by Kate Bell
“Well, that was something,” he said. “Were you aware of his estrangement with his daughter?”
“No. And I also wasn’t aware that he was seeing people while his wife was still alive. Seems kind of slimy. And don’t you think it’s odd that she wouldn’t ask him for details about his love life? It sounds like she was spending a lot of time with him.”
Alec shrugged. “She said they weren’t dating.”
“But don’t you think they would have conversations? Wouldn’t he mention the other women he had dated at some point?”
“You would think so,” he said. “Sometimes people are odd though. Maybe because they weren’t dating, she felt she didn’t have a right to ask.”
“I think she wanted to date him. Officially, I mean, and not just play Uno with him on Thursday nights. And Mama was always the one that brought food to Tom. Now Mrs. Beale is saying that he cooked for her?”
“Maybe Tom just enjoyed your mother’s cooking and never protested when she brought him food,” Alec said.
“Oh! Do you think he recycled my mother’s cooking?” I asked.
“Recycled her cooking? What do you mean?”
“You know. After my mother brought him food, he turned around and told Mrs. Beale that he had made it? What a cad!” I said.
Alec laughed. “You do have an imagination.”
“Do you think Mrs. Beale had anything to do with the murder?” I asked, turning toward him.
“I don’t think so. She seemed genuinely shocked,” he said. “After being in this line of work for so many years, you get to where you can read a person fairly well.”
“Did you see the plate of gingerbread men and candy canes on the porch when you were investigating?” I asked, remembering what Jennifer had said. “Jennifer felt like they had been thrown to the ground rather violently.”
Alec nodded his head. “There did seem to be some emotion behind it. Maybe he insulted someone’s baking?”
I looked at him, and he had a wicked grin on his face. “Well, if a person is stupid enough to insult a Southern woman’s baking, then they pretty much have it coming. They shouldn’t be surprised if they wind up dead.”
He chuckled. “I could see that happening. I know a Southern woman that is mighty proud of her baking skills.”
“I bet you do,” I said.
“John sent the plate in to be examined. He was able to lift quite a few prints off of it. It may be a very important clue to solving the crime.”
“Well, I hope so,” I said. “What a shame. Killing someone this close to Christmas. It ruins the holiday for family members for years to come.”
“I think it probably ruins quite a few things,” he said.
“Oh, and my mother thinks the killer is Ida Crawford. She use to be a cashier at the old phone company, back in the days when phones were attached to walls.”
“Times have sure changed. No one has those dinosaur phones in their homes anymore. Oh. Wait. I’m sorry, but you have one of those dinosaurs in your kitchen, don’t you?” he teased.
“All right, smarty. Yes, I do, but that doesn’t make me a dinosaur as well,” I said, doing my best to sound huffy, but not really meaning it.
“And why does your mother think she did it, besides the obvious fact that she worked for a now defunct phone company?” he asked.
“Because she has garish orange hair and wears too much makeup. Oh, and she may have been seeing Tom on the side,” I said.
He nodded. “Garish orange hair should be a giveaway. I’ll have to ask John if he knows anything about her.”
“That’s a great idea,” I agreed.
“Do you know his daughter Leslie?” he asked.
“She’s younger than I am. I remember her from school, but we ran with different crowds. I do remember hearing that she was a little on the wild side when she was still in junior high, dating more than one boy at once. That was really frowned on back then, especially since she was only in seventh grade.”
“I’m sure John will want to talk to her, as well.”
A light breeze kicked up, and I felt a chill. I pulled my coat tightly around myself and I wondered how many girlfriends Tom had had.
--5--
I was up early the next morning, baking fresh cinnamon rolls. There’s just something about the smell of fresh yeasty sweet rolls on a cold winter morning that makes me feel nostalgic for my childhood and my grandmama. I had peeled and cooked up some Granny Smith apples with spices, raisins, and walnuts for the filling. Cream cheese frosting would top them off nicely. Decadent, but oh so good.
I was spreading the apple filling on my carefully rolled out dough when Mama came into the kitchen.
“Oh my, Allie. What have you gone and done?” she asked, rubbing one sleepy eye with the back of her hand.
“I have made the most delectable cinnamon rolls you have ever tasted,” I said, spreading out the filling. “If you make some coffee, we’ll be eating shortly.”
“I can do that,” she said and headed to the coffee pot. She put whole coffee beans into the grinder and turned it on. The kitchen filled with the smell of wonderful, fresh roasted coffee beans. She turned off the grinder and stood staring at it.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” I asked. I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from her.
She sighed and then turned toward me. “Tom loved cinnamon rolls. I was just about to ask you to set some aside for him when they were done.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I bet Tom ate well with you being here next door. And I’m sure he appreciated it.”
As long as I could remember, Mama was having me run next door with some of whatever she had made. Tom’s wife Jane had been a decent cook, but she didn’t enjoy it and tended to make simple and uncomplicated meals, so Mama’s meals were a treat for Tom.
Mama loved to cook, and she loved to share it with others. She was one of the best cooks around. Just don’t ask her to bake.
“That he did,” she said and turned back to the coffee grinder to put the fresh grounds into the coffee pot.
