Birthday Cake and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

  “It would be a shame to allow family recipes to be lost,” I agreed. “Can I help you put things away?”

  She waved a hand at me. “Don’t worry. I’ve got it.” She picked up a dozen eggs and two pounds of cheap margarine in stick form and headed back to the refrigerator. “Yup, I’ve considered doing what you’re doing. I imagine if I put all my recipes into a cookbook, I’d make enough money to retire on.”

  I looked at her back, wide-eyed, remembering Harry saying she just reheated frozen meals. “You might be able to make a nice little retirement income,” I said.

  She headed back to the shopping bags. “Of course, I’m nowhere near retirement age. I’ve got a few years to go yet.”

  “I guess that just gives you time to write that book then,” I said.

  She came and stood near me, her eyes on me. “Did that detective figure out who killed Silas?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. He’s still working on it. I think these things take time, but I’m sure he’ll get it sorted out soon,” I assured her.

  She set two wrinkled hands on the counter and was quiet a moment. “When I think of what poor Silas went through, it makes my blood boil,” she said, turning to look at me.

  “I don’t blame you. Having a longtime friend murdered like that is heartbreaking.”

  She considered my words a moment. “I’ll tell you something. The more I think about things, the more I think it had to be Karen Forrest that killed him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was always so mean to poor Silas. Always ordering him around. He wanted to break up with her, but he was afraid she’d do something terrible. I can’t help but think that he tried to break up with her and she got mad and killed him. Just like he thought.”

  “Silas said he thought she would kill him?” I asked her.

  “Well, not exactly. But he did say he was afraid of her. He was driving home one night after the two of them had a fight and a car came up behind him with its bright lights on, blinding him, and ran him off the road. He was sure it was her.”

  “Did he report it to the police?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “He never got a good look at the car, he was too busy trying to keep from hitting a stand of trees on the side of the road. I tell you, it had him so frightened. He confronted her, and she acted shocked and hurt.” She rolled her eyes and took out a large container of oatmeal from a shopping bag.

  “How frightening,” I said. “That would be hard to live with. The uncertainty, I mean.”

  She nodded. “You better believe it,” she said putting the oatmeal into a cupboard.

  It was odd that Silas and Karen were together for so long without getting married, but even odder if Karen was as unstable as Sue was making her out to be. She seemed so quiet and calm. It may very well be possible that Silas stayed with her to avoid the unpleasantness of breaking up with her, but that really was a terrible way to have to live.

  “Sue, were you and Silas more than friends?” I felt like I had nothing to lose by asking and I wondered what she would say.

  She looked at me and her eyes went moist. “He was a gentleman. He would never cheat on Karen. But, he said if he ever got free, he would like to see where a relationship with me might lead.”

  “And that’s why you think he tried to break it off with Karen?” I said softly.

  Charlie had said he saw Sue coming out of Silas’s room late at night, so I wasn’t sure if she was telling me the truth about Silas not cheating on Karen. It was hard for me to think of Karen as a murderer. She was a quiet person that kept to herself and I had never seen a bit of temper, but maybe she knew how to keep it under control when others were around.

  She sighed sadly. “I think so. Of course, we’ll never know, will we?”

  “Sue, did Silas’s room get broken into recently?”

  “Did someone tell you that?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

  “It was a rumor I heard.”

  She nodded. “Yes. And I thought it was odd. He had money in his room, but they didn’t take that. They took his journals. It doesn’t make sense. But, I didn’t think many people knew about it. He didn’t want anyone to know. Who told you?”

  I suddenly felt a little sick to my stomach. Karen said his journals were taken. Had she stolen them to see what he was writing about her? Maybe she wanted to see if he was writing about a possible relationship with someone else? If they had had fights about Silas being interested in Sue, maybe Karen had gotten the idea that Silas was ready to break up with her so he could be with Sue and she wanted the journals for proof of it.

  “Dear?” she said when I didn’t answer.

  “What? Oh, I’d rather not say. I hate to gossip. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  She nodded. “I can guess where it came from. I suppose I should get a security system. Cameras, at the very least. Then something like that won’t be able to happen without me knowing who did it.”

  “It might be a good idea,” I said. “Can I ask you one more thing? Did you spend time in the state penitentiary?” I thought I might as well throw it out there and see where it landed.

  Her face went red. “I forged a check from the grocery store I worked at. I was young. I made a mistake and I did my time. I suppose you heard that from the same source as you heard about the break-in?”

  “We all make mistakes,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Sometimes people talk and I should know better than to listen, Sue. You’ve been an upstanding member of the community all these years.” I hoped that would smooth things over.

  Harry’s shuffling feet could be heard in the hallway, and she turned toward the sound.

  She sighed. “That Harry. He’s a difficult one. Always thinking someone is trying to make his life miserable on purpose. I suppose I should feel sorry for him, but it gets tiring.”

