by Nancy CoCo
“Naw, she was on break at the time.” Hanna finished up checking me out and I paid with a credit card. “If I were the cops, I’d check out what the heck was going on in the garden club.”
“Thanks,” I said as I grabbed my stuff.
“Anytime,” Hanna said and returned to her magazine. “You’d be surprised what you see from behind the cashier counter.”
Honey Taffy Candy
½ tablespoon butter
½ cup heavy whipping cream
1½ cups honey
teaspoon baking soda
Take a large heavy pot (you will need room for this to bubble up) and add the whipping cream and honey. Heat over high heat, stirring constantly until the mixture comes to a boil. Then, cook uncovered without stirring until the mixture reaches 280°F on a candy thermometer. (This can take 15–20 minutes so be patient but don’t leave it unsupervised.) While this is cooking take an 8-by-8-inch baking pan and butter it. Place it in the refrigerator to cool. Once your candy mixture reaches 280°F, remove from heat and mix in the baking soda. Pour into your greased pan being careful not to scrape the sides of the pot. Let cool until it is easy to handle. Then, butter your hands and pick up the candy. Pull and stretch the taffy until it becomes lighter and firm ridges form. Braid taffy or roll. Then, slice into one-inch pieces. It’s fun to wrap individually with waxed paper. Store in the refrigerator. Enjoy!
Chapter 6
I left the craft store and texted Aunt Eloise about the garden club. She texted back that she had made progress at the senior center and we should meet up at her home—out of the press’s sight. Aunt Eloise lived in a lovely bungalow just four blocks from the beach. It was built in the 1930s and had white clapboard siding and blue shutters. She kept flower boxes under the sills, and they were currently filled with orange, red, and yellow mums.
I went to the back door and knocked.
“It’s open.” I heard my aunt say from inside so I went in and closed the door behind me. A quick look down the street told me that no one had followed me. The back door led to a small enclosed porch where my aunt kept her collection of cat vases and jars on shelves. I took off my shoes and entered the kitchen. It was warm and smelled like family. To my right was a double window and a small dinette table with three chairs under it. To my left was a gorgeous kitchen with cabinets that went from floor to ceiling. It was not a large space but the cabinets made up for it.
“Oh good, Wren, you’re here,” she said as she came out from the bedroom to the left of the kitchen. Emma, a gorgeous brown cat with mint green eyes, followed her out. She greeted me with a meow and I bent to give her a few long strokes. “I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
Evangeline chased Lug into the kitchen. Lug jumped up on the table and watched me carefully. But Evangeline had no reservations. She came up and put her paw on my arm to say I should pet her as well. “Hello, ladies,” I said and gave them love. “How are my favorite girls?”
“They’re doing well,” Aunt Eloise said. “Making Lug feel right at home.” I stood and studied Lug.
“Would you like to say hello?” I asked him. When I was a small child, Aunt Eloise had taught me to let cats approach me, rather than run to them and start petting. It could be intimidating for the poor dears—especially the ones rescued from bad homes or bad situations. “What’s his story?” I asked as I sidled up to the table and waited for him to ask for pets.
“He’s about five years old and his owner died suddenly of a heart attack. Her son couldn’t keep him because his daughters are allergic. So he found the rescue group and I have him until we find him a good home.” She handed me a cup of tea. “Come on, let’s sit in the living room and let him warm up to you.”
The kitchen was decorated in red and white with strawberry wallpaper and accents. The dining room contained an old dining table and buffet that belonged to my grandparents. Here, Aunt Eloise kept her cat cookie jar collection. My favorite was the cookie jar with two cats driving a convertible. The dining room opened up to the living room with two chairs, a couch, a television that I had never seen on, and a card table with the current craft in progress in the corner.
“What’s in your bag?” Aunt Eloise asked.
“Oh, yarn and things to make socks,” I said and sat down on the couch. “It’s been a while since I knitted, but I thought making socks might be cool.”
