“Spit it out, Tom!” Miss May scooted to the edge of her chair.
“I sent Charles threatening emails! OK!? They were bad!”
Miss May and I looked at one another. She rubbed her eyes in disbelief. “What do you mean you sent threatening emails? What did you say in them?”
Gigley picked at his cuticles. The oven dinged, and he looked up. “Cookies!”
Miss May clapped to get Gigley's attention. “No cookies until you talk!”
“But—”
“No buts, Tom. What did you say in the emails?”
“I said I was going to kill him, OK!?” Gigley buried his head in his hands. “And I said it a lot. With flair.”
Miss May got up to retrieve the cookies from the oven. “Tom. Why?”
“Because, May! I had to!” Gigley stopped and looked out the farmhouse window. “I loved working with that kid’s dad. You know that? Old Bill was the most trustworthy guy in town. He took care of my money. He didn’t take silly risks. None of this ‘venture capital,’ ‘great opportunity,’ ‘now or never,’ nonsense. ‘Stocks and bonds are like rice and beans,’ he used to say. ‘Can’t go wrong with rice and beans!’ And he was right! But I was wrong to trust that kid of his. Charles Fitz. That rat.”
“We all trusted him,” Miss May said. She placed the warm cookies in front of Gigley.
Gigley slammed his hand on the counter. “I trusted him with everything!” He took a deep breath and continued in a more even tone.
“The first time I wanted to pull out my money, take my parents on a Viking Cruise down the river Rhine, he says now’s not the time. Fine. I can wait. Next time I want to make a withdrawal to buy myself a Steinway, he says we’ve got to wait. OK. So I wait. Then a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to make a withdrawal for a down payment on a new car. He said no. Again. And I couldn't take it anymore.”
Gigley grabbed a cookie and took a bite. “So I sent the emails. I guess death threats you could call them. Damn that cookie’s still hot.”
Miss May pressed on. “But you didn’t kill him… right?”
“Heck no, May! I pay taxes on my yard sales, for Pete's sake. Hurting someone? Murder! That's against every one of my core values.”
“Death threats are against your core values, too.”
“The emails were different,” Gigley said. “They were like a creative writing exercise. For fun. They weren't a plan to actually do something.”
Miss May handed me a cookie and took one of her own. “Did you tell all this to the police?”
Gigley nodded. “Problem is, in one email I laid out a detailed plan in which I led him to the forest, got him drunk, and left him there to freeze.”
Miss May shook her head. “Tom.”
“I know, May.” Gigley sighed. “That’s why I need you. You know I didn’t do it, right?”
“I guess,” Miss May said.
“And don’t you want to find that money, anyway?”
“I’m sure the government will seize it and redistribute it or something.”
“Maybe,” Gigley said. “If he had it in a legitimate account.”
I put my cookie down. “Wayne said everything was there.”
“I don’t trust that cop as far as I can throw him” Gigley said. “And I have weak wrists.”
Miss May peeled the remaining cookies up with a spatula and stacked them on a big white plate.
Gigley watched her every move, desperate for help. “Please, May. You solved that last case. And the one before that. I know you can solve this one too.”
Miss May looked over at me. “What do you think, Chels?”
I stopped eating my cookie mid-bite. I did not expect Miss May to ask my opinion. “Uh…”
Gigley looked at me like a baseball player watches a high, fly ball that’s headed toward the warning track. He was hoping for a homerun.
I put my cookie down and wiped my hands on my apron. Then I looked at Gigley. Finally, I looked over at Miss May.
“You want to know what I think?” I asked.
Miss May nodded.
“I think we can solve this murder.”
7
Investigation Initiation
Teeny waved us back into the kitchen as soon as we walked through the door at Grandma’s.
“Come try this potato thingy I’m cooking up!”
“All right, calm down!” Miss May said.
We hung our coats on the hooks by the entrance. I looked around. It was early, so the place was empty. It had a homey energy that always made me feel, well, at home. After my hard weekend, I was glad to be there. The smell of Teeny’s ‘potato thingy’ wafting from the kitchen didn’t hurt either.