  “Here you go,” Harry said, entering the kitchen. “Seems like you could do it yourself. I pay you to live here. I’m not the hired help.”

  “Oh, Harry, you know how I appreciate the help,” Sue said good-naturedly. She turned to me and grinned.

  After a few more minutes of visiting with Sue, I said my goodbyes and headed for home. Karen had some explaining to do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  What Sue told me surprised me. Did Silas really want to end his relationship with Karen? Was Karen angry about it and did she take out her anger on him? If Karen was the angry, evil person Sue made her out to be, it was possible she had killed Silas. And it made sense that she slipped into the boardinghouse to steal his journals. Even if he had kept the details of a budding relationship with Sue to himself, he would certainly pour them into those journals. I just wished I could get a hold of them. The journals would tell the tale.

  I pulled into the police station and parked my car. Cade and I had a lunch date, and I hoped to get information from him about what he knew so far regarding the murder.

  “Hi Buck,” I said to the officer at the front desk.

  “Hey, Rainey. Sam says you’re making a cake. When are you going to bring it to the diner? I’d like to know in advance so I can be there for it.”

  I chuckled. “Soon. I promise. Can I go on back to see Cade?”

  “Sure, if you promise to save me some cake,” he said, one eyebrow arched. Buck was in his late forties with a head full of gray hair and a small scar on his chin, obtained while on duty years ago from a little old lady that hit him with her umbrella when he was called out to a bar on a public nuisance call. He hadn’t yet lived it down.

  “I tell you what. I’ll make a cake just for the good officers of Sparrow and bring it down here. Then for sure, you won’t miss out.”

  He brightened. “That’s why I love you, Rainey.”

  I nodded. “I knew you had ulterior motives,” I said and headed down the hall that led to Cade’s office.

  I knocked and waited.

  “Come in!” he called.

  I pushed the doo
r open and smiled at him. He was sitting behind his desk, a pile of paperwork spread across the top.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling.

  “Hey yourself. Are you ready for lunch?” My eyes went to the paperwork on his desk. “You probably should clean that desk up before you leave. Your boss might get mad.” I leaned across the desk and gave him a kiss.

  He chuckled. “I think it will be fine. He’s come to expect this mess from me. I’ll be just a minute.”

  I sat at a chair in front of his desk, peering at the papers scattered about. There were file folders, a copy of a speeding ticket, and a plastic bag that stuck out from beneath a file marked with Silas’s name. The file was thicker than I expected and I wondered what all was in it.

  “So, how’s Silas’s murder case coming?”

  “It’s coming,” he said noncommittally as he squinted at the computer screen.

  “Maybe it’s time you got some reading glasses. You can’t expect your eyes to hold out forever. Aging is a thing, you know.”

  He glanced at me and narrowed his eyes. “You need to keep that kind of talk to yourself. I am not aging and neither are my eyes.”

  “Suit yourself. Did you find out anything about the cell phone you found in the raincoat pocket? And what about the raincoat?”

  “The raincoat was made by Grubel Industries and can be purchased at a variety of different stores. Nothing special about it,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “I showed it to Sue and some of the residents at the boardinghouse. Some said they thought Silas might have worn something like it, and some said they’d never seen it. The cell phone only had partial prints and the IT guy cracked it open.”

  “Anything interesting?” I asked, hopefully.

  “It’s a cheap generic throwaway phone that you need to buy a phone card for. But, there were a couple of texts, threatening the owner of the phone.”

  My eyes went big. “What did it say?”

  “We’re out of bread and milk. Pick some up at the store.”

  I groaned. “Tell me the truth.”

  “That is the truth,” he said, turning to me. “The other one said ‘you’ll wish you hadn’t’.”

  “Huh. Can you trace the number it came from?” I asked. “Or was there a name mentioned in the texts?”

  “They’re working on it. The phone had gotten wet, so it’s making it hard to recover anything else.”

  “I might know something,” I said, teasing.

  “Oh? Pray tell, what might that be?”

  “Sue said Karen must have broken into Silas’s room and stole the journals to find out if he was planning on breaking up with her. According to Sue, Silas was afraid of Karen and that he may have told her it was over, and Karen snapped and killed him over it. She also said Silas wanted to date her once he broke up with Karen.”

  He sat back in his chair and thought this over. “I suppose it’s possible. With he and Karen together for so long, it would be a hard breakup. Even if they didn’t have feelings for one another anymore, just the fact that they had so much history together would make it difficult to part ways. Karen would have had motive.”

  “Sue was in the penitentiary for forging a check from the business she worked for,” I added.

  “No murder in her past?”

  “Nope. I want to know where those journals are,” I said. “I bet they tell the tale. In detail.”

  “I bet they do, too. I wish someone had reported the break-in when it happened, or at the very least, when Silas turned up dead. We might have found something useful there.”

  “Did you find Silas’s laptop or computer? He had to have had one since he was a columnist for the paper.”

