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 you
r 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 salivating. 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.”
I dusted off my fingers over my plate then got up and headed for the doorway. Mrs. Rickleston wasn’t at her desk in the foyer—she usually took time off after breakfast or ran out to do some errands. Bee and I motored down the hallway and toward the French doors that looked out on the terrace.
The police seal was, indeed, gone.
The terrace was blessedly empty, and we made our way down the stairs and to the spot along the hedge where we’d first seen the body. It was gone, of course, though there was a patch on the grass I didn’t look at.
“They took the shoe,” I said, pointing to the mud under the tree. There was still a faint imprint of where the stiletto had been wedged.
“They would’ve had to. It’s evidence.” Bee put her hands behind her back. “Now, the only question is, where did the shoe come from?”
I scanned the garden. We were at the end of it, and the back of the inn was guarded by a relatively high wall. To my right, a grove of bushy trees flanked another wall, and to the left was the sweeping lawn that led toward a fountain.
“The garden is completely enclosed,” I said.
“Which means the murderer had to have climbed over the wall or had access to the garden already.”
I froze. “Rose-Marie was at the tea party, remember?”
“How could I forget?”
“And she happened to excuse herself from her table just before it happened.”
“But she didn’t walk down the stairs into the garden,” Bee said. “No one did.”
“No, they didn’t. Not at that time. All the tables were full. They were too busy eating the cookies.”
“Or scoffing at them.”
“Exactly.” I walked toward the tree where the stiletto had been wedged in the mud. “So, deductive reasoning says they have to have found another way around the hedge. Where does it end?” The hedge was a long barrier of green, trimmed into a rectangle.
“Let’s find out.”
We strolled along the hedge to the far end and entered the shade underneath the trees. There was mud here too.
“Look there,” Bee said, and put out her arm. I nearly ran into her.
A trail of footprints ran along the edge of the hedge and into the space beneath the trees. We followed them, and a mixture of excitement and dread welled in my stomach. The murderer had definitely come through here.
“Do you think the cops saw this?” I asked.
“Yeah. They would have looked for evidence of the murderer’s presence and connection to the scene.” The footprints disappeared in the long grass—the trail was cold.
I stood in line with them and looked to the right, the left, and then straight ahead. “So, either the killer climbed back over here to escape,” I said, pointing to the perimeter wall. “Or they climbed over the hedge and slipped back to the party.”
“I’m not so much worried about how they got away, but more about how they got in. Did they come from over the hedge or over the wall? That’s a game changer.”
“I don’t think climbing the wall would be that easy,” I said. “Maybe they came from the party then went and changed their shoes in the bathroom and returned to the party afterward?”
“It’s possible.” Bee tapped her chin. “All possible. If only we had something else to identify who did it. I didn’t notice anyone’s red stilettos at the party.”
“To be fair, stilettos are high shoe
s. I doubt any of the women at the party would have been wearing them.”
“Are you saying the elderly can’t wear stilettos?” Bee asked.
“No, I’m saying it’s highly unlikely that they would. You know, it would be the talk of the society. Remember how much they gossiped?” I frowned. “It feels like we’re missing something.”
“We’re missing a lot of things. Let’s split up and see if we can find any other clues.”
I took the length of the wall, and Bee wandered around the hedge, examining the ground closely. But there was nothing else, and though I’d have loved to stay here all day searching, we had to prepare our cookies and treats for the Muffin Flower Show.
One of our suspects would be there.
9
The Flower Show…
I’d been worried that the ladies of the Muffin Garden Society would be the only ones at the Flower Show—they’d hated our scrumptious choc-chip cookies at the tea party, so who was to say how they’d react to our stall?
Thankfully, Muffin’s park was packed with locals, most of whom had never even heard of the Garden Society before, and who seemed to love our cookies.
Bee had parked the truck in our usual spot so she could bake cookies on the fly if we needed extra, and our stall was right across from the pond. A few ducks scudded along the water’s surface or bobbed, their yellow legs tucked tight against their fat, feathery bodies. They were completely unfazed by the activity around them.
Stalls had been erected, a wooden stage had been put up for the prize-giving, and the women and men who were competing in the show had arranged their offerings in massive displays along the walkway.
Rose-Marie Wilde sat in a chair next to her stall, waving a lace fan near her face and glaring around at her competitors. I had to hand it to her, the flower display she’d set up was gorgeous—and her black velvet roses were a stand out.
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