Birthday Cake and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  “Why did it come up a month ago?” I asked her.

  “Silas was having a hard time with Charlie living at the boardinghouse. Someone broke into his room and rifled through his belongings and then squirted ketchup on his clothes.”

  “Seriously? Ketchup? Sounds kind of childish.”

  “I think it was a threat. He wanted to scare Silas. Silas thought it had to be Charlie. No one else would be able to do it, nor would they care to,” she said, sitting back in her chair.

  I thought this over. I supposed the ketchup could have been symbolic of blood, but it seemed juvenile to me. “Did he report it to the police? Or to Sue Hester?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t want to tell the police, but he did tell Sue. He said he confronted Charlie, too, but he denied it. Sue said she didn’t know who would do such a thing, and she had the door replaced.”

  “The door was damaged in the break-in? Who was in the boarding house when it happened?”

  “It happened during the day when Silas was at work. Sue had left to do the shopping for meals at the boarding house and those that worked were gone. There were only a couple of older folks there. Neither of them heard a thing, but they never do. They’re hard of hearing. Whoever did it forced the door open with something. Silas didn’t want to report it to the police because he had been having trouble with the lock and had forgotten to mention it to Sue. He said it wouldn’t have taken a lot to get it open if he hadn’t made sure he pulled it closed tight enough and he thought he may not have been careful that morning.”

  “That’s interesting. Did they take anything from his room?”

  “Just a couple of journals. Being a writer, Silas always kept one. They took the one from last year and the current one. He had a hundred dollars in one of the drawers of his dresser, but they didn’t take that.”

  Harry had said Silas told Sue that he had stolen the journals and a cell phone. I suddenly had a picture of everyone at the boardinghouse accusing one another of stealing.

  “So, nothing else in the boardinghouse was damaged or broken into?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Whoever it was, they came looking for him.”

  “Did you mention it to Cade? It’s something he really needs to know.”

  “I completely forgot. I don’t know how I did that,” she laughed nervously when she said it and it made me wonder about her. I would have expected more grief, but she had conducted the interview in a lighthearted manner.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll mention this to Cade. I’m sure he’ll be interested. Can anyone off the street walk into the boardinghouse? Is there some kind of security there?” I asked.

  “It’s pretty open. I doubt Sue would have security there. She’s not someone that is very up on things like that and I don’t remember Silas ever mentioning it. I didn’t even think to ask him when he told me about someone breaking into his room. I guess I don’t think sometimes, but he was sure it was Charlie, and it didn’t amount to anything.”

  “It must have been hard for the two of them to get along together at the boardinghouse.” It still didn’t make sense to me that Charlie would move in there when he knew Silas lived there even if it was the cheapest rent in town. If it were me, I would have gotten another job to keep from having to live so near someone I couldn’t stand.

  “They argued all the time. Sometimes Charlie would block the path in the hallway and refuse to let Silas pass,” she said and pushed her glasses further up on her nose.

  “Why did Silas stay there? I don’t want to pry, but why didn’t he move in with you?”

  Her cheeks went pink, and she laughed nervously again. “I told him he could. But, he said no one was going to bully him and force him out of his home. It didn’t make sense to me, either. I tried to get him to move in.” She gave the same nervous laugh again, and it made me wonder about their relationship.

  “Well, thanks for the information. I’ll let Cade know and I’m sure he’ll have some more questions for you.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be back in touch with you about the job as soon as I get the okay from Walt. Oh, but don’t mention it to anyone yet. There are other people I need to interview.”

  “No problem, Karen. I’ll keep it to myself. I do appreciate this!”

  I left the newspaper office feeling like there were still a lot of unexplained things about Silas’s and Karen’s relationship. And who would break in and squirt ketchup on his clothes? It did sound childish, but Karen might be right about Charlie, especially since the money hadn’t been stolen.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The door swung open and Cade walked through it looking like a breath of fresh air. He smiled when he saw me. “Good morning, Rainey.”

  “Good morning, Cade.” I couldn’t help but smile back. Then I giggled. “What can I get you, Cade? Scrambled eggs and toast?” Cade was a bit predictable with his food choices. I didn’t mind. It made things easier.

  “It’s like you read my mind,” he said with a grin and took a seat at the diner counter.

  I got him a cup of coffee and then turned in his order.

  “What do you know?” I asked when I got back to him. He had remained tight-lipped about the investigation long enough and I wanted to know what was going on.

  “Are things a little slow in here?” he asked, looking around the diner. “There’s usually a lot more people in here this time of day.” Sam’s was only open for breakfast and lunch and he was right. It was breakfast time, and we didn’t have many customers.

  “Things slow down a bit when summer ends, but it’ll pick up again. Don’t ignore my question.”

  “You tell me what you know, first,” he said.

  I filled him in on the details that I had collected, including the break-in of Silas’s room at the boardinghouse.

  “Why didn’t someone tell me that earlier?” he asked, sounding exasperated.

  I shrugged. “Silas thought it was nothing and told Karen and Sue that. But Karen thinks now that it was Charlie that did it to scare him and that he killed Silas.”

