A Nip of Murder

by Carol Miller

  “I didn’t do it,” she wept. “I didn’t kill him.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  “Of course she didn’t do it,” Deputy Johnson said. “Of course she didn’t kill him.”

  With a gulp, Daisy nodded.

  “He wasn’t stabbed—or cleaved.”

  She nodded again.

  “He was shot.”

  This time Daisy only gulped and answered, “Brenda doesn’t own a gun.”

  In his starched brown uniform with gold trim, the deputy turned toward Brenda, who was slumped on the ground in front of him. “Is that correct, ma’am?”

  She lifted her gaze to him with an expression of overwhelming exhaustion. Although Daisy had tried to get her to rise—if only to wash the blood from her palms—Brenda had remained on her knees in the middle of the grass and gravel. All of her strength had gone into trying to stop Caesar’s bleeding, and now she had nothing left. Her eyes were blank. Her lips were eerily translucent. The number of graying strands in her black hair seemed to have tripled in the past ten minutes.

  “Is that correct?” Deputy Johnson repeated. “You don’t own a firearm?”

  Brenda shook her head in confirmation, then looked over at the shrouded figure being lifted into the ambulance.

  “You did everything you could,” Daisy said emphatically, trying to boost her spirits. “You can be proud of that.”

  “It’s not fair,” Brenda sniffled. “He died because he was here, and he was here because he was protecting us. I know it was his job, but…”

  “His job?” Deputy Johnson inquired when she let the sentence trail away.

  “Caesar was a security guard,” Daisy explained. “Or at least,” she corrected herself, not sure what exactly his employment with Rick had included, “he was a security guard for us. After the other incident, on Saturday—”

  “He was very comforting to have around,” Brenda interjected. “Such a nice man. So helpful too. He moved that heavy table with the marble slab for us.”

  “You felt it necessary to hire a security guard?”

  There was such a strong note of doubt and suspicion in the deputy’s tone, it rankled Daisy.

  “Obviously we needed one,” she snapped, gesturing toward the recently deceased.

  “But there was no cheese taken this time?” he asked.

  “There wasn’t anything taken. Not that I could see.” Daisy turned to Brenda. “Did you see anything taken?”

  “I didn’t see anything at all.”

  Deputy Johnson squinted at her from behind the permanently smeared lenses of his glasses. “That can’t be true, ma’am. You must have seen something.”

  “I didn’t,” Brenda insisted. “They broke the window, came in, and then left again.”

  “If you know that, you must have seen them.”

  “No. They never entered the kitchen, and that’s where I was.”

  “So they came into the storage room,” Daisy mused, matching Brenda’s account to what she had already guessed from her own inspection of Sweetie Pies’ interior, “went through the main part of the bakery, and out the front door?”

  “That’s how it sounded to me,” Brenda said. “The window broke. I threw down the phone and ran to get the cleaver from that box, like you told me. I heard footsteps—and I was sure they were going to find me—but they didn’t. They didn’t even take a peep into the kitchen. They just walked out the front door. The bell clanked with ’em.”

  “And your guard?” Deputy Johnson questioned her. “Where was he during all of this?”

  “When I arrived, Caesar wasn’t here yet. I came in extra early this morning, since I knew Ducky was planning on coming in a bit late. I thought Caesar still hadn’t shown up when the ruckus began, but just a few seconds after the bell clanked, he shouted. He was outside, and he yelled at the people to stop.”

  “Did they answer him?”

  “I didn’t hear it if they did. Caesar shouted again. I heard running, a car door slammed, and the car—or it might have been a pickup—started up. They were trying to get away fast. The tires spun on the gravel. And then,” Brenda’s translucent lips quivered, “there was a shot.”

  Daisy let out a sigh of sympathy and sadness.

  Brenda nodded. “It was awful, Ducky. Just awful. I knew it was Caesar. I knew in an instant that he was the one who had been shot. The car—or truck—didn’t even slow down. It kept on going like nothing in the world had happened, like putting a bullet in a man was the same as tossing a gum wrapper from the window. They went along the dirt road. I was already hurrying outside, but all I saw was a big ball of dust.”

