by Rosie Sams
Terrance sat on the sofa, his foot tapping wildly on the carpet. He knew he had quite a bit of explaining to do.
“Mr. DeWitt, you are in charge of buying supplies for the inn, is that correct?” Alvin asked.
“Yes, I am the authorized purchaser for the Bronwyn Country Inn.”
“The last time we spoke with you, you said that you were only authorizing essential items. Why did you then authorize the purchase of some very expensive new knives? Surely, you only need to sharpen knives, not buy new ones,” Melody said. “Were you lying when you said you were counting every penny? Or, did you order them because you knew that there would be a need for a new set since one knife was destined to fall into an evidence bag?”
Chapter One Hundred Thirty
Terrance’s face turned white and green at the same time under Alvin’s gaze. His foot tapped so hard on the carpet, Melody was afraid he would ruin it with a foot-sized hole. Alvin stood up and walked over to Terrance, towering over him, hoping to speed up the confession.
The bookkeeper was not as confident now as he had been in the first interview. Sweat ran down the side of his face and through his shirt. No matter how he adjusted himself, he knew he looked guilty. It was up to Alvin and Melody to determine if he was.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Terrance said, his voice transformed into a screech. “I have worked with Ruth for six long years. I understood how to run this business. I knew the value of every staff member, every ingredient, and amenity. Ruth knew I was good, and probably the only bookkeeper that would put up with her whims. She left me alone and let me be in my office for the most part.”
“You didn’t want to be around other members of the staff?” Alvin asked.
“I needed as much time away from Ruth as possible to recover from our time together. She was very demanding and rarely listened.”
“So, you felt you knew how to best run the business, and she was standing in the way?” Melody asked.
“I knew what was best for the inn. Numbers never lie. Her grand ideas and schemes either made very little money or cost us big time. I was against hiring a new chef. The previous one understood the town’s likes and dislikes better than anyone.”
“You mentioned being her partner the last time we spoke. Tell me about that,” Alvin said.
“I never had any ambition toward being a partner with Ruth. That was all Shawn and Coleman. Those two wanted to be partners with Ruth more than anything. It was disgusting to see them both suck up to her. That woman was always a nightmare, there was no way they would have done so for anything other than money and power.”
“If you didn’t want to be partners, what did you want to be?”
“I wanted to run the inn on my own, maybe buy her out. I didn’t want her standing over my shoulder, telling me how she wanted everything done. I never worked for someone before who didn’t understand that numbers simply don’t lie. If we couldn’t afford something, she thought I was just being cheap. She always wanted new things. She hoped a fancy new chef would bring in people by the droves. I explained to her that Coleman was an investment, not a sure thing. She wouldn’t listen. She was always looking for the magic potion, chasing a pot of gold instead of working hard and building a steady reputation. It was terrible for business.”
“But it was your job to limit the spending, not hers,” Alvin said.
“You never worked for Ruth. She was always determined to get her way. And when I would try to put a stop to new expenses, she went into a rage. She pushed back on everything I suggested. She wanted to give the appearance that everything was going well, but that was an expensive illusion. She was running this inn into the ground.”
“I think you had been plotting the murder for weeks. You saw Hillary Taylor as a naïve young girl and pegged her as the perfect fall guy. Everyone would think she had done it out of jealousy over Shawn and anger at being fired,” Melody said. “You almost committed the perfect crime.”
“I didn’t kill Ruth! It wasn’t me!”
Alvin and Melody paused their questioning and looked at each other for a few moments. Terrance squirmed in his chair and used his tie to wipe his brow.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Melody asked, looking at Alvin to put their unspoken plan into action.
“I would love some. I need some caffeine to jolt my brain back to focus.”
“That’s funny, Mr. DeWitt. You have a thermos here. We thought it was coffee,” Alvin said.
Alvin walked over to the thermos that Terrance carried with him everywhere. He unscrewed the lid and turned it upside down. Blood trickled to the floor. Smudge barked at the sight and smell of blood. Terrance went completely white. He fumbled for a response but grew quiet. He knew he had been caught, and he would never be able to run the inn.
“Like I said, you almost committed the perfect crime. You wanted the inn for yourself. The only way to do that was to murder Ruth. You saw her dalliances with the staff, and you exploited it. You killed Ruth so you could have the inn free and clear. And afterward, to cover your tracks, you got a thermos full of Ruth’s blood - evidence you thought would clear your name. You also made sure to get a knife Hillary had touched,” Melody said.
Terrance was shaking now. “All right! I did it. I killed Ruth Bronwyn!” Terrance confessed. “You don’t know what a shrew she was. Everything was always wrong, and my fault. Every day was torture under that woman’s thumb. Yes, I framed Hillary. I had to! I was doing the world a favor by killing Ruth. I knew Hillary would doubt herself if she woke up covered in Ruth’s blood. She was the perfect person to blame everything on. Even you believed it was her, Sheriff. I had to fill my thermos with her blood. I wondered how I would get Hillary drenched in it. I found her passed out drunk in the barn. It was almost too good to be true.”