“Well, hopefully, there’s enough good Southern food to make him happy for an eternity there in Heaven.”
“Let’s hope so. He was a staunch Baptist you know,” she said, nodding.
I knew that. I could remember him greeting us every morning as we came through the doors of the little white Baptist church down the road. I missed those days.
The smell of baking cinnamon rolls wafted throughout the house and in short order, people stumbled into the kitchen, still half asleep.
“There’s coffee made,” I said. Coffee was practically a requirement with fresh baked cinnamon rolls.
***
“You know what I have half a mind to do?” I asked Alec as we cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast.
“No, what?” he asked, drying the pile of dishes on the drainer.
“Take these leftover cinnamon rolls to Leslie Warren. It’d be a shame if they went to waste sitting here. Cinnamon rolls are best when eaten fresh, after all,” I said, pulling the stopper from the sink and letting the dishwater drain.
Alec frowned at me. “Now, Allie, we aren’t in my jurisdiction now. You can’t go sticking your nose in someone else’s murder investigation.”
“I don’t intend to stick my nose anywhere. She’s grieving, and could use some support. If she just happens to give out any useful information, there isn’t much I can do about that.”
He snorted. “You could stay home. That would prevent her from telling you anything.”
“Now, Alec, that just isn’t neighborly. Here in the South, we take care of our own. I’m going to wrap up these cinnamons rolls and get them ready to take over to her. You can stay or go, whatever you want to do.”
“Now you’re twisting my arm,” he said, drying a cookie sheet.
“Wait. She knows about his death by now, right?” I asked.
“John said he was going straight over to her house yesterday when he le
ft here,” he said.
My cell phone was lying on the kitchen counter and chimed, letting me know I had a text. I picked it up to see who it was from.
“Oh, look, Lucy texted me,” I said happily.
“Now don’t tell me, she’s going to come down here and help you run all over town and question people, right?” Alec asked, putting the cookie sheet in the bottom drawer of Mama’s stove.
“Now, Alec, that is a downright hateful attitude you have there. And after I made you homemade cinnamon rolls,” I said, followed up by three well-timed tsk, tsk, tsks.
He chuckled to himself and went on drying the dishes. He was a good man, but he didn’t understand how things worked in my world just yet.
So, anything new?
Not yet. We’re going to go talk to his daughter today.
This stinks. I wish I was there to help you. I think I like being a detective.
I know it. I’m getting resistance from Alec. It would be easier if I had you to take along.
Let me know how it goes.
You got it.
I had called Lucy late the night before and filled her in on everything I knew, which wasn’t much. Lucy had good ideas, and I wanted to run things by her to see what she thought. It really would have been easier to take her along to talk to people. I’d take Mama, but she was too close to the victim and it would upset her. Jennifer was a no-go as well since she was still shaken from finding the body.
Twenty minutes later, I had gotten Leslie’s address from Mama and we were on her front step. I had a package of cinnamon rolls in my hand and Alec at my side.
The door opened and Leslie stood there blinking, trying to place me.
“Good morning, Leslie, I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m Allie McSwain, sorry, Allie Hamilton. From school?” I said brightly.
“Sort of,” she said, with her forehead wrinkled, trying to place me.
“My mother is Myrna Hamilton. She was your father’s neighbor. That’s why we stopped by. This is Alec Blanchard, um, Detective Blanchard, and we wanted to stop by and express our condolences. And I brought by some homemade apple cinnamon rolls,” I said.
She stood up straighter, glanced at Alec, and opened the door wider. Her house was in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Goose Bay and was in need of painting. It had been light blue at one time, but the paint had chipped and worn off and showed a lot of gray wood beneath it.
For a moment I thought she was going to turn us away. “Come on in,” she finally said.
We followed her into the house. The smell of stale cigarettes hung in the air and it was sparsely furnished. I remembered Leslie being bright and cute when she was younger, but she had aged badly. Her skin was sallow and she had a lot of fine wrinkles around her mouth that reminded me of someone that had spent a good part of their lives as a smoker.
“Have a seat,” she said, motioning toward an old couch that had large yellow and brown flowers on faux velvet fabric. The cotton stuffing poked out of it on places along the front edge where the cushions should have met the frame, but the cushions were so flat, they sat back a bit from the edge.
“Thank you,” Alec said.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your father,” I said. “I’m sure it was a terrible shock.”
She sat on a dirty green overstuffed chair across from us, and rubbed her hands on her thighs, and looked around nervously. “Yeah, it was. I hadn’t talked to him for a couple of years,” she said, now looking at me.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, nodding understandingly.
“I remember you from gym class. You helped me when I couldn’t do the rope climb. You held the bottom of the rope for me,” she said, nodding her head.
“Oh?” I said. I couldn’t remember the incident and I had thought she was younger than I was.
“Yeah,” she said looking away again. “I was ninth grade, and you were a senior. None of the other senior girls would have ever helped me. But you did.”
I smiled at her. “I’m glad to have helped you.”
It appeared that Leslie had had a hard life, from the looks of the house and the neighborhood she lived in. Her hair was chin length and tightly permed in a style that hadn’t been popular since the late eighties. She gave me a smile, revealing a missing front tooth.
