A Sampling of Murder: Cupcake Truck Mysteries

by Emily James

  Besides, we didn’t even know if Flynn’s drug dealer was the one targeting the store. We wouldn’t know until Flynn started hanging around later this week in between his job interviews.

  I lifted my chin and marched from the car to the door. I jammed my key into the lock and turned.

  No resistance. No click signaling the lock had turned.

  The door wasn’t locked?

  That couldn’t be right. I was the last one out. Claire had already been waiting for me in the car. No way could I have forgotten to lock up.

  But I had been rushing, not wanting to keep Claire waiting. I’d forgotten my tools for that very reason.

  The muscles in my shoulders felt so tight that moving my arms hurt. How could I have been so stupid? With everything that was going on, to forget to lock the door was unpardonable.

  I pulled the door open and stepped inside. From now on, I’d have to make a habit of double checking that the door was locked before I left. I never would have been so careless when I’d been living in my truck. Every moment of my life had been about safeguards and back-up plans. Letting some of that go was healthy, but I needed to make sure I didn’t go so far as to neglect common caution.

  I headed for the kitchen.

  A rustling noise like papers blowing in the wind came from the office.

  I froze. The office didn’t have a window, and I knew I hadn’t left papers out on the desk this time. After the time I’d thought things had been moved around, I’d made a point of putting everything away at the end of each day.

  Was someone in there?

  The sound had been so soft that I might have imagined it…except the door had been unlocked as well.

  I needed to call Dan. I wasn’t going to call 9-1-1 without proof someone was in there. I’d have to give them my name.

  I dialed Dan’s number. He didn’t pick up. The call went to voice mail, and I hung up. If I even whispered a message, the person in the other room—if someone was really in there—might hear me. Dan might not check his messages for hours, and then I’d have given away my presence with no back-up coming.

  Whoever was here hadn’t come out yet, and they must have heard me come in. Since I’d used the front door, the bell had rung upon my entry.

  Maybe I could use that to my advantage to keep them in there until I could reach Dan. The office door didn’t lock, so I’d have to think of something else.

  The chairs set up around the tables caught my gaze. I had no idea if wedging a chair under a doorknob actually worked, but it was worth a try.

  All I had to do was move quietly enough that they didn’t know what I was doing. If they figured out I was trying to trap them, they’d probably risk letting me see them in order to make a break for it.

  I edged backward toward the nearest table and wrapped my hands around the chair back. I lifted it. My arm and shoulder muscles burned. Why had we chosen such heavy chairs?

  I shuffled as soundlessly as possible across the room, toward my office door.

  I was halfway there when the doorknob started to turn.

  The movement was so slow that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t been watching the door as intently as a cat waiting for a mouse to emerge from its hole.

  Except I was definitely not the predator in this situation.

  And I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t reach either the kitchen or the front door in time. My only weapon was the chair, and it was getting heavier by the second.

  The door opened, its hinges creaking because we’d run out of time to oil them.

  A pause.

  And then Scott’s head poked out. His gaze scanned the room and landed on me.

  “Isabel!” His voice came out in a squawk. His skin had a pasty tone that made freckles I hadn’t noticed before stand out on his cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

  I lowered the chair, but I didn’t move out from behind it. At the very least, I could knock it down in front of him if I had to make a run for it. All the times I’d thought Scott was odd came rushing back to me.

  Scott knew we were closed on Mondays. “What are you doing here?” My voice came out cautious and slow.

  Blotches of pink stained his cheeks. “You, uhh, you’d been asking for my social security number and other stuff for taxes. I came to fill in the paperwork.” He straightened up as if he hadn’t been trying to peek out of the office to see if the room was clear only a moment before. “When I heard a noise, I thought it might have been whoever killed your landlord coming back.”

  My heart rate dropped a notch, but Fear still rattled at his cage in the back of my mind. “How did you get in?”

  He shrugged. It almost looked natural. “The door was unlocked.”

  That almost made sense. Claire would have believed him. Most people would have believed him.

  Except for one thing. He couldn’t have known the door would be unlocked. No one came to a place that should be locked and just hoped someone would have forgotten to lock it.

  Scott must have picked the lock. He must have been the one who killed Mr. Jenner. But then why spray paint nasty words on our windows and help clean it off afterward? Why stick around? And why break into my office again today?

  We stared at each other.

  I gripped the back of the chair. What did I do here? If I told him I was calling the police, he’d have no reason to stick around. I didn’t have a gun or anything else over him. For all I knew, Scott wasn’t even his real name.

  But if I let him go, he could come back and hurt us later. His picture might not even be on the security cameras. Since he worked here, he’d probably figured out any blind spots.

  I edged one hand toward the pocket where my phone was.

  Scott stepped back across the office threshold. “What are you doing? We can talk about this.”

  I stopped, hand halfway to my pocket. His hands were extended slightly out in front of him as if he wasn’t sure whether to put them in the air or use them as a shield.

  He was afraid of me.

  That made even less sense. Why would he be afraid of me…unless he wasn’t the one who did those things?