  “Not any sort of make—or model—or color?” Deputy Johnson pressed her. “A guess, even?”

  “Just dust,” she responded, echoing Daisy’s sad sigh.

  “And the guard?”

  “Caesar was on the ground.” Brenda pointed toward the flattened grass at her knees. “He had this pit in his chest. It was like a hole in a pipe, and I tried to plug it. I tried to close it up until someone came to help, but it didn’t work. The blood didn’t stop.” She raised her stained hands and stared at them. “I couldn’t get it to stop.”

  Although Daisy dearly wanted to comfort her, she knew that it was impossible. Caesar had died in front of her. Brenda had felt his last breath beneath her palms. She had witnessed his final, suffering seconds on this earth. And she had desperately tried to save him but couldn’t. There was no comfort for that.

  “We’ll do a search around the building for the gun,” Deputy Johnson pronounced after a moment, “but they probably took it with them.”

  “And they’ll probably throw it away somewhere along the road, so it won’t ever be found,” Daisy remarked pragmatically. “That farm road goes on for five miles, with two ponds both less than a hundred yards off the road within the first mile. What are the chances the gun doesn’t end up in one of them, or some other pond farther down the line? That road connects to another half a dozen unused, secluded farm roads. You could send an army through that area and not come up with the gun.”

  “Standard criminal behavior,” the deputy replied. “They tend to be good at disposing of their weapons.”

  Daisy frowned. “But it doesn’t seem like standard criminal behavior.”

  Deputy Johnson gave her a startled look. “You don’t consider a person being shot in cold blood in the parking lot of your business to be criminal behavior?”

  She glowered at him with irritation. “Of course I do. I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was climbing through a broken window into the bakery—and then walking straight out the front door without doing anything else along the way—doesn’t seem very standard to me.”

  He straightened his glasses. “You may be on to something there.”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Daisy added to emphasize her point, “they didn’t even take a cookie.”

  “The biscuits!” Brenda exclaimed, jumping abruptly to her feet. “I forgot the biscuits!”

  Daisy grabbed her arm just as she was about to sprint toward the back door. “Don’t worry about the biscuits, Brenda.”

  “But they’ll burn!” she cried. “And then they’ll burn the whole place down!”

  “The biscuits are already burnt. Except I turned off the oven, so they won’t be burning anything down.”

  Brenda looked greatly relieved. Daisy was too when she saw that some color had crept back into her friend’s cheeks. She no longer appeared quite so forlorn or teetering dangerously on the edge of a despondent abyss.

  “If you can’t tell me about the vehicle they drove away in,” Deputy Johnson said to her, “can you at least tell me how many of them there were?”

  “One,” Brenda answered.

  It was the deputy’s turn to frown. “One? That’s all?”

  “Well, I can’t be absolutely positive, because I didn’t see it. But it only sounded like one car—or one truck—starting up and one set of tires spinning on the grav
el.”

  The frown became an exasperated grimace. “Not the number of vehicles. The number of people!”

  “Oh.” Brenda paused. “I’m not sure about that. I assumed it was three, since there were three the last time. But,” her brow furrowed, “it couldn’t have been three, could it? It could only be two after…” She paused again, no doubt thinking about the dead cream cheese thief.

  “You referred to them in the plural,” Deputy Johnson reminded her. “You said they, not he.”

  “You’re right.” Brenda’s brow furrowed some more. “I did.”

  “I think it could have been just one person,” Daisy interjected. “In fact, I think it probably was just one person.”

  Both Brenda and the deputy turned to her with interest.

  “Two people would be much more likely to do something inside the bakery,” she surmised. “Two people wouldn’t break a window to get in. Two people would break open a door.”

  “And two people would talk.” Brenda continued the line of reasoning. “But I didn’t hear any talking. I didn’t hear two sets of footsteps either.” Her eyes widened with a sudden realization. “There weren’t two people running outside. I’m fairly certain of that. And only one car—or pickup—door slammed.”

