“I’ll know more when the toxicology reports come back, but, based upon the evidence that we have so far, no, I don’t think that Paul Lieberman died of natural causes,” the detective replied.
“Who do you think did it?” Missy asked tentatively, knowing that she was venturing into dangerous territory.
“Sweetie, I can’t discuss things like that with you,” he replied, reaching for her hand.
“I know,” she nodded. “I’m sorry that I asked, I’m just so worried about Dolly and upset that someone was murdered right here in our Inn,” she shuddered, lower lip trembling.
“I’ll get it figured out, don’t worry,” Chas reassured his wife. Bringing her hand to his lips for a kiss.
**
Dolly Lieberman had a stroke. She had not yet regained consciousness, and it was unknown as to whether or not she’d recover, or to what degree. Missy wasn’t allowed to go see her in the ICU, and, as usual, when she was upset about something, she went on an epic baking spree. Ben and Cheryl joined her, with little Cammie sitting on the floor playing with pots, pans and utensils. They had planned to return home earlier, but when Missy needed them, they made arrangements to stay for a few more days.
“Wow,” Echo remarked, coming into the kitchen at Cupcakes in Paradise. “Looks like someone has been a bit stressed,” she noted, taking in the trays upon trays of cupcakes that needed to be frosted, decorated and ultimately consumed.
“You have no idea,” Missy sighed, swiping a stray curl from her forehead with the back of her hand.
“Well, have a seat, I’ll grab a couple cups of coffee, and you can tell me all about it,” she directed, knowing her friend’s tendency to keep her worries to herself, stewing and stewing for days.
Missy flopped down in the chair opposite Echo. “Dolly Lieberman had a stroke, is in the hospital and may not recover,” she began.
“Oh no!” Echo interrupted. “That poor sweet lady.”
“Exactly,” Missy nodded. “And then, of course, there’s the fact that someone was most likely murdered in my Inn, and the killer is at large,” she shook her head, overwhelmed.
“Have they talked to Carla yet?”
“Oh yeah, let’s be sure to add that to the list. Chas questioned Carla and she thinks it’s because you and Kel and I made up a theory that she had killed Paul, so she’s mad at me now,” Missy sighed again.
“Meh, that’s the least of your worries. So, did you tell Chas about our theory?”
“Nope, he had that thought long before we did, apparently.”
Echo took a long draw from her coffee. “Well, it is his job to think of things like that,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but Carla thinks that we tried to frame her or something. Ugh, what an ugly mess,” Missy exclaimed, turning her coffee cup round and round in her hands.
“So who does Chas think the murderer is?” she asked.
“He won’t talk to me about it yet,” Missy shrugged. “Hey,” she said, realizing something. “Where has Kel been? Today is the third day in a row that he’s missed coffee and cupcakes,” she frowned.
“I have no idea. He told me that he was going to be gone for a few days, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. He had me clear his entire calendar for a week.”
“Is that normal behavior for him?”
“Definitely not,” Echo replied. “Typically, I schedule all of his appointments for him, and if he needs to change something, he checks with me. This was nothing like that, though. He just sent me an email and left. I don’t even know where he is.”
“Maybe he’s being a temperamental artist,” Missy proposed.
“I doubt it, he’s a creature of habit. I also happened to notice that Carla hasn’t stopped by since he left,” she raised her eyebrows.
“You don’t think that they’re…” Missy didn’t finish her sentence.
“I don’t know, and honestly, it really doesn’t make a difference to me. Kel is an adult, he’s my boss, and he’s a nice guy, but beyond that, I’m just not ready to even think about it. I’d hate to see him with Carla, simply because I’d hate to see any sweet male in her evil clutches, but it’s not like I’m going to be upset with him if he’s finally succumbed to her nagging attention,” Echo shrugged.
“Well, I hope everything is okay with him. I wish he was here to talk to about all of this though – that man thrives on a good mystery,” Missy noted wistfully.