From the kitchen, there was a clatter of falling pans. Chef Coleman had broken free from his room and lunged at the bookkeeper.
“You killed my Ruth! We could have had a life together, a real partnership! You ruined both our lives! All because you wanted the inn to yourself!” Chef Coleman screamed.
It took Alvin and the other deputies a while to calm the grieving chef down. To add to the chaos, Hillary appeared out of nowhere with her deputy running behind her. Alvin motioned that it was fine for her to be there. Hillary had pretended to be in the shower and had snuck out the adjoining door and was listening from the top of the stairs to Terrance’s confession.
The girl’s repeated examinations of gratitude warmed Melody’s heart.
While a deputy read Terrance his rights and slapped handcuffs on his wrists, Shawn ran up to Hillary to give her a hug from behind, but she shrugged off his attempt to ingratiate himself to her. He’d let the world know she was not someone he wanted to protect or love. Shawn slinked off, having tasted his first dose of true rejection.
Hillary ran over to Melody and thanked her for believing in her innocence when nobody else had. Melody hugged her and reassured her that her life would return to normal. She suggested the girl go out of town for a few days to get away from all this and to get some rest.
While she felt so relieved for Hillary, Melody knew she had to apologize to the chef for her insistence on his guilt.
“Chef Coleman, I owe you an apology. I think you may have been taken advantage of by Ruth,” Melody said.
“I really did love her. Ruth was fierce but beautiful. She was a complicated, imperfectly perfect woman. I wanted to be her partner in every sense of the word. In life and love, she could have had me forever.”
“Maybe you can run the inn in her memory now. And you can do it on your own terms and make it a destination for authentic Italian cuisine. She would have wanted that. I can show you how to do purchase orders and stuff like that. You will pick it up quickly. I may be self-taught, but my business runs smoothly. The clients don’t care that I wasn’t formally trained,” Melody said.
“You might be onto something. I need to go chop some vegetables and
clear my head.”
Alvin moved to Melody’s side. “You keep amazing me with your ability to connect the dots - the ones I am formally trained to find.”
“Well, I’m grateful that you allow me the opportunity to connect the dots. Thank you for the compliment. I have to say that Smudge is really the one who cracked this. She smelled the blood in the thermos,” Melody said.
Smudge looked up at her owner for a pet and, perhaps, another delicious butter cookie. Now everyone was gone, Melody and Alvin sat on the sofa, relieved that the murder had been solved and that things could go back to normal.
“You know, Alvin, this whole situation has really opened my eyes to how a business should not be run. It seemed like Ruth was giving Coleman, Shawn, and Terrance false hope of being partners. I doubt she would have made any of them partners had she lived.”
“You might be right about that. Running a business is tough. You know that better than anyone else here.”
“I can’t imagine Leslie and Kerry hating their jobs enough to kill me, but I can and should do better than Ruth when it comes to Decadently Delicious. I need to make some changes and have a few conversations.”
Chapter One Hundred Thirty-One
Melody was grateful that Hillary had been found innocent. It had been a few days since word had gotten out that Terrance had confessed to the murder. The town had been shocked to learn how the trusted bookkeeper had set the girl up by covering her in Ruth’s blood. Melody worried that Hillary’s life would be forever changed by the events that had been beyond her control and a nightmare to live through at such a young age. It brought things back, and she did not like reflecting on her own ordeal with the Swan murder.
She had heard that Hillary had taken a three-day trip to a nearby county to get the peace she needed. Melody found out where Hillary was staying and paid for her stay. She knew that those days would help restore her, would help her put this behind her. It was something that would be almost impossible to do if she was worried about how to pay for everything.
Melody took a moment to be grateful that Alvin was committed to her and had never thought of her as a casual fling. It would take Hillary a bit to recover from Shawn’s stinging words.
It was going to be a big day at the shop. She had asked Leslie and Kerry to set up for the day without her. Melody had something special she wanted to share with them before the customers poured in. She wished she had done this when she came back from her trip to Alvin’s family cabin when she had shown Kerry and Leslie her engagement ring. Looking down at the ring, she had a moment of calm and love. It delighted her so much to look at it and to feel the love it represented. Before she got too misty-eyed, Smudge gave a little yip. Melody leaned down and stroked her head. Smudge grunted her appreciation. “Don’t worry, girl, you are still my favorite.
Smudge yipped again before spinning in a circle.
Melody put on her jacket and Smudge’s leash. She bent down to tell the dog she was a good girl and rub her ears. Smudge licked her hand in response and barked to let her owner know she was ready for their big day. As they walked out the door, Smudge ran to a small red candy heart that had been left on one of the porch chairs. Melody picked up the heart and found a short note from Hillary thanking her for paying for her out of town stay and believing in her innocence.
