One Last Bite_A Darling Bakery Cozy Mystery

by Brenda De Witt

  A big smile spread across Marla’s face. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Dani Darling. Now I understand why Guy liked you so much.”

  Dani let out a quiet sigh. Now more than ever she wanted to find out what happened to Guy — if only to show some last bit of kindness to someone who had been so supportive of Dani’s dreams.

  ***

  As Dani drove up to the Friendly Stay Motel all she could think was this was the kind of place someone would stay only if they didn’t have any friends. Dani would have gratefully chosen to sleep on someone’s couch, a reclining chair, or even the floor before choosing to check into a place like this.

  “It certainly isn’t the Ritz,” Marla said as she followed Dani up a rickety staircase to the second floor of the motel. “Not that I’ve ever stayed at a fancy hotel before, but this…,” Marla just shook her head.

  Dani stopped outside room number 206 and waited for Marla to retrieve the room key from the manila envelope in her purse.

  As soon as they opened the door it was obvious that the non-smoking sign posted outside the room was just there for decoration. The thick, stale smell of cigarette smoke that greeted them made Dani’s eyes water.

  “You say Guy’s been living here for three months,” Dani finally asked.

  “Yes,” Marla said curling her lip up to her nose. “He’d been really anxious about money lately and I think this was the best he could afford.”

  Dani heard a twinge of anger rise in Marla’s voice.

  “That wife of his certainly wasn’t suffering, though. Guy just bought her a new car last year and she was always taking trips out of town.” Marla waved her hand in the air like she didn’t want to think about Ingrid Mason anymore. “I guess we should get started.”

  But as Dani looked around the room it was clear that they were going to need some boxes to pack up all the stuff that had been crammed into the small space. The room had two beds and both of them were covered with Guy’s things. On one bed there was a pile of clothes almost two feet high.

  “I guess this was his office,” Marla said with a sad giggle as she walked over to the second bed.

  There were piles of paper everywhere, but Dani couldn’t really make fun of Guy’s unorganized mess. Her own office looked just as cluttered.

  Dani didn’t see any evidence of food supplies so she figured Guy must have eaten all his meals at a restaurant.

  “I guess he hadn’t had time to shred this stuff after he scanned it and emailed them to me.” Marla said as she shuffled through the papers on the bed.”

  As Dani looked around she certainly understood why Guy needed help from someone like Marla.

  “Marla, why don’t I go downstairs to the front office and see if the motel manager has any boxes we can use to pack this stuff up. This is all too much for you to take back to Wheaton on the bus, but I don’t mind keeping it at my house until we have time to sort through it all.”

  Marla was focused on reading something she’d picked up off the bed and just nodded distractedly. “Ok, dear,” she mumbled.

  Dani thought it was probably a good idea that Marla was focused on something work-related. She needed the distraction after what she’d been through at the police station.

  Before Dani slipped out the door she propped it open so a little fresh air could circulate in the room while she was gone. There was no need for she and Marla to suffocate while doing a good deed for their dearly departed friend.

  Dani walked carefully down the rickety stairs and into the front office of the motel. The lobby was exactly as she would have imagined in an establishment whose exterior looked slightly better than a bomb shelter.

  The noise from a blaring television filled the room. A number of people, whom Dani assumed to be motel guests, were variously strewn across the tattered lobby furniture. One man, dressed in thread-bare military fatigues, was yelling back at the television screen.

  “Damn politicians! They’re gonna ruin this country I tell you!”

  He turned to the man sitting on the couch across from him obviously expecting him to agree.

  “Hush all that yelling!” shouted the third member of the trio. “If you don’t pipe down you know Joe’s gonna throw us outta here and it’s too hot in my room to sit up there.”

  The fatigue-adorn man scoffed but did quiet down.

  Dani looked in the direction of the front counter, ostensibly where Joe was, but there wasn’t anyone standing there. The only evidence that the counter was a place to make inquiries was a faded welcome sign, a vase filled with dusty plastic flowers and a rusty bell.

  Dani stepped forward to ring the bell, but while her hand was still in mid-air a gruff voice spoke up.

  “No need for that, little lady. I’m right here.”

  Dani leaned forward and looked over the counter to find a middle-aged man dressed in Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt whose horse and rider that had almost entirely vanished. He was on the floor in an odd position, one leg bent under his body and the other jutting straight out in front of him, disappearing from view under the desk behind the counter.

  For a minute Dani wondered if Joe had fallen and needed help getting up, but before she could express her concern, the man heaved his body off the floor and stood to his feet.