  “I guess it could have been. It would have been nice to know this earlier. We went through Silas’s room, but there wasn’t a lot there. He didn’t have many possessions. We didn’t look at fingerprints because we didn’t know there had been a break in. Of course, there have been people in there before his death and I’m sure afterward as well. Sue and Karen for sure.”

  “What else do you have?” I asked him. “I know you have to know something by now.”

  He shrugged. “We’re waiting for the fingerprints to come back on the knife and our IT guy hasn’t unlocked the phone yet. So, not a lot.”

  I studied him. Was he holding out on me? I thought he was, but pushing Cade never worked. I had to be subtle if I wanted to get something out of him.

  The front door opened and Mom stood there. When she saw Cade sitting at the front counter, she grinned.

  “Well, good morning Detective Starkey!” she nearly shouted.

  He turned and smiled. “Good morning, Mrs. Daye. How are you on this lovely morning?”

  “Fantastic now that I’ve gotten a chance to see you, along with my unwed daughter.”

  “Mom!” I hissed.

  Cade’s shoulders shook from the laughter he was holding back. “Mrs. Daye, you have a lovely daughter,” he said with a bad cockney accent.

  “I have two lovely daughters, but one is married. You can have this one.”

  I sighed. “Stop it.” I handed her a menu.

  “Rainey, I need you to cater a party I’m having,” Mom said as she opened the menu and laid it flat on the front counter.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “What kind of party?”

  “A birthday party,” she said, not looking up from the menu. She slipped her reading glasses on, but still didn’t look up.

  I sighed. “And whose birthday party might this be?”

  “Yours and Stormy’s,” she said. “How are the pancakes here?”

/>   “You know how the pancakes are. You’ve eaten them hundreds of times,” I said pulling my order book from my apron pocket.

  She looked up at me and narrowed her eyes. “Are you trying to say something about my weight?”

  “What? No. I just meant that you’ve eaten here a lot.”

  This didn’t appease her. “Define ‘a lot’.”

  “No, I will not define ‘a lot’. Do you want the pancakes?” I asked.

  “I’m going to have a talk with Sam about you. And yes, I’d like an order of pancakes,” she said and brushed at imaginary lint on her blouse.

  “One tall stack coming up,” I said, jotting the order onto my pad and heading to the kitchen. I left mom at the counter, mumbling something about smart-alecky daughters. “One more for you, Sam.”

  He turned from the grill and glanced at the order I clipped to the order holder.

  “Pancakes. My favorite,” he said. “Hey Rainey, where’s that birthday cake you promised? You know we’ve all got to give it a try and weigh in with our opinion on it.”

  “You and my mom, both,” I said. “I’ll bring some soon.” I turned and headed back to the diner counter.

  Mom was regaling Cade with a story from my childhood when I got back to them.

  “So, when am I going to be asked out on another date?” I asked him.

  He smiled. “I thought you were a modern woman? Why don’t you ask me?”

  “Would you like to have dinner at my house tomorrow night?” I asked him.

  “I would love it,” he said. “I’m tired of frozen dinners.”

  “I hear Sue Hester serves meals when you rent a room from her, and there’s an opening,” Mom said.

  His eyes went wide. “Why, Mary Ann, I didn’t know you had a mean streak in you.”

  “You’ll learn,” I said.

  “Rainey’s a mean girl, too,” Mom advised him.

  “I think I can see where she might have gotten it from,” he said.

  “Don’t pay attention to her,” I advised him. “She’s the original Mommy Dearest.”

  “I hate to break up the family reunion,” Georgia said, walking behind me and heading toward the kitchen. “But there are other customers in here.”

  Cade lifted an eyebrow. “You better get to work.”

  I rolled my eyes. “She thinks she’s the boss.”

  ***

  I stopped off at the grocery store after work. I wanted to pick up some more lemons, raspberries, and cake flour among other things. I was reasonably sure I had the cake recipe down pat, but I wanted another go at it before the big day. I didn’t mind doing my own cooking for my birthday. It was something I truly enjoyed.

  There was a tall, thin woman placing apples into a bag when I got to the produce section. When she turned around, I realized it was Sue Hester.

  “Hi, Sue,” I said as I sidled up to her. I could always use apples.

  “Well, hello, Rainey. It is Rainey, isn’t it?” she asked, squinting at me. “I left my glasses at home and it’s hard enough telling you from your sister when I have them with me.”

  “You got it right,” I said, chuckling. “It’s Rainey. How are you?”

  She frowned. “Oh. You know how it is. The boardinghouse isn’t the same without Silas around. You never know how much you depend on a person until they aren’t around anymore.”

  “You relied on him to help you a lot?” I asked sympathetically.

  She nodded. “Not just to help with things around the boardinghouse, like changing light bulbs or fixing minor things that had broken, but just his company.”

  That made me wonder about her. Was Charlie right when he said she and Silas were having an affair? “It’s nice that you were so close, though I know it’s terrible to lose someone. I try to tell myself the pain I feel when someone dies is a reflection of how much I cared for them while they were still alive.”