Melody clutched the note and heart in her hand. She took a moment to send the girl her best wishes. Smudge was getting restless, so Melody put the gifts in her pocket and vowed to put them in her memory box. While she wanted to forget the grisly details of Ruth’s murder, she wanted to remember the lessons of how not to run a business. Ruth’s murder showed her that while running a business did not have to be a life or death venture, it was one that was highly emotional. She wanted Kerry and Leslie to know she appreciated them and was open to suggestions. Melody wanted them to enjoy being at Decadently Delicious for years to come.
Leslie was brewing coffee when Smudge and Melody stepped through the doors of the shop. Melody motioned for Leslie to sit with her and called for Kerry to join them.
“Ruth’s murder has made me really think about how I run Decadently Delicious. Ruth made a lot of false promises and ran everything in a way that made people dread coming to work. She talked to Shawn, Chef Coleman, and Terrance about them being partners, but I doubt she had any intention of following through on any of them. She might have used partnership as a dangling carrot, which is what I don’t want for either of you. I view you both as more than employees. I see you as friends and unofficial partners. I also know that as your boss, I sometimes have to have tough conversations and correct a few things. That is normal in any business. I make mistakes too. Sometimes a souffle falls, and pans get burnt. I trust both of you to do your jobs well, and you do. I find that having you both on my team makes my day easier and allows me the mental space to bake for the town. I know that sometimes I don’t say it enough, but I wanted to let you know how much you mean to me because I never want either of you to feel unappreciated or dismissed. Ruth’s murder was the wakeup call I needed to check in with both of you and to see how happy you really are working here.”
Kerry and Leslie assured Melody that any thoughts of feeling unappreciated never crossed their minds.
“Melody, we love working here. And if anything, you are giving me more responsibility, you waited until I was ready to handle it.” Leslie said.
“Yeah, Melody, we both love coming to work and have a good time almost every day. I honestly can’t think of anything off the top of my head that I would change. You really don’t need to change anything,” Kerry said.
“Thank you both for saying that. Still, I want to make our unofficial partnership official,” Melody said.
Melody reached into her bag and produced a sizable manila envelope. Kerry and Leslie exchanged a quizzical look. Melody announced that inside the envelope was the paperwork that would make it official that Kerry and Leslie would be partners in Decadently Delicious once they signed. Kerry and Leslie looked at Melody with disbelief at first.
Then their faces changed, going through the emotions of being overwhelmed and then joy. They eagerly took the papers from the envelope and immediately gave their John Hancocks.
“I made this decision because I want both of you to have an equal say in our - yes, our - daily operations,” Melody said.
“Wow, Melody, thank you so much. We both love working with you, and now we are partners. I never in a million years thought this would happen. I just thought today would be an ordinary day at work, not the best day of my life!” Leslie said, overjoyed at her new status in Port Warren as a business owner.
“Thank you so much, Melody. We will continue to do the same jobs. And now that we are partners, our future is bright and secure,” Kerry said.
Melody stood up and gestured for a group hug. Smudge wagged her tail as she forced her way into the middle of the love fest. Once they had squeezed each other hard enough, Kerry ran to the back to get a bottle of sparkling cider to celebrate.
“Let’s have a toast to a solid partnership and a glittering future,” Kerry said.
The women raised their glasses, and Smudge raised a paw to the partnership.
“Can I still have time off for my wedding?” Kerry asked. “Bradford already requested time off from work like I did.”
“Well, now there is no need to ask for permission, is there?” Melody asked. “We still need to keep the lines of communication open. Instead of asking permission, we all just need to inform each other when we need some time off. We will just work together and cover for each other as normal.”
The women chatted excitedly and drank the cider from their paper cups.
“Where are you thinking of having the wedding now?” Leslie asked.
“Bradford and I really liked the inn. It looks like the Chef will buy it out, so we are going to wait until Chef Coleman gets everything back up and running before we set a date. I know a murder happened there, but the grounds are stunning.�
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Leslie and Melody agreed.
“Chef Coleman is a fast learner. I sat down with him over the past few days and showed him how the backend should be run. That man had never seen a purchase order in his life,” Melody laughed. “We tossed around the idea of our bakery being the dessert provider for the inn, with one of you dropping off the special dessert of the night during lunch. Chef Coleman will get there. He actually really loved Ruth and wants to run the inn in her memory,” Melody said. “He is going to fight to make it the success she always wanted it to be.”
“I just hope no more murders happen there, or it will become a haunted inn,” Kerry said.
“I doubt it,” Leslie said. “Although, a ghost tour is exactly what Port Warren needs.”
“Don’t forget that our dumpster would be one of the stops,” Kerry said.
The women sipped their sparkling cider in silence, each thinking of how Port Warren was not for the faint of heart. There were many good people who lived there and a few difficult characters, but every person would agree that making Kerry and Leslie partners in Decadently Delicious was the best decision Melody made, after asking Alvin to marry her, and keeping a puppy that had been left tied to a lamp post.
“We have gotten through so many things, and we’ll get through anything if we work together,” Melody said. “I guess I’m including Alvin and Smudge in that.”
They all smiled and had a group hug with one happy Frenchie standing in the middle.
The Cat and the Killer