by Anne Hagan
Opera House Ops
Episode 7 – Cole’s Conundrum
A Morelville Cozies Serial Mystery
Anne Hagan
To Mrs. Rotunno for words of praise that sparked a lifelong passion for writing
PUBLISHED BY:
Jug Run Press, USA
Copyright © 2016
https://annehaganauthor.com/
All rights reserved: No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed or given away in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without prior written consent of the author or the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are actual places used in an entirely fictitious manner and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1 – ME’s Report
Wednesday Morning, October 7th
Crane Family Farm
“Mom, it’s Mel.”
“Hi sweetie. I was just heading out the door to go and take a shift at the bakery. Hannah’s doing those carrot cake cupcakes today that you like so well. Do you want me to set a couple back for you?”
“Um yeah, sure, but listen; that’s not why I called. Do you have a board meeting at the church tonight?”
“Yes; every other Wednesday. Why?”
“I want you to promise me that you’ll do your best not to bring up anything to do with the opera house.”
“Well, why would I even bother, dear? Pastor Scott made it clear at the community meeting that the church isn’t interested in it. You were there, for heaven’s sake. You heard.”
“But, Kent will be there tonight, I’m sure, and you seem to have a knack for getting under his skin and getting him riled. He’s very interested in that building. If he asks you what your plan is going forward to secure it for the historical society, walk away…play dumb…I don’t know, just don’t engage with him.”
“I’ll try but I can’t promise. My committee comes under his, er, leadership so to speak, but you know, I really do try to be on my best behavior at church functions. Right now I feel like a child being chastised and I don’t even know why.”
“Not chastised; cautioned. Let’s just say that there are extenuating circumstances that make bringing anything up around Kent Gross a bad idea.”
“So now you have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Maybe you better fill me in on what’s going on.”
“Frankly, I don’t know very much and I don’t mean to scare you. I just want you to be careful who you’re dealing with. This is just between us for now and I wouldn’t be saying anything at all if I wasn’t worried about you being around that lout.”
Mel thought to herself that she’d probably already stirred up a hornets nest but, knowing her mother had a habit of getting involved in anything that smacked of intrigue, no matter what she said to her or how hard she tried to stop her, she figured she probably ought to at least forewarn her. “I spent the half hour before I called you with a private forensic medical examiner in Florida.”
“Who?” Faye sounded puzzled.
“A man who does what a coroner does to examine a body and determine the cause of death but one that works for a private company.”
“What did he want with you?”
“He wants me to re-open the Gregory Sellers investigation.”
“The guy that died in the opera house?”
“Yes. His mother commissioned her own autopsy right after she claimed the body. For some reason, they’re just now getting back around to us but this guy claims Sellers died of blunt force trauma to the head that was likely caused by being pushed hard off of that stage. He claims the extensive damage to the skull and the frontal tissue of his brain could not have resulted from a simple fall.”
“And you think Kent pushed him?” Faye’s voice had an incredulous ring.
“I don’t know what to think. I do know Lucas mentioned something along similar lines when he examined the body here but we didn’t have a shred of proof. As I listened to this guy, I sat here thinking, who would have had it in for a guy no one around here seemed to know and the only thing I could come back to that made any sense is that Gross did figure out who actually owned the building, called him to come up here or found him in there…I don’t know, and somehow it got heated.”
“Oh Mel! If that’s true, it’s horrifying.”
“Yes but it’s just a theory and I’m only telling you as a precaution. Please watch yourself around him and please, don’t try to investigate. You and Chloe need to stay far away from this one.”
“Okay…wait…I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“I’ve just been searching my brain here, real quick. Maybe it wasn’t Kent. He told me…me and Chloe and Mario, that is, back right after it happened he’d been out of town and something about filming a TV show about real estate.”
“Let me look into that, okay? If that’s true, then we don’t have any reason to worry and I’ll tell this guy in Florida there’s nothing to go on up here.”
“Okay.”
“In the meantime, you play it safe.”
“Got it. Safe.”
###
9:10 AM, Hannah’s Bakery
“Hi sweetie, sorry I’m a little late,” Faye said to Hannah.
“No worries. Chloe handled the morning rush herself right up until it was time to get the store open which let me get all the bread started for the afternoon. Did you stop and see Jef?” Hannah smiled. Her baby was a constant cause of lateness and lost minutes of productive work time for all of them.
“I wish! Mel told me he’s cruising now. We’re going to have a toddler on our hands soon.”
“I’m ready. My younger brothers were so much fun at that age.”
Faye laughed. “You had to be pretty young yourself then. I’m surprised you remember that.”
“I’m the youngest girl but I have three younger brothers. One is only just nine…or maybe ten.”
