Ain't Seen Muffin Yet (Lexy Baker Cozy Mystery Series Book 15)

by Leighann Dobbs

  “This looks like a nice building,” Helen said as they stood at the glass entrance, scanning the list of names on the brass plate that had the buzzers. The mill was a hundred years old, and though it was recently renovated into apartments, they’d kept a lot of the old charming details, like the aged brick and wide pine floors.

  “This must be her. Ruby Dewalt.” Ida pointed to a name card. The tattoo girl hadn’t given them a last name, but how many Ruby’s could there be?

  Helen pressed the buzzer, and they waited.

  “Huh, maybe she’s not home. Now what?” Ruth asked.

  “I guess we could come back later.” Helen started to turn away just as an elderly man in a tweed jacket and cane came out. He tipped his hat at them and continued on. Ida put the toe of her shoe in the door and waited until he disappeared around the corner.

  “Or we could go in and check the place out.” Ida slipped inside. Nans turned to the rest of them, who shrugged and followed her in.

  The hallways had the scent of old wood and lemon pledge. The walls were painted a trendy slate gray. The ceilings were ten feet tall and had exposed duct work.

  “At least the landlord keeps things updated,” Ruth said. “These are newer colors, according to the decorating magazines.”

  “The buzzer said she was in 204. That must be on the second floor.” Ruth headed toward a stairway, and they walked up one flight then found the door.

  “Looks like all the other doors.” Ida glanced around the hallway. “No new clues here.”

  “Let’s just knock… maybe she didn’t hear us before because she was in the shower. That happened to me once when maintenance came to fix my leaky kitchen faucet. Imagine my surprise to find Herbert in my kitchen when I walked in there wearing only a towel.”

  “Imagine Herbert’s surprise…” Ida said.

  Nans knocked. “Ruby? Hello?”

  She knocked harder, and the door creaked open.

  “Uh oh…” Helen said. “This doesn’t bode well. Who leaves their door open?”

  “Who gets a snake tattoo all over their arm?” Ida answered.

  “Good point.” Nans pushed the door further open, and they stepped in.

  As soon as they stepped in, Lexy knew something bad had happened. A lamp lay on the floor, casting an eerie light on the wall. The kitchen counter stools were knocked over. A black leather purse lay on the floor next to a chair, its contents spilling out of the top. And a foot stuck out from behind the breakfast bar.

  They rushed over to find a dark-haired woman in a pool of blood. Her clouded eyes stared at the ceiling. Nans squatted to feel for a pulse, but everyone knew the girl was long gone.

  “Well, looks like that lead is gone.” Ida pointed to the snake tattoo on the woman’s arm. “Now we’ll never be able to ask her what her association with Henry was.”

  “If she even had one with him,” Ruth said.

  “Look at her neck and the weapon.” Nans pointed to a blood-covered steak knife that lay beside the victim. “She was stabbed similar to Rosa.”

  “It would be easier to puncture the artery with a steak knife than a butter knife, but that does seem to indicate the same killer,” Helen said.

  “If so, it clearly wasn’t Henry.” Nans stood up, careful not to step in the blood. “Blood is dry—she’s been here a while.”

  “We need to figure out if the two murders are related.” Ida wandered over to the kitchen counter and started shuffling through the mail.

  “Ida! What are you doing? We need to call the police.” Helen had her phone in her hand and was already thumbing in 911.

  “Of course we should.” Ida held an envelope up to the light as if to see the contents while Helen completed the call. She put it down and continued her perusal. “But we can’t leave until they come and question us, so we might as well look around while we are waiting.”

  Lexy glanced down at the body, an uncomfortable feeling washing over her. “It doesn’t feel right to poke through her things when she’s laying right here.”

  “We’re not going to poke. We’re just going to look.” Nans glanced at Ida. “And we should be careful not to touch anything. Fingerprints and all.”

  “Right.” Ida dropped the letter she was holding.

