“She’s so weird,” Lucy said.
“Let’s set that aside for a minute.” I poured water into Bee’s glass and then into mine. “What did you want to talk to us about? You seemed uncomfortable this afternoon.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because I happened to come into some information about that gardener dude’s murder.” Lucy held her glass in front of her mouth as she spoke, darting her gaze toward the other tables. “So, his name is Brent, right?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, then it’s the right guy. My aunt’s best friend, Mavis, she was in the salon today and she told me that, apparently, Brent and his wife, they was having problems. Wicked big problems.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he took out a life insurance policy like five days before the whole thing went down and she’s the one who gets the money when he dies. Isn’t that fried?” Lucy asked, twirling a streak of purple hair around her finger. “So I heard that and I thought, that’s really the kinda thing you two would like to know.”
“You thought right,” Bee said.
As was the case in every other investigation, the person closest to the victim always had to be investigated. The spouse was often the last to see the victim alive.
“So, I did good by telling you this?” Lucy asked. “I don’t wanna get in trouble.”
“You did great,” I replied. “Thanks, Lucy.”
The food arrived shortly after, and our conversation turned away from the new clue we’d just been presented, though my thoughts flickered back to it occasionally. Lori and Brent had been having troubles, and his life insurance policy would pay out to her.
We had our next lead.
6
“There it is,” Bee whispered, pointing toward the place in question. The house on the corner sat behind a chain link fence. The garden path was concrete, weeds peeking out between the cracks, and the house’s white vinyl siding had seen better days.
“Brent stayed here,” I said.
It was a sharp contrast between where Rose-Marie, his boss, had stayed. It was rundown, in the poorer part of town, and ill-maintained. A single porch light illuminated the front door in a sickly yellow glow, and the lights were on in the front windows.
Lori should be home. But there wasn’t a car in the driveway. Unless, the Snows hadn’t had a car. I checked my watch—it was past 8 pm, now, and we’d already dropped Lucy off at her place before walking over here.
“I wonder if Lori’s home,” Bee said.
“We should have brought cookies. It would make more sense to offer our condolences with a box of cookies.”
“Would you take cookies from someone you didn’t know after your husband had just been killed?”
“Fair point. But still. She might have done it, in which case she wouldn’t be worried about whether the cookies were poisoned or not.”
“We’re loitering,” Bee said, looking up and down the street. “Let’s get this over with.”
I opened the front gate and held it for Bee. We made our way up the path and onto the porch steps. I knocked on the door then tucked my hands against my sides, tapping my fingers against the fabric of my skirt.
A minute ticked by. I knocked again.
“Nothing,” Bee said. “No one home. Now, I’m no expert on behavior, but it seems strange to me that the widow would go out gallivanting so soon after her husband was murdered in cold blood.”
“Unless she’s the one who was wearing the stilettos.” I couldn’t get the image of the shoe lodged in the mud out of my mind. Who did it belong to? Could it be that Mrs. Snow had done this? That it was as simple as that?
She had wanted the money and killed her husband for it. That happened all the time, unfortunately.
I knocked one last time then shrugged and backed away from the door and onto the porch’s front steps. “What now? Should we wait for her to come back?”
“Hmm.” Bee tapped her chin.
“Uh oh, I know what that means. You’ve got a plan. One I’m probably not going to like.”
“While we’re here,” Bee said, “why don’t we have a look around the back of the house? We’re already in yard, and look, there’s no fence dividing the front from the back.”
“That’s trespassing.”
“As if that’s ever stopped us before.”
Another fair point. “Fine,” I said, “but let’s make this quick. The last thing we need is to get caught by Detective Wilkes. I’m sure he won’t appreciate us interfering again.”
Bee trudged around the corner and I went after her. The house next door had built a relatively high wall, so we were safe from prying eyes, at least from the right. If anyone passed by in the street, they’d see us at the side of the house, peeking through windows.
And that was exactly what I did.
I raised myself onto tiptoe and peered inside the first window I came across. A hall light was on, giving me a glimpse of the battered carpeting and the skew picture frames on a lemon yellow wall. The room in front of me, however, appeared to be the living room. The TV was dark, and above it was a plaque holding a gun.
I did a double-take.
“Bee.” I pressed a finger to the window pane.
“What?” Bee peeked inside. “Oh. Oh my.”
All along the walls, plaques and gun racks held arms of every kind. They weren’t even being kept in a gun safe. None of these were safely stored. Were they all ornaments? Completely out of commission? Or were they active and this was—
The gate in the front garden opened, the chain link rattling, and Bee and I ducked down low and pressed ourselves against the side of the house.
If we were caught trespassing, who knew what Lori might do? She had plenty of guns to use on us if she got sufficiently angry. A door slammed in the house, and footsteps thumped through to the living room. The light clicked on above our heads.
A low noise came from above. Sobbing.
It was Lori, crying.
“Hello?” she spoke near the window, and I jolted on the spot.
Bee put out a hand to calm me.
“Yeah, hi. Yeah, I just got home.” Lori sniffled. “I know. I know, I know. I know! You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t care if it looks suspicious. I can’t stay cooped up in this house all day long. It’s driving me crazy.”
