A Killer Deal (A Seagrove Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Leona Fox

  “Stay back,” she said, “or I’ll burn you.”

  “Olivia,” said Chief Woodstone gently, “it’s not plugged in. You can’t burn anyone.”

  “It doesn’t have to be plugged in,” Olivia said. “It stays really hot. Look I burned myself.” She showed him the burn mark on her arm.

  “But Olivia,” Sadie said. “It hasn’t been plugged in days. I don’t think it stays hot that long.”

  “Then I’ll strangle you with the cord,” Olivia said. “I told Roger Roberts that I’d strangle him, but I didn’t have to, he died all by himself.”

  “Not quite all by himself,” Chief Woodstone said. “You burned him and the stress caused the heart attack.”

  “That was so the others would know he was mine. They shouldn’t have been selling to him. Now they know. He’s mine.” Olivia had a serene, almost angelic look on her face. It totally creeped Sadie out.

  “He’s not yours, Olivia, he’s dead,” the chief said. “You killed him.”

  “No. I branded him. He died all on his own.” Olivia darted sideways and rushed Sadie, wrapping the cord of the branding iron around her neck.

  Mr. Bradshaw grabbed Olivia’s ankle getting a mouth full of jeans. Sadie wasn’t going down easy and jabbed Olivia in the chest with her elbow, hard. The air whooshed out of Olivia and Sadie grabbed the cord and yanked it from her neck. Chief Woodstone got Olivia’s arm up behind her back, putting Olivia off balance and allowing Mr. Bradshaw to pull her leg out from under her. Olivia fell onto the evidence littered floor, face down with Chief Woodstone bent over, holding her arm behind her back.

  “Good dog, Mr. Bradshaw,” Sadie said to him. “You can let go now.” Mr. Bradshaw released his grip on Olivia’s jeans and came to put his front feet on Sadie’s legs. He licked her hand as if to ask if she was okay.

  “It’s okay, boy. I’m good.”

  “Roger is mine,” Olivia said. “My customer. My brand.”

  “Come on Olivia I think maybe you need to see a doctor,” Chief Woodstone said. “Something here isn’t right.”

  A while later, Sadie sat in Chief Woodstone’s office absently rubbing her neck. There’d be some bruising there, she was pretty sure, but she’d be fine. Mr. Bradshaw was sitting in Sadie’s lap. Every so often a cop would put his head in looking for the chief and Mr. Bradshaw would growl low in his throat. He was not happy. Chief Woodstone came in and closed the door behind him, collapsing in his desk chair.

  “Never seen a person come unglued like that,” he said. “It’s the damnedest thing. You want a drink of something Sadie? You’re looking pretty pale there.”

  “No, Chief, I’m fine,” Sadie said. “I just want to go home.”

  “Damn it, Sadie. Call me Zack.” He glared at her.

  “I’ll try,” she said but didn’t mean it.

  “Do you want to go look at Roger’s freezer with me? I want to check out Olivia’s story.”

  “It’s a bunch of nonsense,” Sadie said, “I would know if trucks were unloading in the alley. But I’ll come with you, why not? It’s on my way home.” Chief Woodstone grinned.

  “That’s an understatement,” he said.

  Chief Woodstone let them in through the back entrance and left the door open. The smell of mold was almost overpowering.

  “No one came to take care of this place?” Sadie asked.

  “We don’t know who to contact,” Chief Woodstone said. “We’re still trying to find a next of kin or a will, we need something to go on.”

  “Someone needs to clean up this mess,” Sadie insisted. “It’s disgusting.” She walked through to the front of the store and opened the door to get a cross breeze.

  Then she joined Chief Woodstone at the freezer. He had a walk-in refrigerated room, but only a chest freezer for frozen goods. The Chief opened the lid and they peered in. There were some containers of blueberries, raspberries, and other assorted fruits. There were flat freezer bags labeled zucchini and banana. But those things barely filled a quarter of the freezer. It was mostly empty.

  Chief Woodstone looked at Sadie and shrugged. “I told you. Delusional.”

  Sadie looked around the kitchen. There were day’s old balls of bread dough that had grown out of mixing bowls and bread pans that were hard and crusty around the edges. There were mixing bowls of batter with mold growing on the top. There was a moldy container of blueberries next to the muffin batter.

  “I want to clean this up,” Sadie said.

  “Let me put a call in. I want to make sure they are done with this place.” The Chief pulled his cell out of his pocket, and a minute later he was nodding and putting it away again.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know, Sadie,” Chief Woodstone said. “A cleaning service could do it.”

  “No,” Sadie said. “I want to do this. I feel like I owe Roger. I wasn’t as nearly as good a friend as I should have been. I’m just going to take Mr. Bradshaw next door to keep Lucy company.”