We walked around the counter and into the back. First thing I saw was Teeny’s line cook, Petey, peeling a potato. Petey was nineteen and skinny, and he had deep acne scars on his rose red cheeks. There was a pile of potato skins beside him that was at least four feet high, and based on the sunken look in his eyes, he had peeled every single one of those tubers.
“You OK, Petey?” Miss May asked.
Petey groaned. “I should have stayed in high school.”
“Never too late to go back!” Teeny said, wiping her hands on her apron and hurrying toward us. “Otherwise, it’s jobs like this, every single day for the rest of your life.”
Miss May looked at the poor kid over her glasses. “Teeny’s right, you know.”
“I know,” Petey said. “But I’m already nineteen.”
“OK, old man,” Teeny said. “Have it your way.” She thumped a bag with fifty more potatoes onto the counter. “Let me know when you’re ready for more.”
Petey shook his head, put his headphones in, and got back to work, like the Sisyphus of root vegetables.
Teeny turned to us and smiled. “You have got to try what I’m making!”
Seconds later, we were over by the stove top. Each one of Teeny’s twelve burners had a frying pan on it. One pan had been burned black and crusty. Several others were wet, for no discernible reason. It was not an appetizing scene.
“What the heck happened here?” Miss May took Teeny by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “Teeny. Have you lost your faculties?”
“Oh, shut up,” Teeny said. “Most of these pans were experiments. Only one’s got the good stuff.”
Teeny opened the oven and pulled out what I would soon come to know as the most delicious hashbrown dish in the history of potato-kind.
“This,” Teeny said. “is hashbrown lasagna!”
Teeny held up the pan with a proud smile. The “Hashbrown Lasagna” was golden and crispy and covered in magazine-perfect melted cheese. And it smelled so good it almost broke my heart. It took all my limited willpower not to grab the pan and run out the back door like a cartoon crook with a bag of money, but I resisted. I leaned in and took one more smell and I almost fell backwards into poor Petey with his peeler.
Miss May, meanwhile, just stood there smiling. She garnered immense joy from her friends’ and family’s new achievements, and Teeny’s hashbrown lasagna seemed like a big one.
“You‘ve done it again, Teeny! What is this? How’d you come up with it?”
“I’m single. I work in a restaurant! All I do is rearrange the plants and artwork and try different combinations of potatoes and cheese.”
“Well, this is your coup-de-grace,” Miss May said. “Much better than that onion dessert thing you tried last month.”
“Oh, hush up. You haven’t even tried it!”
“We don’t need to,” I said, snapping out of my hashbrown-induced hypnosis. “I can already smell it in my stomach.”
“Oh-yes-you-do-need-to-try-it.” Teeny grabbed a spatula and cut into the lasagna. The top layer crunched. The cheese oozed as she pulled it apart. Then she placed a slice on a small white plate, and we got a look inside.
I squinted, taking scientific interest in this magnificent creation. “What are the layers?”
“Hashbrown. Egg. Chee
se. Hashbrown. Egg. Cheese. Hashbrown.” Teeny held up her finger like she was forgetting something. “But it’s not done!”
“What more could you need?” Miss May said.
Teeny spooned two perfect slices of avocado onto the lasagna and drizzled hot sauce in a zig-zag pattern across the top. I reached out to take the plate but Teeny smacked my hand away. “One second, little miss!” Teeny pulled a small sauce ramekin from the fridge and placed it next to the plate. “Chipotle aioli, for dipping.”
Miss May and I each grabbed a fork and crunched into a bite. The lasagna was perfect. Crispy, a little creamy, a touch salty and yet somehow light. A lesser chef’s take on this creation might be greasy or heavy or just… gross. But not Teeny. She had invented a new category of breakfast food and I was hooked.
“This is incredible,” Miss May garbled through a mouthful of potato.
“I know, right!?” Teeny said.