Another pause followed. My legs had started cramping from the crouched position. I trembled on the spot.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Lori asked. “I know, honey. Please, just stop asking me so many questions I just—yeah. OK! Yes. No, I haven’t heard anything about the payout. That’s not my concern right this second.”
I raised an eyebrow. Whoever she was talking to was ‘honey’ and wanted to know about money. Not only did that rhyme, but it was great motivation for murder. An affair and the life insurance policy.
“Yes. Well, I don’t know what else to do. The police have come by asking me questions, if I start trying to cash in life insurance policies now, it will look suspicious. It doesn’t matter that—look, the bills will have to wait. Yes, I’m aware of that, honey. I’m the one who has to go through all of this firsthand. I don’t need this pressure right now, OK?” Lori paused. “I have to go. I can’t do this right now. I’ll talk to you later. Later!” She fell silent.
Bee and I continued holding still. Inside the living room, the TV switched on and noise blared. Blue light flashed and was reflected on the neighbor’s border wall.
I bit down on my lip, mentally counting to ten, then lifted myself. The window was empty. She wasn’t standing there, looking out—not that there was much of a view. I gave Bee a quick thumbs up and we sneaked back to the front of the house and onto the cracked concrete path.
Quickly, I headed for the front gate. If Lori happened to come out now, it would still look suspicious, but if it seemed as if we had just entered…
“What now?” I whispered to Bee. “She’s home. Should we still speak to her?”
/> Bee shoved her hands into the pockets of her pants. “Interesting conversation. And yes, we should speak to her. Get a feel for who she is and what else she might know. Clearly, she needed money.”
“But was that enough of a motivation to kill her husband? She sounded upset that he was gone.”
Bee gestured to the front door. “Let’s try to find out.”
7
The second time I knocked on Lori’s front door, it opened after a minute or so. Lori was young, in her twenties, and pretty, with long, blonde hair and a face that looked like it could break into a smile easily. Except her eyes were red, and she wore an old t-shirt that had a couple holes along the hemline. She brushed her hair back from her cheeks, her chin wobbling a little, and regarded us. “Yes?”
“Hi, Mrs. Snow?” I stuck out a hand.
“Yes, that’s me. Lori. And you are?”
“Ruby Holmes,” I replied. “This is my friend Bee. We work on the Bite-sized Bakery food truck. You might have heard of—”
“I know all about you.” Lori’s face lit up and she shuffled back. “Come in, please. Come in.”
I hesitated. There was something worrying about being invited into the home of a woman whose husband had just died, and who had a living room full of guns.
Bee took the lead, though and entered the house. Then again, Bee was all about solving the case, whatever it took, and if Lori attacked us that would likely mean a quicker apprehension of our suspect.
Lori didn’t take us into the living room, however. She brought us down the short, carpeted hall and into a kitchen. Dishes were piled high in the sink, and the table was covered in plates and casserole dishes.
“Sorry about the mess,” Lori said. “Things have been complicated lately, it’s been difficult to keep up with the housework.” She shifted meal after meal from the table onto the already packed countertop. “Everyone has been so kind. They’ve been coming by to give me food and offer their help, but it just feels wrong to take it. You know, we all have our problems, and I don’t want to be a burden.” She paused after putting down the last dish. “Can I get you ladies some coffee?”
“Sure,” Bee said.
“Do you need me to make it?” I asked.
“No, no, that’s all right. You two take a seat there at the table. I’ll make the coffee.” Lori flitted to the fridge and brought out some half-and-half then went to grab her coffee grounds from a cupboard. “You know, things are—things change too quickly. The house is so empty now, and my poor Brent—” She cut off with a choked noise.
“Are you sure I can’t help you with that?” I made to get up.
“No, no. I’m fine. Really. I’m fine. I’m glad you’re here.”
“Why is that?” Bee asked, in her blunt-as-always fashion.
“Oh, you know, it gets lonely in the house. And, well, I’ve been hoping you two would stop by,” she said, hitting a button on the coffee pot. She brought a few chipped mugs to the table. She fetched a bowl of sugar next. “I bet that sounds strange to you.”
“A little,” I replied.
“A lot.” Bee folded her arms.
“I know what you did for Misty’s family.” Lori lowered herself into a chair opposite mine. “You solved Misty’s murder. Everyone was talking about it. And I figure that you’ll be able to do the same for my poor Brent.”
“You want us to investigate?” I asked, to be sure I wasn’t reading the situation wrong.
“That’s right.”
“It wasn’t all us,” I said. “The police did their jobs. They worked hard to—”
Lori waved her hands, offering as a watery smile. “You don’t have to be modest. If you hadn’t figured out what was going on, I doubt that Detective Wilkes would have. He’s a nice man, but he can’t investigate like you two do. He has to, what’s it called? Um…”
“Investigate within the confines of the law?” Bee suggested.
“Yes. That. Whereas you two can dig around,” Lori replied. “I don’t have much money at the moment, but I’m due to get some soon. Could I pay you to look into this for me?”
Wow. I don’t know what to make of this.