“We should start watching him over here for a bit. The smell of your cookies or seeing your cupcakes in the case will get him walking.”
“Hmm, and chubby too. Besides, he’s quickly figuring out he likes cake all by himself. We’re almost done with cupcakes at school and we’ll be moving on to larger cakes. I do a lot of practicing at home.”
“You mean you don’t do enough of that here?”
“I get distracted here a lot with customers coming and going and, anyway, I make here what sells day to day and not so much the crazy, weird things I get assigned at school.”
“It all builds skill baby doll.”
“I know; that’s what the chef keeps saying.”
They both turned as Chloe came into the front of the shop from the kitchen.
“Forget something?” Hannah asked her.
“Just checking up on you, seeing if you got swarmed again.” she answered then turned to Faye and said, “I didn’t realize you were here now.”
“You never did say why you were late,” Hannah added.
Faye was about to answer when old Lucy Sharp passed in front of the large front window and entered the shop for her usual morning coffee and Danish before she went and opened her antique store.
“Such a lovely morning out, isn’t it?” She asked the three of them. They all nodded and Hannah move
d closer to the counter to take care of her. Chloe and Faye stepped back a little to get out of the way.
Faye told Chloe, “I just had the strangest conversation with Mel this morning. She called me right before I left the house. She says someone down in Florida did another autopsy on that man that died at the opera house and, get this; they think he was pushed off that stage because of all the damage they found to him, poor man. Can you believe it?”
Shaking her head no, Chloe said, “Really? No, I can’t believe that. I mean, who would do such a thing? No one here even knew him.”
Faye half shrugged and spread her hands.
“Another murder?” Lucy asked, butting in.
“Oh, no, no!” Faye said, trying to placate Lucy. “It can’t be. It had to be accidental; had to be…if what this man thinks is actually true, after all. I think he’s got it all wrong though.”
“Does he?” Chloe mouthed softly.
“I’m not looking forward to tonight’s meeting, that’s for sure,” Faye told Chloe as they shared coffee in the store office after the bakery closed for the afternoon.
“Doris?”
“Yeah, her too.”
“Too?” Chloe asked.
Faye told her friend about Mel’s suspicion of Kent Gross.
“I’m with Mel. You…we…everyone needs to avoid him, for whatever reason,” Chloe said when she’d finished. “By the same token though, if we want to preserve that building, we need to figure the funding out for it and get moving before he gives in to Kara’s price demand and pounces.”
“I know, but when the meeting ended in chaos the other night, we hadn’t resolved anything. We don’t even know where half the community stands.”
“If you think about it, you probably know a couple dozen or more people around here who would help with a down payment and closing costs and such, just to keep it standing. I’ll help you go door to door to talk to them, if that’s what it takes.”
Faye nodded. “You’re right, I do know several that would help with a few dollars or so, and it may just come to that, but that doesn’t speed the 501c3 along so we could actually get the mortgage.”
Chloe drummed her fingers on her desk. “There’s got to be a way for the banks to do it based on what’s been filed.”
“Maybe if we had a board in place or something,” Faye said. “I’ll try to talk to Aiden tonight about it and see what he thinks.”
“What do you think the church board is going to do about Doris?”
“Probably nothing.”
“At all?”
“They’re letting her keep working there but Kent’s doing all the bills. Her story seemed sincere…I don’t know. I doubt they’ll make her pay it back. I mean, they can hardly take it out of what they pay her and they can’t control what her sister does or doesn’t do. Heavens, no one’s seen her around here in years. I wouldn’t know her if I passed her on the street.”
“Has anyone at the church tried to contact her…check in on her and see if there’s some other way to be of help?”
“You know,” Faye said, “that’s a good question. But, Pastor Scott has been so out of sorts lately I don’t even want to lay that on him. I think I’ll just ask Aiden about that too and see what he thinks.”
Chapter 2 – Cole’s Concerns
4:03 PM, Wednesday Afternoon, October 7th
Cole hopped down off the last step of the school bus at the Community Center and started walking through the village. He couldn’t wait to get his driver’s license so he could stop taking the bus. A lot of days, he was the oldest one riding it at all.
He was alone. Beth stayed after school for basketball practice. He didn’t know why she’d bothered to go out for the team anyway. She wasn’t much good at sports, he thought to himself.
Planning on heading straight home and fixing a snack to hold him over until his grandmother put dinner on the table at the farm promptly at 6:00, he stopped to cross the street on the corner opposite the gas station. He was surprised to hear his mother calling his name and he turned to find her leaning out the front door of the station, waving him over.
Kris didn’t usually like him and Beth to hang around the station while she was working. It was always busy and she claimed they were too distracting.