  “He didn’t have a personal computer. He used one at the newspaper. They had to force him to use it when they first began using computers years ago and he wanted nothing to do with them,” he said. “By the way, I thought you were applying for a job at the newspaper?”

  “I did and Karen interviewed me. She said she wanted to hire me but had to interview other people and then get approval to hire me. That doesn’t surprise me about Silas. He didn’t seem the type that was very tech savvy. I’m a little surprised he even had a cell phone,” I said.

  “We don’t know that the cell phone in the raincoat was his, but Karen did say he had one. His last nod to the fact that the world was moving on,” he said. “Let me get things straightened up a little and we’ll go.”

  I smirked at him. “Your boss is okay with the mess, eh?”

  “Sure. I just don’t want some of these things left out,” he said and began gathering papers and files together.

  He moved the file on top of the clear plastic bag and there was a knife in it with dried blood on the blade. I winced.

  “Silas?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Sorry. I was trying to figure out where this kind of knife is sold.”

  The knife had a cute, decorative blade with pink and blue flowers and a bright pink handle. I had seen some knives similar to it somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where. It looked to be an eight-inch chef’s knife.

  “That’s really cute. Am I to assume it belongs to a woman?” I asked. “I wonder what Karen’s kitchen knives look like?”

  He shrugged. “Or it just came from a woman’s kitchen. And just because it’s pretty doesn’t mean a woman is the killer. Maybe some rugged gentleman decided he needed a nice feminine touch in his kitchen to draw the ladies in and convince them to make him dinner?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. Anything to lure a woman in.”

  He chuckled. “Let me get these locked up and I’ll be right back.”

  He left the room with the knife and the file and I sat back in my chair. His computer was still on and I debated with myself whether I should sneak a look at it before he returned and caught me at it. I couldn’t hold back. I got to my feet and peered over at the computer screen. He had been searching for knife patterns. There was a Word document open beneath the Internet page and I looked over my shoulder. The door was partially open, but I didn’t hear anyone in the hall. I turned back to the computer and moved the cursor to the document.

  “Ah ha!” Cade said from behind me.

  I jumped, slamming the mouse on the desk, and turned to face him. Heat rushed into my cheeks. “I—I.”

  “Yes, I know. You’re nosy. Keep your hands off my computer, Rainey,” he said sounding serious, and walked around to the other side of the desk and locked the computer screen.

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling a little foolish. “But you might try searching Walmart for knife patterns. I don’t think that one is very expensive and people here in Sparrow are kind of simple folk for the most part.”

  “I’ll take that suggestion under consult. Now, let’s go get some lunch before I decide that your snooping ways aren’t worth the trouble.”

  I snorted. He was smiling, but I knew he didn’t appreciate what I had just done. I’d have to get that cake made to make it up to him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I showed up at the newspaper to work my first day on Monday morning. Karen had called me and given me the good news on Friday and I was both nervous and excited. Sam had been hesitant when I told him about the job, worrying about whether I would still be flexible enough for the shifts I worked at the diner. But I thought it would all come together somehow. Both jobs were part-time, with the newspaper being fewer hours than the diner.

  Karen met me at the door. “Good morning, Rainey. How are you?” she said brightly. She wore a business casual ensemble, and I wondered if I was under-dressed with my blouse and jeans.

  “I’m excited to be here,” I nearly gushed. And I was. I enjoyed writing and this job would give me a taste of something other than writing cookbooks. Maybe someday I would branch out and write other kinds of books. Maybe a novel or two.

  “Let’s go to my office and fill out new-hire paperwork,” she said, leading the way.

  Most of the other desks out front were filled, exce
pt for the one at the end. I smiled and nodded at the other staff members as I passed and got friendly reactions. That was a good start. I remembered seeing Silas sitting at the empty desk and with a sinking feeling, I realized it would probably be mine. But, no matter, I would make the best of it.

  We went back into Karen’s office and I took a seat. “Smells good in here,” I said.

  “That’s my vanilla scented candle warmer. Fall makes me want to burn candles,” she said. “We need to get a little paperwork filled out. I’m sure you know the drill. We need to make the government happy.” She rummaged through her desk and then pulled out a file. “Just fill these out and we’ll get started.”

  “Okay,” I said, looking them over. “So, Karen, what exactly will I be doing? I know we talked briefly about it before, but how many hours a week and will I need to come into the office to do the work?”

  “You’ll have articles assigned to you. You’ll have to come into the office at least part of the time, but I know you have another job. We can be flexible. As long as you meet the deadlines, you don’t have to be tied to a set schedule. For now it will only be about ten to fifteen hours a week. We’ll see how things go. It might be increased later.”

  I nodded and began filling out a W-2 form. “That sounds great. Sam was a little worried whether I could still make it into the diner when he needed me.”

  She smiled. “We’re flexible. We’ll work on it,” she repeated.

  “Will I have a chance to do other articles, besides the lifestyle ones?” I asked, looking up from the form in front of me.