  She looked at me, her eyes wet with unshed tears. “That is exactly how it is. You got it exactly right.”

  “So, has Silas’s next of kin come to collect his things from his room?”

  She looked at me and blinked. “No. I don’t think Silas had any next of kin, his things are still in his room. He’s paid up until the beginning of next month. If someone doesn’t contact me about it, I guess I’ll have to figure out something to do with it. I can hardly stand to go through it and I don’t know what I’d do with it, anyway. It’s not like I can just throw it out.”

  “Karen didn’t come and get it?” I asked. I would have thought that it would have been one of the first things she did after Silas died.

  She shook her head. “No. To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen much of Karen. Not for months. Silas was moping about for a while, but I didn’t want to press him for details. I figured if he wanted me to know, he would tell me what was wrong. But when Karen stopped coming around, I figured they had broken up.”

  “Oh,” was all I could manage. I took this all in. First, Karen and Silas weren’t very public with their relationship. And now she hadn’t been around the boardinghouse in months. But when I spoke to her, she said they were in a relationship for twenty years. Something didn’t add up here, and I wasn’t sure what it was.

  “I better get going. I’ve got supper to cook for my boarders. It was nice talking to you, Rainey,” she said and placed the bag of apples into her shopping cart and left.

  I watched her go, not feeling right about something. Then I realized I hadn’t asked her about the break-in. Not a problem. I needed an excuse to stop by and pay the boardinghouse a visit, anyway. It had been on my list of things to do for days and I hadn’t gotten around to it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I spent another sleepless night thinking about the things I had learned about Silas’s death. I still had no idea why he had been dumped in my alley. At this point I was assuming it was something random, but one thing I had come to understand about murder—most things weren’t random. I had gotten to talk to Cade for a while when he got off of work, but I thought he was still keeping something from me. Not that I blamed him. He was a detective, after all, and it wasn’t like he could just tell me everything he knew. He was working late hours because of the murder and I wasn’t getting to see him nearly as much as I wanted to.

  I picked up my nephews, Curtis and Brent from school the next day to spend some quality time with them. Which means I wanted an excuse to take them to the hobby shop and see if I could get more information out of Charlie Rhoades. With him being family to Silas, he had to know something significant about Silas’s private life that I didn’t yet know.

  “Do they have video games in here?” Brent asked as I parked my car.

  “Not really, but they do have action figures based on the characters in video games,” I told him and got out of the car.

  “I’d rather got to the bookstore,” Curtis said, slamming the car door shut behind him.

  “Maybe next time,” I said while Brent hurried to the door to open it for me.

  “Such a gentleman, thank you,” I said as I passed through it. I didn’t miss the fact that he closed the door on his brother, but I ignored it. Brothers will be brothers.

  Charlie smiled big when he saw me with the boys. “Hi Rainey, I see you’ve brought some friends along today. What can I help you with?”

  “My nephews, as promised,” I said, returning his smile. “I think I’ll let them have a look around and see if they can find something they want.”

  Curtis headed straight to the comic book rack while Brent headed to the action figures.

  “Excellent,” Charlie said. “If you need any help, just let me know.”

  “We sure will,” I said, looking over some dollhouse furniture on a display next to the front counter.

  “It’s a lovely day,” Charlie said after a few minutes of silently rearranging a display of small wooden puzzles. “Getting a little colder each day.”

  “It sure is,” I said. “I love the fall. I can’t wait f
or it to really get going.”

  “Me too,” he said. His eyes went to the boys, but they were busy looking through items on the shelves. “Say Rainey, anything new on Silas’s death? I’d hate for it to go unsolved.”

  The grin on his face told me he actually felt otherwise. “You know how it is. They’ve got to process evidence. How are things going down at the boardinghouse these days?”

  He chuckled. “Wonderful. Nice and quiet. Everyone gets along so well lately.”

  “Hey, Charlie, why did you move in there? If I didn’t like someone the last thing I’d want to do is move into the same house with them.” He’d already told me it was because of money, but I just felt like there was something he wasn’t telling me and I hoped he’d spill it.

  He shrugged. “Money. I was saving every dime I had so I could open this place. Sue offers a room and two meals a day for just a bit more than the room alone. I hated working for someone else. All my life I wanted to own my own business, and while I wish I had had more starting capital when I started to invest in stock for this place, I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve done here.”

  “It is a nice little shop,” I said. “We don’t have anything else quite like it in Sparrow.”

  “That’s exactly right. Plus, I’m a collector myself so it’s something I have a keen interest in. That’s how I funded the business. I had a few collectibles that were worth some money and as much as I hated to let them go, it was for the greater good. I figured I could buy them back as soon as I started turning a profit.”

  “Really? I guess it’s helpful to have had a hobby that earned enough starting capital to open the shop,” I said. I wasn’t buying it, but he was sticking to his story. “I’m glad you had the opportunity to open this shop.”

  “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done with my life.”

  I studied him a moment. “Charlie, can I ask you a question that might seem personal?”