“Ambitious,” she said and sat down. The crocheted throw on the back of her chair had a cat motif.
“I really went to check out the craft store. I heard some interesting information,” I said and sipped my tea. “What did you find out?”
“I learned that Agnes was blackmailing Bill McCarty,” Aunt Eloise said.
“Over what?” I asked. Bill was the tourism board manager at the local chamber of commerce. Like so many other residents, he’d grown up in Oceanview and, after a brief stint away in college, returned to create a career in the small town. He’d been at the chamber of commerce as long as I could remember.
Bill was a memorable guy with his long gray beard and bald head. I didn’t know how old he was, but I figured at least my mother’s age.
“No one knows for sure,” Aunt Eloise said. “But it had to be something big because every Friday for the last three months, Bill would go into the bank and withdraw two hundred dollars in cash.”
“Who told you this?”
“Eleanor Stone,” she said. “She’s a teller at Cascade Federal Bank.”
“How did she know that he was paying Agnes?”
“Because Agnes would come into the bank within minutes of his withdrawal and deposit the same amount into her account. So, Eleanor got suspicious. One day, she took a quick break and followed Bill after he left with his cash and she saw that Bill went to the back alley and Agnes met him there. He handed her the cash and she took it without a word. Eleanor hurried back to the bank and then soon enough Agnes was in the bank making her weekly deposit. Eleanor joked with her one time about blackmailing someone.”
“And?”
“Agnes didn’t even flinch.”
“I wonder what Agnes had on Bill?”
“Eleanor has no clue, but it is certainly another avenue to explore,” Aunt Eloise said. “How did it go at the craft store? Did you get anything other than knitting supplies?”
Lug leapt up on the edge of the couch and pretended not to notice me. Meanwhile Evangeline curled up on my lap. Emma had the prime spot on Aunt Eloise’s lap.
“I ran into Marcy. She told me I should start with a hat and scarf,” I said. “But I was pretty insistent on getting stuff to make socks.”
“You spoke to Marcy?” Aunt Eloise put her teacup down on the end table and leaned toward me, her right hand petting Emma. “Did she have any idea who might have killed Agnes?”
“Marcy was suspicious of me. She heard I was a person of interest.”
“What did you do?”
“I played it off as just fake news,” I said. “Then, I asked if she knew anyone who might want to hurt Agnes, but she swore she didn’t know anyone who would want to do such a thing.”
“So the craft store was a dead end?”
“Not really. The cashier, Hanna, told me that Agnes and Rhonda were in a fight in the store the other day. Rhonda was trying to oust Agnes from her position in the garden club.”
“Oh, I remember that,” Aunt Eloise said. “Rhonda had worked hard to gain enough signatures to force a new vote for president, but in the end the club voted Agnes back in.”
“Hanna told me that Rhonda followed Agnes into the store and screamed and yelled at her. Words like ‘control freak’ and ‘manipulator’ were used.”
“Oh, interesting,” Aunt Eloise said. “We need to add Rhonda to the murder board. It sounds like both she and Bill had motive—certainly more motive than you.”
“There might be even more people with motive,” I said. “Hanna said that Agnes had something on most of the garden club members. Apparently, that’s how she maintained her p
ower.”
“Small towns,” Aunt Eloise said. “You learn everybody’s secrets if you pay attention.”
“I don’t have any secrets,” I said.
“Yes you do,” Aunt Eloise countered. “We all have secrets.”
“What are yours?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she teased. “I doubt anything I’m holding next to my heart is worthy of blackmail.”
“Do you think that Agnes was blackmailing more than one person?”
“Maybe,” she said and looked at me. “Do you think Bernie knew?”
“Well, if he didn’t, he will soon. Won’t the bank report all of her accounts?”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” my aunt said. “I guess, yes, they will all come out in probate.”
“Any one of her blackmail victims might have killed her,” I said. “We need to figure out the entire list of suspects.”