  “So that leaves us with the question,” Daisy said, “was it one of the men who stole the cream cheese, or was it somebody else?”

  Brenda drew a raspy breath. “I told you they’d come back!”

  “But why?” Daisy retorted. “Why would one of them come back? Especially if they’re not going to do anything while they’re back. They’re just raising their risk of getting caught.”

  “Maybe they were looking for us?”

  “Except they didn’t actually look for us. You said the person didn’t even take a peep into the kitchen, and the kitchen is where they found you the last time.”

  “Huh.” Brenda wrinkled her pug nose. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either,” Daisy agreed.

  “Do you know how many of those geocachers are still hanging around?” Deputy Johnson asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.

  “Geocachers?” Brenda echoed.

  “Not a lot,” Daisy answered him. “Most of them left as soon as the event ended, but a few have stayed on.”

  “Are you acquainted with any of them personally?”

  “Only two—Chris and Laurel Page—although I might recognize some of the others.”

  The deputy scribbled a note of the names.

  “They’re brother and sister,” Daisy went on. “They could probably tell you who else from the group is still in the area.”

  He scribbled some more.

  “What on earth do the geocachers have to do with this?” Brenda said with a touch of indignation. “They bought our scones and dug stuff up. They didn’t break our window or shoot poor Caesar.”

  “They may very well have done both,” Deputy Johnson countered. “The man who died here last Saturday—the man you stabbed—he was a geocacher.”

  Daisy was so stunned that her body froze. Brenda’s reaction went in the opposite direction. She took a couple of wobbly steps toward nothing in particular, then her legs swayed like a hurricane-force wind had suddenly struck her. Just as she was about to topple over, Daisy shook herself awake and grabbed Brenda’s arm for the second time that morning, only instead of stopping her from making a wasted trip inside to check on burning biscuits, she kept her from slamming face-first into the dirt.

  “The man…” Brenda stammered, still wobbling. “He was a geocacher?”

  “He was,” Deputy Johnson confirmed.

  “How did you identify him?” Daisy asked. “And when? I thought you were having trouble figuring out who he was.”

  “We were having trouble,” the deputy admitted. “And I wasn’t the one who identified him. His parents did. They showed up yesterday at my office. They drove over from Richmond, because they were worried that there had been some sort of an accident when their son quit sending them updates on the hunt. Apparently they’re geocachers too, but they didn’t come along since this event was geared toward a younger crowd.”

  “I assume you told them what happened at the bakery?” Daisy said. “Could they give you any kind of explanation?”

  “None at all.” He shook his head. “They couldn’t believe it. They didn’t have a clue why their beloved, angelic son Jordan—that was his name, Jordan Snyder—would want to break in to a bakery and steal something. When I told them that the theft involved ninety pounds’ worth of cream cheese, they were completely flabbergasted.”

  “They aren’t the only ones,” Daisy muttered.

  “After I found out who he was,” Deputy Johnson continued, “I checked every database that we have access to. Up until this past weekend, Jordan Snyder from Richmond, Virginia, never had a lick of trouble with the law. He was twenty-six years old, had graduated from his local community college, worked in the family furniture business, owned a pair of golden retrievers, and really liked this geocaching thing.”

  Daisy threw up her hands in frustration. “And now he’s dead for no comprehensible reason!”

  “There doesn’t have to be a reason,” the deputy rejoined. “Some criminals are just late bloomers.”

  With effort, Daisy restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Based on his curriculum vitae, Jordan Snyder didn’t sound like much of a criminal to her—late bloomer or not. Obviously he was a criminal, considering that he and his friends had come in to her bakery and taken her cream cheese, but he certainly wasn’t a hardened career criminal. And he had paid an awfully steep price if this was indeed his first lapse in judgment.

  “Late bloomers are often the worst types of criminals. They think they can get away with anything, but they can’t.” Deputy Johnson pointed a stern finger in the air. “Not while I’m here. I’ll stop ’em. I stopped Jordan. I can stop the others too.”