  I slowly put my hand back on the chair, but I kept my gaze firmly on him in case this was a trick. “How did you really get in here?”

  Scott moved his hand toward his pocket.

  “Stop!” My voice didn’t sound much steadier than his. I pretended as if I was going to reach for whatever weapon he thought I had. “If I can’t go for what’s in my pocket, then neither can you.”

  Scott actually raised his hands this time. “It’s just a key. I have a key.”

  We hadn’t given him a key. “Only Claire and I have a key. Did you steal hers? Or make a copy when we weren’t watching?”

  Scott’s eyebrows dipped slightly, and he lowered his hands. “I have a key of my own.”

  I’d preferred it when his hands were in the air. He didn’t look as frightened of me anymore. “I’m going to call the police.”

  He took a step out of the doorway. “Do you think I’m here to hurt you?”

  I had to keep the chair between us. I had to make sure he didn’t get between me and the door. “I don’t know why you’re here, or why you did any of the other things you did, but that’s why we’re going to call the police to sort it out. So don’t come any closer.”

  His eyebrows scrunched down fully this time. “What other things?”

  He had to be kidding. Like he didn’t know exactly what had gone on here.

  My brain slowed slightly, like an anxious person taking a deep breath. He’d looked scared of me when he’d discovered me here. As scared as I felt.

  A hardened criminal who’d killed and vandalized wouldn’t look that frightened, even if they felt it.

  Something wasn’t right here. The fact that he’d been avoiding giving us any other information about himself than his first name flashed like a beacon in my mind.

  “Who are you really?”

  He met my gaze. “Scott
Jenner. Robert Jenner was my father.”

  15

  I hadn’t met Bob Jenner, so I couldn’t see a family resemblance. Scott could still be lying to me.

  “I have a key,” he was saying, “because this is my property now. I’m his only child, and he and my mom divorced when I was five.”

  Were those too many details? I couldn’t remember what Jarrod used to say about people who were lying—whether their stories were too vague or whether they added in a lot of detail hoping it would make their story sound true.

  “If you’re our new landlord, why not just say so? Why pretend you needed a job? Why come in here when we’re closed?”

  Scott didn’t flinch at the questions, look away, or give any other sign that he didn’t know how to answer them.

  “I thought the police were wrong when they told me you and Claire didn’t have anything to do with my dad’s death. Especially once I came by to check the place out and found the spray paint on the windows. It seemed like you might be running some sort of scam or insurance fraud.”

  So he’d pretended to be a kid looking for work to save for college in order to find evidence. “You’re not actually saving up for college, are you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m twenty-two. I already graduated with a business degree.”

  If he was telling the truth, then it explained something else as well. “You’ve searched my office more than once.”

  It was more of a statement than a question. Scott had to be the one who’d moved the papers before.

  He crossed his arms but didn’t make any move to come closer. “Yes.”

  At least it was good to know that Detective Austen didn’t suspect us anymore. Or, at least, she’d told Scott we weren’t people of interest.

  It was also good to know that I wasn’t imagining things. I knew those papers had been moved.

  “I almost didn’t come in today.” Scott shrugged his shoulders up high and let them drop like he was rolling a heavy weight off them. “The longer I’ve worked with you and Claire, the more convinced I was that you hadn’t killed my dad. I just wasn’t sure yet that you weren’t trying to run some other kind of scam. But everything in your paperwork is legitimate, and you didn’t even file an insurance claim for the vandalism. You were going to pay me out-of-pocket for cleaning it up.”

  I would have felt insulted that he thought we might be criminals and murderers if I hadn’t suspected innocent people myself before. “You thought we might be running a scam even though Claire’s cousin is a police officer?”

  Scott’s ears turned red. “I thought that’s why the police didn’t suspect you.”

  Nepotism wasn’t unheard of, but Dan wasn’t the kind of person who’d ask other officers to overlook a crime for him. The farthest he’d gone was to ask Detective Austen not to request my real name, and he had legitimate reasons for that. “Detective Austen didn’t play any favors. She treated me like I was a suspect every time I talked to her.”

  Scott came out of the office door and stood at the end of the counter. “Are you going to fire me now?”

  He could still be playing me, but I didn’t think so. I moved the chair back where it belonged. “If you were only here to figure out if we killed your dad, why do you want to stay?”

  “I moved back here to start working with my dad a couple weeks before he died, and the rest of my family lives across the country.” Scott rubbed behind his ear, as if this was more embarrassing than anything he’d already had to admit to. “I don’t have any friends here yet. What else am I going to do with my time while I’m waiting for the lawyers to settle the estate so I can actually manage my new business?”

  The space inside my chest felt too small for my heart again. Claire would probably tell me that I needed to stop empathizing with everyone who had even the smallest similarity with me. But I knew what it was like to be in a new town with no one. You felt like no one would miss you if you disappeared. No one liked to feel that way. No one liked to feel like they didn’t have anyone to call if they got sick or needed help.

  “I’m not going to fire you. I wouldn’t even if you weren’t our new landlord.”