“Hey, we don’t need him to start thinking creatively about this whole thing,” Echo reminded her. “You’re pretty good at figuring things out on your own, and I have a wickedly clever mind,” she grinned and nudged her friend, getting a smile at last. “Let’s do something.”
“Like what?”
Echo paused, stood up, walked behind the counter, grabbed a German Chocolate cupcake for Missy and a vegan Lime Crème cupcake for herself, and came back to the table ready to work.
Chapter 10
Buoyed by Echo’s confidence in her ability to unravel mysteries, Missy decided to see what she could find out about the Lieberman family that might give her some insight into why someone would want to kill the reclusive owner of a used book store. Opening up her slim and speedy laptop, she was soon surfing the internet, looking for clues as to who Paul Lieberman was, and what he might have done to make someone (most likely his younger brother) want to kill him.
She searched the name of the town that they all lived in, plus Paul’s name, and found the name of his business. She also checked for criminal records and found some things that were disturbing for a variety of reasons. Absorbed in her work, she didn’t notice the sun setting, and didn’t notice the patrol car that pulled up in front of the Inn. She was at her own kitchen table, in the Owner’s Wing of the Inn, when a knock at the front door startled her out of the research cocoon that she’d been inhabiting for the past several hours.
Missy’s heart leapt to her throat when she saw a uniformed officer on the other side of the door.
“Oh my goodness,” she exclaimed, wide-eyed. “Is it Chas, is he…?”
The officer held up his hands to calm her down. “No, Mrs. Beckett, your husband is fine. It’s you that I came to see,” he explained quickly. “I’m Officer Lane Scoggins,” the grizzled, lifetime cop introduced himself.
“Oh thank goodness,” Missy wilted with relief, sagging against the door frame. “Would you like to come in?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am, thank you,” Scoggins replied, taking off his cap when he stepped inside.
“I’m going to make some tea, would you like a cup?” she offered, rolling her head from side to side and hearing the bunched up muscles of her neck crackling in response.
“No thank you, ma’am. I’m just here to ask you a few questions.”
“Well, please have a seat at the breakfast bar. Make yourself at home – we can chat while I make tea, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” he took out a notebook and pen. “Can you tell me where you were on the night that Paul Lieberman died?” he asked, gazing down at his notebook.
“I was with Chas, at the party. Didn’t he tell you that himself?” she was puzzled. “And…Paul died that night? I thought that he had died the next morning.”
“Ma’am, whatever the detective did or did not tell me, I have to ask you the questions because you were present when the incident occurred,” he explained patiently.
“Wait…am I a suspect here? Because, if I am, that’s utterly ridiculous. How much better of an alibi can someone have than to be in the presence of their spouse who happens to be a detective?” she challenged, hands on hips.
“Look, Mrs. Beckett,” Scoggins sighed. “If you weren’t related to the detective by marriage, he’d be asking you these questions, but since you are, they sent me. You’re not suspected of anything, we just have to cover our bases, okay? You might remember something that’s important,” he explained patiently.
“But if I remembered something, I would’ve told my hus
band.”
“And I would still have to come over here and take your statement. I promise, if we can just get to this, it won’t take long at all and I’ll be out of your hair,” Scoggins regarded her with calm grey eyes, hoping for agreement.
“Fine,” she finally relented. “Ask away.”
**
Phillip “Kel” Kellerman pulled the lapels of his fine wool coat closer together at the neck, shivering in the small northern town. He hadn’t been warm since he’d left Florida, and if he didn’t care so much for Missy and Echo, he’d have climbed onto the next plane back home.
He stood by his rental car, gazing up at the strange little house on the outskirts of town with a strange sense of foreboding. Kel was a consummate busybody, whose bravado and charm had enabled him to face just about any situation with the confidence that if he did indeed get in over his head, he’d be able to finagle his way out again. This time felt different for some reason, and a shiver that had nothing to do with the weather rippled through him, making the hairs at the nape of his neck stand up.