  “Ya know, they say this yoga stuff is supposed to make you feel younger, but I think it’s all a bunch of malarky,” Joe said with a grunt.

  Dani stifled a giggle. For historical reasons, she wasn’t exactly a fan of yoga either, so she felt a kindred connection to Joe’s distaste of the activity everyone else seemed to love.

  “How can I help you?” Joe asked, now on his feet.

  “Hi, my name is Dani Darling. I’m…” she paused. “I was a friend of Guy Mason in room 206. I’m here with his assistant to pick up his things, but we weren’t quite prepared for there to be so much stuff. I was wondering if you had any old boxes we could use.”

  The man just shook his head. “Darn shame, I tell ya! I’m really gonna miss that dude. He was one of the best guests I had.”

  Dani took a quick glance over at the group gathered around the television, but they either didn’t hear Joe’s comment or didn’t care that none of them were his favorite.

  “I’ve got some half-empty toilet paper boxes in the storage room,” Joe said. “These folks go through it like you wouldn’t believe and somehow they always think its the motel’s responsibility to replace it.”

  Dani wasn’t sure if she objected or agreed with the guest’s assumptions. After all, it was a motel even though it seemed like many of the occupants lived there on a full-time basis. She chose to keep her expression neutral and just nodded.

  “Hey, Dan!” Joe yelled.

  The man who had been nodding jostled to life.

  “Go into the storage room and get this young lady a few boxes would ya. Just empty out the toilet paper and put it in a garbage bag or something.”

  Dan slowly rose from the couch and headed out the lobby door.

  “Like I said,” Joe continued. “I really liked that Guy fella. When I read that he was found dead I just shook my head. Ya know, he had three more days on that room this week all paid up. Another guest, who shall remain nameless…,” Joe held up his hand and then pointed his finger at his palm and in the direction of the remaining guests on the couch. “… actually wanted to take over his room right away, but I knew someone would be by to get his stuff. Folks like him always have friends even if they end up living in a dump like this for a while.”

  Dani didn’t have to respond because Dan walked back into the lobby carrying two boxes stacked one inside the other. Dani thanked Joe, and Dan, for the boxes and headed back upstairs to Guy’s room.

  “I struck gold!” Dani announced as she walked back through the door of Room 206.

  It smelled a little less smokey, but Marla was just as absorbed in the papers covering the bed as she’d been when Dani left.

  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” Marla
said shaking her head as she thumbed through one of the piles.

  Dani put the boxes down and stepped closer.

  “What’s wrong, Marla?”

  “Well, to start with I keep finding appraisal forms for properties I’ve never heard of.” Marla waved a stack of pages in Dani’s direction. “I scheduled all of Guy’s appraisals myself and I kept copies of his appraisal notes just in case the bank needed clarification on something, but I’ve never seen any notes regarding these appraisals. Also, look at this.”

  Marla handed an email print out to Dani.

  “Everyday I emailed Guy a list of the appointments he had so he could attach it to his clipboard and keep track of his day.”

  Dani looked at the page in her hand. The email was from last Wednesday, May 30th. Down the left side, she could see the time indicated and then the next column noted the address of where Guy had to go and the name of the bank, or private party, that was requesting the appraisal. Dani noticed that a few of the appraisals had been requested by Oswald & Morgan Enterprises. That was the same name of the construction company where she’d passed out some of her cupcakes yesterday. They must be into both commercial and residential development Dani thought.

  “See here,” Marla pointed to the addresses next to the familiar company’s name. “These two addresses are in a different font. Guy must have typed these in himself before printing the email I sent over. I have no idea where these houses are.” She got up from her seat on the bed shaking her head and began to pace the room. “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s almost as if Guy was leading a double life. No wonder he was having trouble getting to the appointments I scheduled for him on time. I always tried to make sure that all the homes he had to go to on a given day were in the same area, but the ones he added are on opposite sides of the county. There’s no way he could make it any place on time following a schedule like this. And what’s this notation?”

  Marla pointed to a handwritten note on the page.

  “GA 7pm?” Dani read. “You don’t have any idea what that means?”

  “Not a clue,” Marla said with an exasperated tone. “I’m just going to have to take these papers home with me and look them over and try to figure this all out.”

  Marla began stacking the papers into one pile and Dani pulled the two large boxes Dan had brought her into the room and started dumping Guy’s clothes into them. She felt a little bad for just tossing Guy’s clothes into the boxes without folding them, but she guessed it wasn’t much different from them being piled up on the bed.

