blackmail you was actually in there. Were you planning on destroying it?”

  “That’s ridiculous. You’ve concocted quite a tale here and you should be ashamed of yourself,” the pastor asserted, seeming to regain his bearings a bit.

  “I wasn’t sure,” Sonja continued, ignoring his protest. “But when I visited Belinda yesterday, she showed me a picture of her father. And the profile of the man in the picture didn’t seem to really match what I would think a rich tycoon would look. It just didn’t add up.”

  “So? What does that have to do with anything?” was the exasperated reply.

  “I found this in the basement of the church,” Sonja held up a photo. “It matches the picture Belinda had, the one that she said was of her father. On the back, it says Belinda Smith and Pastor Patrick Williams. Church picnic 1991.”

  Pastor Williams glared at her, reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a revolver.

  “You should have just stayed out of the way.”

  “Is that what you shot at me with last night?”

  “It is,” his smile was sinister now.

  “And the foam rock? That was from your own basement. It was usually used in the yearly Easter pageant, wasn’t it?”

  “It was a shame I had to use it at all. But you just wouldn’t leave well enough alone.”

  “And the other gun? You planted it in my father’s car,” her eyes narrowed.

  “I thought it was abandoned,” he shrugged, showing no remorse whatsoever.

  “I still don’t understand why Belinda had the picture,” she mused.

  “That was a mistake. I had someone take the picture at the picnic that year and had two copies made. I gave one to Belinda and kept one myse
lf. I wanted her to have something from her real father,” he still had the gun trained on Sonja’s midsection.

  She had to keep him talking, it might mean the difference between life and death.

  “But how would she know that you were her real father?”

  “I have no idea. She just started telling people around town that the man in the picture was her father.”

  “She does seem to have a special intuition. A sixth sense.”

  “When she started telling everyone I was her father, Leonard and . . . and my ex-wife took her out of school.”

  “Your ex-wife?”

  “She left me, divorced me, so she could marry Leonard Smith. She was pregnant with my child at the time. But, after Belinda was born, Leonard didn’t want anyone to know that she was my child, so he covered it up. He took the birth certificate which listed me as the father and kept it somewhere in his mansion.”

  “And then Ronda found it.”

  “She threatened to tell the whole town. I didn’t want Belinda to find out. Not after all these years.”

  “And you didn’t want her to lose the fortune either.”

  Pastor Williams gritted his teeth. “That fortune belongs to her!”

  “So, to make sure that Belinda got the fortune, you killed Ronda.”

  Pastor Williams nodded. “Guess that’s what happens to women who meddle in things that are none of their business,” he snarled, flipping the safety so that he could fire. The soft snick of the safety made Sonja’s blood run cold.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said coolly, staring him down.

  “And why not? This time, I won’t miss,” he promised grimly.

  “Because Sheriff Thompson is right behind you.”

  Pastor Williams glanced quickly over his shoulder, and saw Sheriff Thompson, standing mere feet from him, with his weapon drawn and steady.

  “And you just confessed to the murder of Ronda Smith right in front of him.”

  “Put the gun down, Williams.” the Sheriff ordered.

  Pastor Williams’ head fell to his chest, and he tossed the gun onto his desk.