  Scott smiled. It crinkled his cheeks and made him look much younger than his twenty-two years. I really couldn’t be blamed for believing his story given how young he looked.

  He dipped his head. “Thank you. You and Claire didn’t do this, but this shop is still the only link I have. I call the police station every day. Detective Austen keeps telling me there’s nothing new in the case, which means they have no idea who hurt my dad. I’m afraid my dad’s murder won’t ever be solved.”

  “Do you want to see what I’ve dug up so far? Maybe if we work together, we can figure it out.”

  16

  I brewed a fresh pot of coffee to share with Scott. We didn’t have any day-old snacks. Since we were closed Mondays, I took anything that didn’t sell on Sunday to the local homeless shelter. Even though our funds were tight, we had so much more than the people who used the shelter did.

  And I’d lived in their world for a short time. A few baked goods wouldn’t get them a job or help them overcome an addiction. What it could do was show them they weren’t invisible. It could bring a tiny spot of joy into a day that probably hadn’t allowed much room for hope.

  I updated Scott on how we thought the vandalism and the murder could be related, what I’d learned from Flynn Wendt, and what Dan told me about the drug lord who controlled the neighborhood.

  Scott wrapped both hands around his coffee cup, his shoulders slouched forward. “I guess it’s better thinking my dad was in the wrong place at the wrong time than that he’d done something to get himself killed.”

  I’m not sure I would have found the same comfort in that. Then my loved one’s death would feel random and purposeless. “That’s only one theory. Flynn’s going to hang around here for a few days to see if he recognizes anyone.”

  Scott’s gaze shot up from his cup. The skin around his eyes was red. “That’s a bad idea. If he’s able to recognize someone, they’ll recognize him as well. It’ll reinforce the idea that his family is still connected to the shop.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. The last thing we needed was Edgar Serranno putting even more pressure on us because he thought we were working for the Wendts. “I’ll call Flynn and let him know not to come.”

  “Maybe he’d be willing to watch a few hours of the security footage to see if he recognizes anyone that way.”

  The security cameras only watched a limited area, basically both doors and the cash register. They also weren’t on during the day when customers were coming in and out. They turned on with the alarm system. But it was better than nothing. If the drug lord had assigned someone to keep an eye on us, he might have been caught on camera when we were closing down the shop at night.

  “Any other theories?” Scott asked.

  I shook my head.

  He refilled both our cups and sat back down. He didn’t drink from his right away.

  “It has to be an accident. My dad…” He shook his head. “I know what people say about rich landlords. They think they’re all about the money, but my dad wasn’t like that. He grew up poor. He knew what it was like. He made deals no one else would make, gave people chances.”

  He gave us one. It didn’t surprise me that he also made arrangements with others.

  “You can’t think of anyone who might want to hurt him?” I asked.

  Scott stared at the wall behind me as if thinking it through then shook his head.

  To figure this out I needed a better picture of who his dad was. Maybe Scott’s perception of his dad wasn’t the full picture. “Why did your parents’ divorce?”

  Scott stirred his coffee. The fact that he hadn’t reacted by getting defensive told me that he understood I wasn’t accusing his mom of flying out here and killing his dad.

  Scott swung his spoon back and forth, letting it dangle from his fingers above the cup. “Money. Thoug
h both my parents tell it a different way. My mom said my dad was too controlling and never let her do what she wanted. My dad said my mom spent without considering the consequences, and it was sabotaging his ability to build the kind of business and life that he wanted.”

  Arguments over money ranked number one among married couples. Whenever it came up, it showed me how unusual my marriage had been once again. I hadn’t even had a credit card. What money I got, I had to ask Jarrod for, like a child begging her parents for an allowance. He hadn’t let me work. He’d wanted me home, taking care of things there so that he didn’t have to do anything when he finished work for the day. The longer we were married, the less he allowed me out of the house. Shortly before I left, he’d even started grocery shopping with me or going himself with a list I made.

  Scott’s spoon stopped swinging. He balanced it across the top of the cup. “My dad says he fought to keep me, but the courts always favor the wife, especially back then. So my dad paid child support, and I stayed with him in the summers, learning his business practically before I could do division or multiplication.”

  And then he’d gone on to business school and graduated, excited to finally be an official part of his dad’s business and play a bigger role in his dad’s life only to have this happen. So often life didn’t seem fair.

  Bob Jenner didn’t sound like the kind of man who would have made a lot of enemies. At least, he didn’t sound like a man who would have made a lot of enemies among the average people.

  “Is there anyone at all who you can think of who might have had a reason to harm your dad? We need to figure out if this was about him or not.”

  “I know everyone says this when they lose someone through a tragedy, but I really can’t. My dad helped people build a better life. He didn’t rent gouge.”

  Claire had never explained to me why Mr. Jenner had been willing to make the unusual deal with us that he did. That explained it. He was a business man, but he was also a man who wanted to see other people succeed in life. It wasn’t the most secure business plan, but it was a way to go to bed content at night. “Was there anyone who’d benefit financially from his death?”