“Bernie might know more than we think,” Aunt Eloise suggested.
“You think he might be in on it?” I remembered how Bernie looked the night when I brought the casserole over. There was so much grief on his face.
“He hasn’t made any noise about her accounts,” she pointed out. “He might not know yet, but I suspect if we know someone has told him. Wouldn’t you be trying to find out why your spouse had secret accounts?”
“Do you think the cops might say something to him?”
“If we can find out about Bill, they will find out about Bill,” Aunt Eloise surmised. “The real question is which of her blackmail victims is also angry enough with you to frame you?”
“I don’t know Bill or Rhonda,” I said. “I don’t run in their circles.”
“It doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try to frame you,” Aunt Eloise said. “People get strange ideas and trust me if you’re poisoning someone, you’re not thinking straight. Let’s approach this from a different angle. Who wants you out of business or in jail or both?”
My eyes widened at the thought. “No one,” I said. “I don’t have anyone who hates me that much.”
“Anyone who might want your business?”
“Gosh, I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve been so busy the last year getting the store up and running, I haven’t had time to make enemies let alone friends.”
“What about old boyfriends?”
“I haven’t had a boyfriend since Rick,” I said. “You know that.” Rick was my college boyfriend who left me for adventures in Europe. I didn’t regret it. We were close, but I wasn’t ready to give up my idea of owning a honey shop.
She made a face. “Why would anyone be doing this to you?”
“Maybe it’s not about me,” I mused. “Like you said, people get strange ideas. Maybe the killer simply needed a way to get Agnes to ingest the poison, and once the police started looking at me, they had a scapegoat.”
“If you think about it, it was ingenious. I mean, people keep putting on lip balm as it wears off and most women store a tube in their purses or their cars. We don’t think about others having access to it.”
“Agnes was holding the label from one of my tubes when she died,” I said. “But what if the label was not the original?”
“So you think the killer tore your label off of her tube, glued it on the poison tube, and put it back in her purse?”
“I didn’t find a purse,” I said. “Maybe it was in her jacket pocket.”
“So, who was close enough to her to slip a poisoned lip balm into her jacket pocket?”
“Not someone she was blackmailing,” I said thoughtfully. “Think about it. You don’t hug your blackmailer.”
“That leads us back to Bernie.”
“Except poison is most likely the weapon of a female killer.”
“One of Agnes’s friends?”
“Maybe someone from the garden club.”
“This is all too difficult,” Aunt Eloise said. “How do the police do it? On television it looks so easy.”
I glanced at the clock. It was well past Everett’s dinner. “I have to go,” I said and stood. Evangeline deftly leapt off my lap. Lug put a paw on my arm as if to say I should pet him before I go. I ran my hand along his silky fur.
“Update the murder board,” Aunt Eloise advised. “We have to keep track of everything we learned.”
“I will.” I picked up my bag of knitting supplies, gave the cats one last pet, and left.
* * *
As I arrived back at the store I saw that the crowd had disappeared. It seemed that the interest in my being a suspect in Agnes’s murder had died down. Thank goodness people had short attention spans. Now, maybe I could get back to selling bee products.
I went in through the front door and the bells jangled behind me. Everything was in its place again. The shop smelled of the honey almond candles we specialized in as Porsche had some burning behind the counter where I stashed my bag of yarn and needles.
Helen Dower was browsing the body creams. Thankfully I could count on my regulars, and Helen was one of them. She was a fortysomething, high school teacher with blonde hair and big blue eyes. When I opened my store, she told me she would make a point of stopping by as she had a special place in her heart for the bees. “I made a new lavender honey face cream,” I said and pulled one off the shelf beside her. “I know you love my face creams. This one is great for bedtime. It’s soothing and it helps firm your skin while you sleep. Not that you need that, but it’s good to get in the habit.”
“Oh, thanks, Wren,” Helen said and took the jar from me. “This sounds perfect. What’s in it?”