Glancing about, he saw nothing but looming trees, waving grasses and the darkened windows of the shuttered home in front of him. Taking a deep breath, he headed for the house, but instead of going to the front door like the civilized human being that he was, he crept around the side, past barren rose bushes and trees whose leaves had long since abandoned their branches, to the back of the house. There were no neighbors in sight, thankfully, and when the skilled artist pulled from his pocket a roll of tools that had nothing to do with art, he just as skillfully utilized them to meet his own peculiar purpose.
Picking the lock on the back door, Kel was inside the dank and musty home in a matter of seconds. He had elected to use a flashlight to navigate his way around inside rather than turning on the lights, despite the remote location where he had little chance of being disturbed. The home was surprisingly dark. All of the heavy velvet and brocade curtains were drawn, the walls were all painted in deep shades of burgundy, hunter green and gold, and every bit of the woodwork and furniture was dark and gleaming.
The beam of his flashlight played over the richly appointed but shabbily kept surfaces which looked as though no one had lived in the home for decades, perhaps centuries. Everything was clean and tidy, with no dust or spider webs to be seen, but the fine fabrics were a bit faded and worn, and there apparently hadn’t been any updating for a very long time, if ever. There was a strange smell in the house, and Kel went to the kitchen in search of its source.
He sniffed the sink – nothing. He opened the refrigerator which contained no food, only a box of baking soda, which did an admirable job of keeping away the odors. He opened the freezer and shut it again, horror and revulsion washing over him in waves. His heart pounded, and his throat worked as he fought to keep the contents of his stomach in their proper place. Hands shaking, he backed away from the innocent looking freezer and its devilish contents, wanting to turn and run, but knowing that where one found smoke, one typically found fire.
The contents of the freezer made him wonder what else might be lurking in tucked away nooks and crannies in this house of horrors, and he decided to face his biggest fear first, heading down the creaky grey-painted wooden stairs to the basement. The light from his flashlight wasn’t fierce enough to settle his nerves in this dank, nasty nightmare of a room, so he hit the switch to his right on the way down, illuminating the basement with fluorescent light.
Kel relaxed a bit when nothing jumped out at him or grabbed his ankle on the way down the stairs, and a thorough examination of the room that was mainly used for tool storage turned up nothing new or gruesome. Heading back up the stairs into the kitchen, he was still jumpy, but his breathing and heart rate had mostly returned to normal. He looked through the upstairs bedrooms and the downstairs living rooms finding nothing beyond that which one would typically find in the home of a fastidious bachelor.
Letting himself out of the back door, Kel noticed that there was a work shed further back on the property, inside the brick wall that isolated the property from the rest of the world. His stomach sank at the sight of the small building with no windows, which had more locks on its heavy metal door than a nuclear silo. Having come this far, he fully intended to leave no stone unturned, despite the fear that now churned within his gut. Leaning his head first to one side, then the other, to crack his neck, he took a breath and moved across the brown and frosted grass toward the shed.
Inside was a shop of horrors beyond imagination. Sharp instruments gleamed evilly from their pegs, and beady eyes seemed to watch his every move. His heart in his throat, Kel backed out of the horrific shed, stumbling and nearly tumbling out backwards in his haste to leave. Despite his rush, he took the time to relock the many locks – the environment must be preserved in its present state – and stubbed his toe in the thick grass.
Looking down at the clump of grass that tripped him up, he noticed that there was a rather large patch in the front of the building that looked as though it had been recently sodded, which was strange for this time of year. He kicked aside one of the dry, brown sod clumps and noticed that the soil underneath was fine and crumbled, almost as though it had been recently disturbed. Dreading the task, he bent down, and with his leather-gloved hand, he brushed away some of the loose soil. Seeing what was beneath the sod and soil, he continued to move aside clumps of sod and brush away the loosened earth below it, finding more and more gruesome discoveries.