Miss May continued. “It almost makes me forget that Gigley just hired us to solve the murder.”
Teeny dropped the fork right out of her mouth. “What!?”
Moments later, Miss May and I sat in our usual booth with Teeny. We each devoured a fresh plate of hashbrown lasagna as we told Teeny everything Gigley had told us. It took Teeny five minutes to stop laughing about Gigley's ridiculous emails. Then she got serious.
“All right,” she said. “First thing’s first. You two need to design business cards for this sleuthing operation.” Teeny looked into the distance. “You can be ‘The Thomas Family Detective Agency,’ or ‘Thomas and Thomas, Tough on Crime!’”
“We are not getting business cards,” Miss May lowered her voice and looked around to make sure the place was still empty. “You are the only person in town that’s even privy to this information, other than Gigley. And it has to stay that way.”
Teeny stuck her lower lip out. “Sleuthing is no fun if we can’t talk about it.”
“Well, we can't talk about it,” Miss May said. “We don't have a license or authority or anything, so we have to operate under the radar. Otherwise they could arrest us.”
“No. Fun.” Teeny crossed her arms.
“It can be fun,” I said. “Think of it like...we're secret agents. And no one can know what we're doing.”
Teeny looked up with a glint in her eye. “Like secret spies?”
I nodded.
Teeny did her little golf-claps again. “I love it! Secret sleuths on a mission, flying under the radar like bats in the night!”
“We are not bats in the night,” Miss May said. “Chelsea and I are helping Gigley. We’re telling you because you’re…you. That's all. Now stop being weird about it.”
Teeny took a big bite of lasagna. “OK. So I’m the unofficial third member of the secret Thomas Family spy organization.”
“There is no spy organization!” Miss May said. “And besides, you’ve got a restaurant to run.”
“My mom's got this place covered, May. You know that.”
We looked over at the register. Teeny’s ancient mother, the eponymous “Grandma,” was doing a crossword while listening to a Walkman. She looked content, but not like she had anything covered.
“Besides,” Teeny said. “You’ve got the orchard, right?”
“Slow season up there,” Miss May said. “Not too busy in the bake shop. And KP’s got everything handled on the farm.”
“But this is not fair,” Teeny said. “I want to help. You two finished the whole first mystery without me. I want to be in on the sequel! Or the three-quel. Whatever this is!”
“This is not a movie trilogy, Teeny! It’s real life. We need to be lean and mean.”
Teeny huffed and puffed in her whiniest voice. “I just, you got Chelsea and Petey’s not— It’s not the same! I’m lonely, May! And I’m bored. You saw how much time I have on my hands, I spent three days coming up with a way to make hashbrowns into lasagna!”
Teeny hung her head. This was her “Lonely Divorcee” con. The same one she used to coerce me into taking part in the sled race. It always worked like a charm, and that day was no different.
Miss May let out a long breath. “Oh all right. You can come along.”
Teeny did her little golf-claps, and then took a celebratory bite of lasagna. With her mouth full, she looked between me and Miss May, excited. “So, what’s first?”
“Well we can’t just sit around talking about business cards,” Miss May said. “We need to be serious if we have any hope of solving this mystery.”
“OK,” Teeny said. “I agree.”
Teeny craned her neck and shouted toward the kitchen. “Petey! Bring out three hot chocolates, extra whipped cream, extra chocolate. Sprinkles on mine!”
Miss May and I laughed.
“What?” Teeny said. “I can’t get serious ‘til I get my morning cocoa.”
----
Once Petey brought the hot chocolate, we got down to business. We began our investigation by narrowing down the list of suspects. That was difficult, however, because we were operating under a potato-and-chocolate-induced fog.
Also, everyone in town had money with Charles Fitz, so everyone in town had a motive. Especially if Charles had nefarious plans to disappear with the money.