  “We may have to solve this murder, too, and we’ll need to get all the clues we can,” Nans said as she surveyed the room with the eye of an expert private detective. “This is a unique opportunity to be first on the scene.”

  Good point. Lexy walked around the room looking for anything out of place. Maybe she’d get lucky and find a cuff link on the floor or a cigarette butt in the ashtray that could lead to the identity of the killer.

  “Well, looky here!” Helen gestured to a collage of framed photos that were displayed on a side table. “Looks like maybe Doris Pettigrew was wrong about who Ruby was coming to visit.”

  Lexy joined her. The photos showed a smiling Ruby with a group of people, one of whom was Rosa Maguire. They were standing arm in arm, clearly very friendly.

  “That’s Rosa, and they look pretty chummy,” Ida stated the obvious.

  “Doesn’t look like Ruby would want to kill Rosa. At least not in that picture.” Ruth pointed to another picture in the back. “Check out this one.”

  The picture, in a fancy etched silver frame, showed Ruby, Rosa, and four others dressed in sparkly bodysuits and standing next to a large trampoline. “Looks like they performed in the Circo Acrobato together.”

  “Ruby must have been one of the ‘family’ that Henry talked about,” Helen said.

  “He said that Rosa was worried about the family. Maybe there was an argument between her and Ruby and it turned deadly.” Ida looked hopeful.

  “Ruby could have killed Rosa, but then who killed Ruby?” Nans asked.

  Ida’s hopeful look turned to disappointment. “Good point. But this does prove that they must have been close friends.”

  “I’ll say.” Ida was crouched near the overturned purse, leafing through the pages of a small book with the eraser end of a pencil. “Looks like Ruby was an old-fashioned girl despite her love of skin art. This here is a calendar. No electronic phone calendars for her. She penciled her appointments in.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Ruth huffed. “I still use a paper calendar. I love those little ones you get at the pharmacy. Mine has pink roses on it.”

  Ida flipped back to the cover. “This one has butterflies. I was expecting snakes, but maybe they don’t make them with snakes. Anyway, it’s not what’s on the cover that’s interesting. It’s what she has written in here. Dinner with Rosa.”

  Nans’s head whipped around to look at Ida. “Rosa? Could it be Rosa Maguire?”

  Ida shrugged. “There’s no last name, but they look pretty chummy in the picture, so I think that’s a safe assumption.”

  Helen peered at the book over Ida’s shoulder. “That date is a few days before Rosa’s murder. Could they have been meeting about something related?”

  “If they were, it wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that whoever killed Rosa also killed Ruby.” Nans pressed her lips together and tilted her head, deep in thought. “What if Rosa and Ruby knew something, and someone didn’t want them to tell?”

  “If that’s the case, then Henry isn’t the killer.” Ruth gestured toward the body in the kitchen. “He couldn’t have killed Ruby because he’s in jail.”

  “Which means we better start paying more attention to our other suspects,” Nans said.

  “I knew it!” Helen said. “This is related to the Circo Acrobata and possibly to that heist that Vinny told us about. And who else was in the Circo? Mario! We already know that he’s a shady character, and now, he seems to be right in the thick of things.”

  “Now, don’t be so quick to throw him under the bus,” Ruth said. “There are plenty of people in the Circo Acrobata family. And for all we know, Henry is behind it all, the strategic mastermind pulling strings from his jail cell.”

 
Helen put her hands on her hips. “That may well be, but if that’s the case, then someone else is surely involved. Unless Ruby’s death is not related to Rosa’s.”

  “We do have to consider that they aren’t related,” Nans said.

  “Yeah, well, let’s save our considering for when we are back at your place.” Ida had gone over to the window and was looking out. “The cops are here.”

  Everyone made a beeline for the door, which Nans opened so they could all step out into the hall. “Okay everyone, put on your innocent old lady faces and pretend like we’ve been out in the hallway all this time so they don’t think we were snooping around inside.”

  Jack was the first to come around the corner. His footsteps faltered, and he let out an exaggerated sigh. “Not you people.”