Kel’s mind and body had finally reached the limit of what one human being could stomach and he staggered away from the shed, supporting himself on a tree as he retched and heaved. Taking a moment to recover after the paralyzing spasms had passed, he dabbed at his mouth with a pocket square, cold chills making him shiver from head to toe. He made his way back to the rental car and drove directly to the airport, having gathered enough bizarre information to last him a lifetime.
Chapter 11
“Mr. Lieberman, how would you characterize your relationship with your brother?” Detective Chas Beckett asked a very upset Samuel at the police station.
“We were brothers,” Sam shrugged. “We didn’t hate each other, but we didn’t exactly see eye to eye either. He was pretty reclusive. Preferred his books to keeping company with actual human beings. Mother and I very rarely saw him. Sasha went out of her way to be sweet to him, but he really creeped the kids out, so they just kind of disappeared whenever he was around, which wasn’t often.”
“What time did you leave the party on your mother’s birthday?” Chas asked.
“I don’t actually remember. Sometime around one o’clock, I think. I’d had a lot of champagne, so it’s hard to say.”
The detective nodded. “And what time did you first try to contact your brother in the morning?”
“I sent him a text around eight, so that he’d have plenty of time to wake up and join us for breakfast, but he never answered. That didn’t really surprise me though, he hardly ever turned his phone on. I don’t think he wanted to have any contact with the outside world. Mother bought him the phone in case he ever needed one in the event of an emergency, but he almost never used it. Since he didn’t answer the text, I tried calling a couple of times, and when that didn’t work, I knocked on his door,” Sam explained.
Chas nodded and tapped the end of his pen against his tablet, studying the man in front of him. “Were there any significant people in your brother’s life, aside from family members?”
“He had a girlfriend once, about ten thirty years ago. She was a quiet girl, no family to speak of, which made Mother a bit uncomfortable, but she seemed nice enough.”
“They broke up?” the detective asked.
“No. Everything was going along fine, and she just took off,” Samuel shrugged and sighed.
“Took off?”
“Disappeared. Skipped town. I guess she just got tired of him and didn’t know how to tell him or something.”
“I see. What was her name?” Chas as
ked.
“Dolores. Dolores Meacham.”
“And there hasn’t been anyone else since then?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Any idea who might want your brother dead?” the detective cut to the chase.
“No clue,” Sam shook his head, not dropping his gaze.
“Okay,” Chas said, standing to indicate that the interview was over. “I’ll be in touch. Stick around town until we get this cleared up,” he directed.
“Enforced vacation in the place where my brother was murdered…great,” he replied dryly.
Chapter 12
Missy and Echo sat down at their usual table in the cozy little cupcake shop with mugs of fresh hot coffee, but no cupcakes. Neither one of them had much of an appetite these days. Chas was chasing down some new leads in the case, but as yet, no one had been named as a suspect in the murder of Paul Lieberman, his mother was still in a coma in the hospital, and Kel was still among the missing. Their eyes met as they both sipped their steaming brew, and both looked sympathetically at each other. Missy was about to speak when the bell over the door jangled.
“Kel!” Echo exclaimed, jumping up from her seat to give him a hug. Missy was next in line, and both of the women noticed that he didn’t seem to be his usual upbeat self.
“Is everything okay?” Missy asked as they all took their customary seats around the bistro table in the corner.
“No, my lovely,” the artist shook his head. “Everything is anything but okay,” he closed his eyes briefly. “I hesitate to share with you just how NOT okay everything is, but I must, in the interest of justice,” he muttered.
“Here,” Echo handed him a mug of coffee. “Tell us what happened sweetie,” she encouraged him, placing a plate with two of his favorite Lemon Raspberry cupcakes in front of him.
“Well, as both of you probably realized, I’ve been out of town for the last few days,” he began.
“Yes, where the heck did you go?” Missy demanded. “We missed you and we really could have used your help trying to unravel this mess of a murder mystery that we have on our hands,” she chided him gently.
Chocolate Fudge Murder: A Frosted Love Cozy Mystery - Book 20 (A Frosted Love Cozy Mysteries) Page 4