  Daisy was tempted to remind him that Brenda was actually the one who had stopped Jordan, but she didn’t want to upset Brenda any more than she already was, so she prudently bit her tongue.

  “Even if it was just a dumb prank, there still needs to be consequences.” The deputy waved his finger around like he was conducting an orchestra. “We can’t let strangers come waltzing into Pittsylvania County believing that there won’t be any consequences to their shenanigans.”

  That remark made Daisy think of Aunt Emily and her reference that morning to hooligans. Maybe she was right. Maybe the broken window at the historical society was simply a product of mischief, and the maps had been taken merely to cause trouble. The same could apply to the broken window in the storage room. Perhaps something had been stolen from Sweetie Pies too, only she and Brenda hadn’t discovered it yet. It wasn’t anything valuable or important. It was taken just to cause trouble. That would also explain the otherwise inexplicable cream cheese. A childish idea to steal something from the local bakery had gone horribly wrong, and Jordan Snyder had ended up dead as a result.

  “I’ll need to talk to those people you mentioned—the brother and sister.” Deputy Johnson glanced at the notes that he had scribbled earlier. “The Pages. You said they might know which of the geocachers were still in the area?”

  “Yes,” Daisy began, “they should be able to—”

  “Oh heavens, Ducky,” Brenda cut her off. “Rick’s here.”

  “He is?” She was surprised. “Where?”

  “Around the side near the ambulance. He must have been driving by and seen the commotion.”

  Daisy turned toward the side of the building.

  “Oh heavens, Ducky,” Brenda said again, her voice anxious. “We’re going to have to tell him about Caesar. Do you think he’ll be mad?”

  “He won’t be mad at you,” Daisy assured her, searching the small crowd that was collected around the ambulance. “But he’s going to be plenty mad at whoever—” This time she cut herself off.

  “Can you tell me where I can find the
Pages?” Deputy Johnson inquired.

  Daisy didn’t respond. She was too busy staring at the spectacle before her, wondering if her eyes could possibly be deceiving her.

  “Are they staying at the Tosh Inn?” the deputy pursued.

  It took a minute before she finally answered. Her words came out slow and uneven.

  “You don’t need to go to the Tosh Inn. Laurel Page is right over there.”

  As she spoke, Daisy gestured toward the corner of the bakery, where a woman was standing in a tight embrace with a man. It was Laurel, wrapped in Rick’s arms.

  CHAPTER

  15

  “That sure is a load off my mind,” Brenda said with a weighty exhalation.

  “What is?” Daisy asked.

  “We won’t have to be the ones to tell Rick about Caesar. He must have seen him in the ambulance or found out from a deputy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, look at him. Look at how Laurel is comforting him.”

  Daisy blinked at the pair. Laurel Page was pressed against Rick Balsam’s chest. There wasn’t a sliver of daylight between their bodies. She blinked again, hard. The scene didn’t change.

  “Or maybe Rick is comforting Laurel,” Brenda added after a moment. “Maybe it’s given her a shock.”

  The embrace continued—and showed no sign of weakening.

  Doubt began to creep into Brenda’s voice. “Laurel’s marrying Bobby, right?”

  “As far as I’m aware,” Daisy replied, echoing her misgiving. “Or at least she was the last I heard.”

  Brenda frowned. “I wonder about that, Ducky. I think there might be trouble.”

  Trouble was a very fitting word for the Balsam brothers. There were plenty of other words also, but treacherous was not one that Daisy would have used, which was why the lingering embrace surprised her so much. Although Rick and Bobby had certainly had their share of spats and disagreements over the years—some more and some less serious—she had never seen them be truly disloyal to each other. And fooling around with a fiancée was most definitely disloyal. Daisy remembered how a couple of days earlier in the bakery she had noticed Rick admiring Laurel. At the time she had thought that the admiration went on a little too long and a little too intently to be appropriate for a future brother-in-law, even an irrepressibly rakish one like Rick. The current level of intimacy between him and Laurel appeared to go well beyond admiration, and it piqued her curiosity.