I suggested that we pick one attendee of Liz's secret meeting at random and start the investigation there. But Miss May insisted that our investigation be less arbitrary than that. There was damning evidence against Gigley, she reasoned. If we didn’t make haste, he could end up in jail, at least for a night or two. And both Teeny and Miss May hated the thought of their old friend behind bars. I hated the idea too, but I did think it would be a little funny to see the erudite, suit-wearing Tom Gigley in the town drunk tank.
We were almost at wit’s end when Teeny asked a pivotal question. “Aren’t most murder victims killed by their husband or wife? Statistically, I mean?”
“I thought about that,” Miss May said. “But Florence Fitz is no murderer.”
“Principal Fitz was missing from the sled race that day,” I said. “She had agreed to wave the flag to start the sled race. But remember, Mayor Delgado said that Florence called in sick? And the principal didn’t show up until way later. After I had already, uh, bumped into Charles.”
“Come to think of it,” Teeny said. “She came in here a few days ago, and she seemed pretty upset.”
“Upset how?” Miss May asked.
Teeny shrugged. “I tried to eavesdrop, but she went right into the bathroom.”
“You didn’t think to bring that up earlier?”
“Plenty of people come here when they’re upset,” Teeny said. “That’s why it’s called comfort food. Nobody wants a green juice when they’re down in the dumps. But Florence seemed extra worked-up. Didn’t even order.”
Miss May shook her head, like something wasn’t setting right with her. “I don’t know. Florence has worked in the schools almost thirty years.”
“Maybe those kids drove her off the edge,” Teeny said. “And she snapped like a crazy little twig.”
“She was a strict principal,” I said, stirring my hot chocolate.
“Strict but a great leader. And a nice woman,” Miss May said. “And she took an interest in you after your parents‘ accident. You don’t remember that? Helped you pick your classes. Set you up with that special guidance counselor.”
“I remember,” I said. “Still. She was stern.”
“Stern like a killer?” Teeny asked.
I shrugged. Maybe. But Miss May shook her head. “I like Florence Fitz.”
“No one’s saying she did it,” Teeny said.
“We’re just saying, perhaps she’s a good place to start,” I said.
Miss May took a sip of her cocoa. “I guess she might have useful information. Either way.”
“And that’s all we need,” I said. “A little more intel.”
“We're not going to treat her like a suspect,” Miss May insisted. “We'll ask her some questions. See if sh
e knows something that might help.”
“And if it turns out she’s the killer, that’s good too,” Teeny said.
“How is that good, Teeny?” Miss May raised her eyebrows.
“I don’t mean good, like, good-good,” Teeny said. “I mean, good like, ‘Yay, we solved another case.’”
“And we put the beloved high school principal behind bars for life?”
Teeny held up her hands in surrender. “OK, OK. You’re right,” Teeny said. “Florence is a great high school principal. Innocent ‘til proven guilty.”
Petey came over and cleared our dishes. “You guys talking about Principal Fitz?”
I coughed on my hot chocolate. Teeny froze like she was playing hide and seek. But Miss May kept her cool. She didn’t miss a beat before answering Petey’s question.
“Just saying how sad we are. About what happened with her husband,” Miss May said calmly and smiled at Petey. She could think faster on her feet than anyone I knew.
Petey nodded, stacked the dishes, and walked away.
Miss May glared at Teeny. “Could you try to keep it down, T?”
Teeny took a guilty sip of her hot cocoa and muttered an apology.
Miss May stood up and put on her coat. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to the Principal's office.”
8
High School Blues
I looked out the window as Miss May drove out of town.
Teenagers loitered outside the coffee shop, as they always had. Little old ladies hobbled into the diner, as they always had. The sun shone and the wind blew, as it always would.
The peaceful downtown scene gave me that same bittersweet feeling as watching the snowball fight at the winter fest. At first it made me smile, but then my smile morphed into the threat of an ugly cry. So I forced myself to stop thinking about the past or wondering about the future, and instead focused on the present.
I did a double-take as Miss May turned into the high school parking lot. I doubted Florence would have been at work the day after her husband died, so I spoke up.
Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery series Box Set 1 Page 19