“Do you have someone to help you through this?” I asked. “I know it’s a difficult time.”
“Awe, sure. My old man. When he’s around. Sometimes he’s out of town on business. But it ain’t much to me anyhow. My father didn’t care much for me, and I didn’t care much for him. He abandoned my mother in that nursing home and went out and enjoyed himself,” she said, her voice cracking on the last part.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. I wasn’t sure what else to say. Leslie was in a tough life situation and now her father had been murdered.
“Do you know if anyone had anything against your father?” Alec asked gently. He had his notebook and pen in hand, at the ready.
She shrugged. “Any old woman in town, I suppose. He was a womanizer. I didn’t know it when I was younger, but I sure knew it when Mama was put in the nursing home. He never went to visit her. Never. Just dropped her off and didn’t look back. He said he had a life to live, and she wasn’t holding him back no more.”
Wow. I would never have suspected Tom could be so heartless. I glanced at Alec, who was scribbling in his book.
“Do you have any specific names?” he asked.
She shrugged again. “Like I said, I hadn’t talked to him in two years. I wouldn’t know anything about his personal life. He was already dead to me years ago.”
Alec asked a few more questions and then we left. Poor Leslie.
“Sounds like she had a rough life,” Alec said when we were back in the minivan.
“I’ll say. I would never have suspected Tom of being a womanizer,” I said.
“Well, the thing is, she’s grieving, whether she wants to admit it or not. People experience extreme emotions during the time right after someone has died, as I’m sure you know. But when a relationship is bad before the death of one party, the survivor either turns that person into a saint or a villain. It seems like it can go either way,” he said, heading back to my Mother’s house.
“Yeah. I guess I know that. It does seem complicated,” I said.
I was very glad that Mama hadn’t gotten more involved with Tom than she had. It would have been heartbreaking for her.
--6--
Later that evening, I decided it was time to bake those Joe Froggers. Traditionally, they were made into lily pad sized and shaped cookies, but we always made them into gingerbread men, women, and houses. I hadn’t made an actual gingerbread house since Jennifer was in the sixth grade. That was also the last Christmas we’d had with Thaddeus. I had intended to continue the tradition, but my heart was never in it.
Mama’s stand mixer was from the 1970’s and was struggling with the cookie dough. The motor was making whining sounds, so I stopped it and gave it a rest.
“You aren’t going to burn up my mixer, are you?” she asked, leaning over the mixer to inspect it.
“Nope. At least, I don’t think so. I’m giving it a rest and sparing its life as we speak,” I said and opened a cabinet to look for a hand mixer. I finally found one that looked like it was from the 1960’s. It was olive green with cream colored swirls around the base. “Mama, I really think you should invest in mixers from this century.”
“What for?” she asked. “These old ones worked just fine back in their day and they’ll work just fine now. Did cookie dough change so much that it’s harder to mix in this century?”
I shook my head. “No, but age is taking its toll. Maybe you could get one and keep it under your cabinet and keep these more for looks. Or to mix something light and easy, like whipped cream.”
She shrugged. “I suppose I could.”
I smiled at her. “It’s all right. They’ll work.”
I turned the stand mix
er back on, and pushed the dough down with a wooden spoon, trying to help keep it moving.
“I’ll get some bowls and put the decorator candies out,” she said, turning toward the cupboard.
We had red and black licorice, round peppermint candies, M&Ms, tiny jawbreakers and an assortment of other candies. I loved decorating Christmas cookies better than any others. There was something about the smell of Christmas spices that made me happy.
“Now, tell me. What did you find out when you went to visit Leslie?” she asked, opening up the bag of M&Ms.
I frowned. I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. I wasn’t sure she was aware of how Tom had treated his wife or not. “Well, we were really only there a few minutes,” I said. “Leslie appeared to have troubles with her father before he passed.”
“I know,” she said, pouring some of the M&Ms into a small Pyrex bowl. “Tom said she refused to speak to him. I expect it was because Tom was ashamed of her.”
I turned toward her. “What do you mean? Why?”
“Well, Leslie was one of those loose girls. She had lots of boyfriends early on. You remember that, don’t you? And then she got into drugs and Tom wouldn’t allow her around his house for a while. She got her son taken away, too.”
“What?” I said. “I didn’t know she had a son. When did he get taken away?”
“About the time Leslie’s mother went into the nursing home. That like to have killed Tom to have to do that, but it was only supposed to be temporary. She passed while she was in there though. Tom never forgave himself for it.”
“And her son was taken because she was doing drugs?” I asked, shutting the mixer off again. “Did she get him back?”
She shook her head and opened the tiny jawbreakers. “No. Sadly, she never could get off the drugs. I’m not so sure she’s off them now. I hope so, but I haven’t seen her in a long time. Did you think she was on drugs when you talked to her?”
I thought about it. Leslie had seemed to have lived a rough life, and it showed in her face and in the area she lived. But she had seemed fine while we were there. A little spacey maybe, but I didn’t think she was on drugs. “I don’t think she was on anything while we were there. She was happy to get the cinnamon rolls. That’s sad that she lost her child.”