Our main suspect, who was our main suspect because she was about to get a huge life insurance payout, was offering to pay us some of that payout to find the killer. Was this a bribe? But no, surely Lori would have been more obvious about it if she was bribing us.
“Is this a bribe?” Bee asked.
Lori frowned. “Huh?”
“Are you bribing us to blame someone else for your husband’s murder?”
Good heavens, when Bee got a hold of an idea, she certainly went with it.
“Of course not,” Lori said, shaking her head as if the idea made no sense to her. Or it hadn’t even occurred to her that she might look suspicious. “No, I want you to find out who did this. I want to know.”
“You don’t have to pay us anything,” I said. “We’re not investigators. We can’t accept money for something that we don’t do professionally.”
“Oh.” Lori deflated. “Oh. Oh no.”
“But we will be looking into it, rest assured,” Bee said.
“Though, we’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to Detective Wilkes.”
“My lips are sealed.” Lori traced the frown lines on her forehead with a finger. “Wait, why would you think I was trying to bribe you? Are you saying that I—?”
“Mrs. Snow,” Bee said, “is there anyone that you might know of who might’ve wanted your husband dead?”
That cut off her train of thought. The color sapped from Lori’s pretty face. She pushed up from the table and stumbled to the coffee pot then brought it back with a shaking hand. I took it from her and poured the liquid into the three chipped mugs.
“An enemy,” Lori said, and pressed her hands over her face. “Brent was such a good person. He was nice to everyone he met. He didn’t get in trouble and he didn’t hang out with the wrong crowd.”
“Still,” Bee replied, “there must be someone who wanted to harm him.”
A long pause followed. Lori’s shoulders shook a little then stopped. She dropped her hands into her lap and met Bee’s gaze, fire burning in her eyes. “There was one person,” she said. “One person I’m sure wanted him out of the picture.”
“Who?”
“Rose-Marie Wilde,” she replied. “His boss. Brent was usually in such a good mood. He loved what he did, loved working with plants and seeing things grow after he’d tended to them. He usually came home in a great mood, except when he worked on her garden. Every time, without fail, he would come back furious about something she had said.”
“So they didn’t like each other.”
“No, she didn’t like him. Brent was nice to everybody, but it’s people like Rose who took advantage of his good nature,” Lori said. “The last I heard, she was looking to fire him. If anyone would have wanted him dead, it was her.”
“Was there any reason she couldn’t fire him?” I asked.
“Not that I know of, no.” Lori lifted her cup to her lips and took a sip. It seemed to fortify her, and she drew herself up straight, no longer shaking. “But I know that woman is bad news. She’s horrible to everyone. I believe it was her.”
Why would Rose have killed Brent? If she’d wanted to fire him and there was nothing standing in her way of doing so, why run the risk of murdering him and getting caught for it?
It was a tenuous connection at best, and we didn’t have any way of proving it… yet.
8
The breakfast at the Runaway Inn was the highlight of our stay in Muffin. Most times, we had to miss it because there were cookies and donuts to be baked, but we had decided to get a late start this morning. The police officers had come to remove the seal on the back door that led to the terrace, as well as the crime scene tape out back.
That meant all systems were ‘go’ in Bee’s own words.
I buttered the insides of a poppy-seed muffin, practically saliva
ting. I’d already drank half of my orange juice and ordered myself a cup of coffee. If we were going to take the morning off to go snooping around in the inn’s back garden, I’d need my energy. And it was the perfect excuse to indulge.
I took a spoonful of clotted cream and plopped it onto one of half of my muffin.
“You’re happy this morning,” Bee said, taking a seat opposite me. “Poppy seed muffins?”
“Correct,” I replied. “Apparently, there are chocolate chip ones too. Mrs. Rickleston got inspired after the tea party the other day.”
“Not too inspired, I hope,” Bee said, ominously. “The last thing we need is another dead body turning up.”
I was too invested in dishing jam onto the other half of my muffin to worry about the dark humor. I ate enthusiastically, the poppy seeds crunching between my teeth. My stomach growled even as I swallowed a mouthful and took another bite right away.
“We’ll wait a few minutes before we go out there,” Bee said, as she cut into a juicy sausage on her plate. “We don’t want to seem like we’re desperate to get into the garden. That might raise suspicions.”
“Right. Of course.”
“Most of the people here will be gone after breakfast, but I heard that Mrs. Rickleston is going to invite over a few of the Garden Society ladies since the Flower Show is tomorrow. She’s buttering them up, though why she wants them on her side, I don’t know.”
Another reason we could take the morning off was because we’d be spending the rest of the afternoon preparing our cookies for the stall at the Muffin Flower Show tomorrow. The timing was just about perfect. Relatively speaking. I was sure if Brent could’ve, he would’ve disagreed with that sentiment.
I finished up my poppy seed muffin and considered having another one. We did have time—we had to wait for the rest of the group to clear out. I got myself another one as a treat, ignoring Bee’s scrutiny, and tucked in.
Twenty minutes later, we were the only ones left in the dining room.
“All right,” Bee said. “Everyone’s gone. We should have ample time to check it out now.”
Choc Chip Murder (A Bite-sized Bakery Cozy Mystery Book 7) Page 3