  She stepped out the back and took Mr. Bradshaw in through her back door. The door she’d been avoiding. She explained to Lucy about the shop next door and Lucy volunteered to help.

  When the two of them arrived back at the bakery, Chief Woodstone had his sleeves rolled up and a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves graced his hands. A huge trash bin had been pulled into the middle of the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Sadie asked. “Don’t you have to be back at work?”

  “I’m helping you. And also Lucy. Hello, Lucy.” He waved a bright yellow hand.

  “Hi, Chief,” Lucy said. “I’ll start with the front case.”

  While Lucy went into the storefront to clear the glass cases, Sadie and Chief Woodstone dumped the fermenting and moldy doughs into the trash can. Then Lucy loaded the dishwasher while the chief wiped down the counters and cutting boards. It wasn’t long before they were finished.

  “It’s a good thing he didn’t have anything in the oven,” Sadie said. “Or the whole shop could have burned down. And mine too.”

  “And my lovely China,” Lucy added.

  “Actually, the officer who secured the scene would have turned off any ovens,” Chief Woodstone said.

  They all three turned to look at the wall of ovens. Sadie started opening oven doors, but they were all empty.

  “Thank goodness for that,” Lucy said. “If this garbage can gets any fuller we’d never be able to shift it.”

  As it was, it took all three of them to move it out the door and down the stairs to the trash pick-up area.

  “Are you going to put it in the dumpster?” Lucy asked. The chief shook his head.

  “It’s not worth straining a back over. The garbage guys will take care of it. Now I’m headed back to the office, and I suggest that you ladies pour a couple of glasses of wine. You’ve done your good deed for the day.”

  A few days later Sadie was polishing English brasses when Chief Woodstone came in. She wiped her hands on a clean rag and went through the shop to greet him.

  “Hi Chief,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I thought you would like to know the story behind Olivia Brown’s meltdown,” Chief Woodstone said. He held up the bag he was carrying. “I brought coffee and scones.”

  “It’s such a nice day, let’s go sit up on the balcony,” Sadie said.

  The Chief followed her up the staircase and through her apartment to the balcony overlooking the street. They sat on either side of her café table and the chief pulled the coffee and pastries from the white bakery bag. The sun filtered through the trees and provided just the right ratio of sun to shade on the balcony.

  “Look,” Sadie said pointing to a group sitting on the grass in the park across the street. “There is Professor Ive’s college class. They’ve met on the green several times this week.”

  “I can’t say I blame them. I would guess you could discuss history and philosophy just as well outside as in,” Chief Woodstone said. Sadie sipped her coffee.

  “So wha
t is the story with Olivia Brown?” she asked. “Has she been found to be mentally ill or something?” She didn’t know what ‘or something,’ might be, but she had a vague idea that there were different legal terms for being unfit to stand trial.

  “Apparently, she was using two different weed killers, or a weed killer and a fertilizer – I don’t know. But when you combine those two compounds in the human body they cause you to go stark raving looney toons – and more specifically paranoid. Which she did, obviously.”

  “Can the effects be reversed?” Sadie asked. “Will she ever be the same again?”

  “Yes, as soon as the drugs clear her system she should recover,” he said. “She will still have to stand trial, though.” A wave of relief flowed through Sadie.

  “I’m glad she’ll be okay,” she said. “I’d hate to think she’d been permanently brain damaged.”

  “You do remember that this woman threatened to kill you?” the Chief asked.

  “I do. But she wasn’t in her right mind at the time.” Sadie remembered the produce. “Did you ever find out if she was violating the organic regulations? Was she still organic?”

  “It’s hard to say. Her employees say that the weed killer was for the grass in her walkway and that certain pesticides are allowed if you can document that they are necessary. But I don’t know what she was doing for certain. Luckily, it’s not my call. The regulatory board gets to look into Olivia’s practices. I get to stick to law enforcement.”

  After they had finished their coffee, she and Mr. Bradshaw walked Chief Woodstone down to the sidewalk outside her shop.

  “It’s going to be a gorgeous day,” Sadie said. “I think Mr. B and I will spend some time in the park today.”

  “Don’t forget to lock your door when you do,” the Chief said. “I worry about your safety.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Sadie said. She opened the door and let Mr. Bradshaw back in the shop ahead of her. “See you later, Chief,” she said and shut the door behind her. As she walked to her workstation at the back of the shop, she heard his parting words through the door.

  “For God’s sake, Sadie. Call me Zack.”

  She grinned to herself. She might one day call him Zack, but when she did, he wasn’t going to know what hit him. He’d probably end up wishing she was still calling him chief.

  “Come on, Mr. Bradshaw,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.” And they did.

  ~~~

  Find out what Sadie discovers in book 2 of The Seagrove Mysteries here: http://amzn.to/1NaM6pa

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