As he waited for a couple of cars to go by to cross to that side of the intersection instead, he watched Dale Walters hang up a pump handle and go into the station. The adults in town all called him Dingy Dale. Cole wasn’t allowed to call him that but it didn’t stop him from thinking that the man was just plain odd. He slowed a little, hoping he would just pay for his gas and go.
By the time Cole reached the door, he could see Dale leaning against the counter, having an earnest conversation with his mother. He sighed, opened the door and wandered in, going straight past the counter, to the drink cooler.
The teen grabbed a quart jug of chocolate milk and held it up to catch his mother’s attention. He figured he might as well make having to deal with Walters worth his while.
When his mother nodded her consent, he decided to push his luck just a little bit further and grabbed a pack of powdered sugar doughnuts off a wire rack.
This time she shook her head no. “You’ll spoil your dinner.”
“It’s not for two hours. I’m hungry now and I’ll be hungry then.”
“Teenagers,” Kris said to Dale, “what do you do with them?”
Walters smiled back at her. “We only had girls, you know, but they ate a lot too. Now they’ve all got teens and twenty somethings’ of their own and they’re seeing what we went through.”
He looked Cole up and down while he placed his food on the counter for his mother to scan. “I think you’ve grown a couple of inches since the last time I saw you, young man.”
“You say that every time you see me Mr. Walters,” Cole said.
Kris shot her son a look and mouthed the words, ‘Be nice’.
“So you’re all grown up now, are you then?” Walters asked him.
“Not quite yet. I’m a Junior this year and working on getting my driver’s license.”
“I see. So you probably don’t have an opinion on our latest whodunit?”
“Our what?”
“Dale,” Kris cautioned him now but the older man ignored her.
“A whodunit; a crime.”
“What crime?” Cole searched his brain.
“The murder of that guy over at the Opera House. Everybody’s talking about it. People are saying he was pushed.”
Cole’s face blanched white. He looked at his mother and asked, “Murder? They don’t think I…we…I had anything to do with it, do they?”
“You?” Dale asked. “Why would anyone blame you? Did you know him?”
“No…no, nothing like that.” Cole looked at his mother, his eyes pleading for help.
“Cole was the one that found the man Dale; him and one of his football buddies.”
“Oh. Well good work then son.”
“I gotta go now,” Cole said. He started to head for the door.
“Wait,” Kris called after him. “I wanted to tell you that Papa is picking you up at 5:00. You need to go out to the mill and pick up feed with him before dinner and that’s at 5:30 because Grandma has a Council meeting at the church tonight. Don’t keep him waiting.”
“Yes ma’am.” He pushed the door open to leave.
“Don’t you want this food?”
He waved a hand over his shoulder at her and was gone.
If grandma had a meeting at the church, that meant pastor Scott was probably still there, Cole thought. Shaken, he needed to talk to somebody and he’d felt comfortable talking to the man before. He crossed the street but instead of turning left and heading down the sidewalk for home, he continued on, going the two blocks up to the church.
He opened the side door and went right to the office. The secretary was sitting in there. He could hear a voice coming from the sanctuary several steps further down the narrow hall
way.
“Ms. Proctor?”
“Why Cole, are you here with Faye? It’s awful early.”
“No ma’am, She’ll be coming later. I was hoping to get a minute to talk to Pastor Scott.”
“Listen. Do you hear him?”
“The man talking?”
Doris nodded. “He’s working on his Sunday sermon. He likes to practice in there. Come on; he’s been at it for a bit. I’m sure he could use a break.”
That sat in a pew two rows back from the front. Cole was relieved the Reverend hadn’t suggested they go up to his office. He already had one too many dead bodies on his mind. He didn’t want to be anywhere near those urns.
“What’s weighing on your mind, son,” Seth asked him.
“I was just over at the gas station and I heard about that man.”
“What man?”
“You haven’t heard?”
Seth shook his head slowly. I think you better fill me in.”
“The one that died in the opera house.”
“Uh, okay, what about him?”
The pastor colored a little but Cole didn’t notice anything amiss and plowed on. “They’re saying he was murdered.”
Seth swallowed hard. “Who is?”
“Well, my mom for one and Mr. Walters but I don’t know where they heard it. You mean you really haven’t heard?”
“No. I’ve been here all day. I haven’t left and there hasn’t been anyone in but a delivery driver and Ms. Proctor.”
“I’m scared.”
“Because you found him and you didn’t know – if it’s even true?”
“You don’t think it’s true? Why are they saying it then?”
“Without hearing the whole story Cole, there’s no way for me to know.”
“I’m worried that someone is going to think I did it or that me an…an…”