  “We can’t help it if we’re always in the wrong place,” Ida said.

  “Were you snooping around inside?” Jack glanced at Lexy who gave him a wan smile.

  “No. Well, I mean, maybe we looked at a few things before we realized there was a dead body,” Nans said.

  “And just exactly why are you here?” Jack gestured for the rest of his crew to get to work inside. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest as he waited for their answer.

  Nans lowered her voice. “We were following a lead in the Maguire case.”

  “So Ruby Dewalt is a person of interest in that case?” Jack asked.

  Nans nodded. “I guess her place here is in your jurisdiction then?”

  “Yep. I’m going inside to check it out. You guys stay put. I still want to talk to you.” Jack entered the apartment, and the ladies crowded in behind him just like they weren’t supposed to. He turned and looked at them, opened his mouth, probably to tell them to wait outside, then shook his head as he thought better of it. He knew them well enough to know his warning might not stick. “Don’t get in anyone’s way, and don’t touch anything.”

  As Jack and the police processed the body, Nans whispered, “This is good. If Jack will be investigating this murder, we might be able to help him.”

  “At least maybe he will share some clues,” Ida said.

  “And Jack is a good cop. He could solve this murder where the other cops have the wrong guy,” Ruth whispered.

  Lexy beamed with pride. She knew Jack was a good cop, but it was always nice to hear it from others. “We should fill him in.”

  “Oh, we will,” Nans said absently, her ear cocked toward the kitchen as she probably tried to listen in. Lexy wouldn’t be surprised if she tweaked her hearing aids up a notch so as to be able to hear any hushed conversations.

  “Okay, so, tell me again how you came to be in this apartment with the deceased,” Jack said.

  “As I said, we were following a lead.” Nans filled Jack in on how the nosey neighbor had seen someone with a snake tattoo visiting Henry and how they’d found the tattoo parlor while looking for corn muffins.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “So, let me get this straight. You were looking for a special type of corn muffin because you think the killer brought them, and beside the muffin shop was a tattoo parlor that had a snake tattoo that was seen on someone visiting Henry.”

  “That’s right.” Nans nodded.

  “So the deceased, Ruby, would have known about the bakery. Maybe she brought the corn muffins to Rosa,” Jack said.

  “She could have. They knew each other.” Ruth pointed to the pictures on the table.

  Jack looked them over then glanced back. “So maybe she saw something the night Rosa was killed and that’s why she was killed.”

  “Maybe, or she could have been up to something with Rosa and that’s why they both got killed,” Ruth said.

  Jack nodded. “And what else did you guys just happen to see here while you weren’t snooping around?”

  “We might have noticed that she had an appointment with Rosa shortly before Rosa died.” Ida pointed to the contents of the purse, and Jack let out another sigh. Before he could lecture them about contaminating crime scenes, a uniformed policeman came up beside him.

  “We’re almost done with the body. Looks like she’s been dead sixteen hours, give or take fifteen minutes on either side. Billy is done with photos, and he’s going to start in here.” The man looked at Lexy and the ladies.

  “Sounds good. These ladies were just leaving.” Jack turned to them. “You can go home. Don’t worry, I know where to find you, and if you do anything that might impede the investigation, you will not like the consequences.” He winked at Lexy. “Especially you.”

  Lexy’s stomach did a little flip. At least he wasn’t mad. And by the look in his eye, the consequences might not be so dire either. Naturally, she would never do anything to mess up the investigation for him, but it was good to know she wasn’t in trouble. She made a mental note to make sure that whatever Nans and the ladies did would only help and not harm what the police were doing.

  A slight pang of guilt bubbled up about her trip to the prison, but technically, she didn’t go to visit a prisoner, so technically, she didn’t break her promise. Still, maybe she should come clean on that. Not now, though. Later, when the timing was better.

  “Did you hear that?” Helen whispered as they filed out into the hallway. “That policeman said that Ruby was killed sixteen hours ago. Mario could be the killer.”