“Honey and lavender along with coconut and avocado oil.”
“Did you know women used to use arsenic on their skin to make it whiter and more translucent?”
“What?”
“I teach history and love all those kinds of details,” she said.
“You can rest assured, there’s no arsenic in my products.”
“Well, now that’s not what the press is saying,” she said and peered up at me through her round tortoiseshell glasses.
“I wouldn’t know the first thing about even obtaining arsenic,” I said and put my hands on my hips. “I use only natural ingredients.”
“A lot of poisons are natural, honey,” she said. “Arsenic is a mineral that occurs in the earth.”
“So, what? There are just arsenic mines somewhere?”
She laughed and held out her hands. “How would I know?”
“Well,” I took the jar from her, unscrewed the top and stuck my finger into the perfect swirl. “This cream is perfectly safe.” I rubbed some on my cheek. “See?”
“I’ll take it,” she said and snatched it back from my hands. Helen was all of five foot one inches tall. She wore jeans and a T-shirt that had a teddy bear motif. “I didn’t mean to insult you. You know I love your stuff. I actually came in looking for pumpkin spice. You, know, keeping up with the season.”
I calmed down. She was actually going to buy and that’s exactly what I needed right now. Customers.
After helping Helen with her purchases, I turned to Porsche, who was going over the inventory. “How bad is it?” I asked.
“They took a good one-third of the inventory,” she said. “That includes all of the lip balm.” She pointed to the empty basket where I had displayed it. “And most of the skin care.”
“I’ve got enough ingredients to replenish some of the favorites,” I said. “The rest will have to wait until I get more supplies. How bad is it going to affect the bottom line this month?”
She did some quick calculating in her head. “Probably as much as you’re going to pay me.”
“Oh, so twelve dollars and fifty cents?” I teased.
She laughed. “You never know. We might have a run on our store. I mean, people like gruesome during Halloween. And murder is pretty gruesome.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Agnes’s death,” I said.
Porsche raised her hands. “I didn’t say you did, and I
didn’t realize you were so touchy about the subject.”
“It’s been a strange twenty-four hours,” I said. “Anyone would be touchy.”
“I suppose you’re right. How’d it go at the craft store?”
I went behind the counter and opened the bag of yarn to show her my haul. “Apparently I’m going to make socks,” I said. “Unless you want to try.”
“No way, I’ve got enough going on. Did you find out anything about Agnes?”
“Yes. Do you know Hanna Graebill?”
“Sure, she babysits for me sometimes.”
“She cashiers at the craft store and she told me that Agnes and Rhonda Doll got into a fight in the store recently.”
“Oh, that’s good, a clue. What was it about?”
“Rhonda wanted to oust Agnes from her position as president of the garden club. But Hanna said that Agnes had dirt on members of the club and pulled strings to keep her position.”
“That must have really ticked Rhonda off,” Porsche surmised. “Rhonda can be a force to be reckoned with. My mom found that out a few years ago when she started a book club. Rhonda came in and took it over. Before my mother even realized what was happening, the book club was meeting at Rhonda’s house every month and Rhonda was not only picking the book but leading the discussion.”
I winced. “She sounds like a handful.”
“To say the least. You think that your aunt and Agnes were a problem?” Porsche’s mouth firmed. “Rhonda makes trouble wherever she goes.”
The door to the shop opened and Jim walked in, taking off his hat. My heart sank. “What can I do for you?”
“Have you come to take more from her?” Porsche closed in ranks beside me.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said and came over to the counter. “We had to ensure that none of your products were tainted.”
“And did you do that?”
“The lab hasn’t had time to process what we took,” he said. “Listen, I heard you were asking people questions, and I wanted to let you know that we take our investigation seriously. We don’t need any help from amateurs.”
I raised my chin and stood my ground. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to just sit around and wring my hands while you try to prove I murdered Agnes Snow. Because I’m innocent.”