  “I guess that’s about it,” Marla said as she stuffed the last of several stacks of papers into some plastic grocery bags that had been laying on the floor. “We’ve finished just in time. My bus leaves in forty-five minutes.”

  “Okay,” Dani said. “Let’s get this stuff down to the car and then I’ll turn the room key back into the hotel manager.”

  Marla was able to carry the grocery bags filled with papers down in one trip, while Dani drug the large boxes of clothes to the edge of the motel steps and then let them roll down the stairs flipping end over end like large tumbling dice. Once they had everything loaded up Dani went back into the motel lobby to turn the key into Joe.

  “I think we’re all done here,” she said. The trio was still in the sitting area and all three heads turned at the sound of Dani’s announcement. She dropped the key into Joe’s hand and scurried out of the lobby as quickly as she could. Dani didn’t want to witness whatever mortal combat was about to take place to determine which of the quests, if any, got the newly available premium space.

  Chapter 11

  Dani watched Marla climb safely on board her bus Thursday night and then went straight home without stopping at the bakery. There wasn’t really any point in baking her usual 10 to 15 dozen cupcakes in preparation for a nonexistent morning rush. It would have just been a waste. Instead, Dani went home, cuddled up with Sheba — until Sheba got tired of being squeezed — and went over and over what she’d learned about Guy over the past few days.

  First, Guy was found alone in a house only five minutes from The Darling Bakery. Since he left the bakery with two coffee cups in his hands there either had to be someone waiting for him in the car or meeting him at the house. The question was who? And what happened to the empty coffee cups?

  A spouse is often the logical first suspect in a crime, but according to Marla, Ingrid had been out of town at some type of job-related training.

  Second, what about Guy’s strange behavior in the weeks leading up to his death? And who was the person he thought was following him?

  Third, it seemed like a long shot to Dani that Guy could have come into contact with something peanut-based in an empty house. And even, if he had, he carried an EpiPen in his bag and was prepared for just such an event. Unless there was someone there who prevented him from getting to his bag and saving his life!

  Every scenario Dani came up with pointed to someone else being at the scene of the crime and she was going to have to find out who that someone was.

  ***

  The next morning Dani made a quick stop at the bakery. As she suspected everything was as slow as it had been the day before, so she packed up a few small boxes of cupcakes and went in search of new customers.

  As she drove rather aimlessly through Riley, Dani thought about how strange she used to think it was that Nana hadn’t sold the building the bakery was in years ago. When she asked her mother about it she said Nana was adamant that the family hold on to the property until Dani was old enough to decide what she wanted to do with it. She wondered if Nana somehow knew that Dani would move to Riley and re-open the family bakery. That thought made the pressure to save her business even greater. She had to make sure The Darling Bakery lived on.

  When a car horn blew behind her, Dani realized she must have been sitting at the same four-way stop for a while. She waved an apologetic hand to the driver behind her and moved forward. That’s when she realized what street she was on. Reynolds Ave. Wasn’t that the street where Clint said they found Guy?

  Dani slowed the car down and peered out the window. The houses in this neighborhood were small — in comparison to the huge six bedroom home Dani’s grandparents had left her— but they were quaint and well cared for.

  Dani drove about three blocks before she saw what she was looking for— a for sale sign. When she pulled up in front of the house Dani was shocked. The real estate sign wasn’t the only indicator that this house was no longer occupied — the house was a mess. It stood out like a sore thumb amongst the other well-kept homes on the block. The pale yellow paint was peeling off the sides and it looked like the windows hadn’t been washed in a decade. The only thing that was well maintained about the property was the yard. There were no pretty flowers in front, but the grass was neatly cut and edged.

  That was more than Dani could say for her own house. A picture of her overgrown front yard flashed through her mind. Finding a gardener had been on her to do list for months but she just hadn’t gotten around to finding one.

  The family who’d rented the house before she moved in had teenage sons and they’d kept the lawn nice, but Dani didn’t have any free hands to help around and all of her time and energy had been put into getting the bakery up and running. The only thing that kept her yard from looking like a total disaster was the small white flowers that blossomed on the weeds. It at least gave the yard a little color.

  The Reynolds Ave. house sat on a corner lot. Dani got out of the car and walked up to the front porch. The front door was covered with a big yellow X of crime scene tape. Dani tried to peer into the windows, but the dirt covering them was so thick that she really couldn’t get a good view of the inside of the house. She decided to take a look around back. Dani wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. Maybe something that would give her a clue about who might have been here the morning Guy died.