  “What makes you say that?” Ruth asked.

  Helen looked at her watch. “I’ve been checking the time pretty regularly because tonight is the voting for community center president, and I have to visit some of the less mobile residents and see if I can help them get to the center to vote.”

  “And this makes Mario suspicious because…” Ruth gave Helen the side-eye.

  “Sixteen hours ago was ten o’clock yesterday. That was when we were peering into Mario’s windows. Didn’t you notice the house was empty?” Helen asked.

  “Well, it did seem empty, but just because Mario wasn’t home doesn’t mean he was here killing Ruby,” Ruth pointed out. “And besides, the dining room was set up for a buffet. Who sets out the food then goes off and kills someone?”

  “Maybe someone who is trying to create a false alibi,” Helen said. “Now, if you don’t mind, Lexy, you’ll need to step on it. I want to get back and secure some last-minute votes!”

  Chapter 19

  Back at the retirement center, Helen didn’t waste any time on her goal of getting more votes. She spied potential victims watching TV as soon as they entered the lobby and headed over.

  “Celia! Ellen! Mary! So good to see you!” Helen exuberantly shook hands with the blue-haired ladies, who seemed a bit perturbed at being interrupted during their soap opera. It was General Hospital, and Lexy couldn’t blame them—Luke was up to something on his casino boat, and she was sure it was no good.

  “Have you had a chance to think of who you want for community center president?” Helen stood in front of them, blocking the view of the television.

  “Not really.” Celia tried to peer around Helen.

  “Don’t forget that I promise to have free coffee on Saturdays.” Helen leaned in and lowered her voice. “I can really come through with my promises, unlike some people who might promise the moon and not be able to deliver.”

  “Helen, are you coming?” Nans punched the button for the elevator.

  Helen glanced over. “In a minute.” She looked back down at the women, who were craning to watch TV around her. “Now the coffee isn’t the only thing I will do, of course—”

  “If we promise to vote for you, will you let us watch our show?” Ellen asked.

  Helen glanced behind her at the TV. “Your show? Oh, umm… sure. A vote is a vote no matter how I get it, I suppose.”

  “Great, then we all promise to vote for you.” Mary waved her hand for Helen to step to the side.

  Helen shrugged. “Great then! See you there. Tonight at seven p.m.!” She hurried off toward the elevator. Everyone was already inside, and Ida impatiently held the door for her. />
  “About time,” Ida said as she repeatedly punched the button to close the door.

  Nans could barely wait for the doors to open on the second floor before she bolted to her apartment, shoved the key in the lock, and pushed the door open. She was at the whiteboard before the rest of them even got inside.

  “The exciting event of another victim really sheds a different light on this case.” Nans made another column and added the information about Ruby.

  “It seems to indicate that Henry really is innocent just like Muriel thought,” Ruth said.

  “Do we have any snacks?” Ida yelled from the kitchen. “I can’t think about clues on an empty stomach.”

  “In the bottom drawer,” Nans yelled back. “Now, let’s go over what we know.”

  “We know that both victims knew each other and were in the Circo Acrobata.” Helen glanced at her watch.

  “Don’t worry, Helen, we still have a few hours left before voting,” Ruth said. “And we know that Henry couldn’t have killed Ruby.”

  “And we know that Vinny thinks that the Circo Acrobata people had something to do with the Broadmoore Heist,” Lexy said.

  Nans nodded. “Putting two and two together, we can assume the deaths had something to do with the heist. Either the two women were involved or they knew something.”

  Ida came out of the kitchen with a serving tray full of cut-up vegetables and some dip, her disgusted expression indicating her disappointment in the snacks. The smell of percolating coffee wafted out from behind her, and Lexy heard the old-fashioned coffee urn gurgle. “I could only find these vegetables. Guess we ate all the pastries.”

  “Veggies are good for you!” Helen picked up a carrot and chomped off a bite as if to prove her point. “I think we’ve had enough pastry with all the bakeries we’ve been visiting.”