A Berry Baffling Businessman

by A. R. Winters

  “Poison.”

  “Poison! Kylie, that makes a second murder attempt.” He took my hand in his, and his brow pinched in worry. “Kylie, I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all. I just found you.”

  My reaction was surprise and shock, and it wasn’t out of a sense of flattery. “Let’s say you get a hot tip that someone’s running an illegal smuggling operation and the people are dangerous. What are you going to do? Try to investigate so you can report on it? Or will you decide it’s too dangerous and overlook it altogether?”

  “Kylie, that’s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair is you holding me to a different standard than you hold yourself.”

  Joel released my hand and held his own up in the air. “Hey, I’m a professional. This is my job, my career. You’re just…” His words trailed off. He’d put his foot in his mouth, and his frozen expression along with the sudden fear in his eyes told me he’d realized it.

  “I’m just…” I prompted him.

  He cleared his throat. It was obvious that he didn’t want to continue with this line of conversation, yet he finished his thought anyway. “You’re just the owner and operator of a café,” he said, his voice gentle.

  I nodded my head as I gritted my teeth. Without looking in her direction, I said, “Brenda needs me. I’d better go.”

  “Kylie—”

  I stood. “We can talk later, Joel, maybe after you think of me as more than ‘just’ anything.”

  I turned on my heel and let him watch my backside as I walked away. It was the only thing of me he’d be seeing for quite some time.

  I reached Brenda behind the grill’s counter just in time to see Joel heading out the front door. With him gone and not there to judge me as weak or inept, I allowed my shoulders to droop and my head to sag. Bungling my way through a murder—with the murderer loose and still trying to murder others—was a heavy burden to carry.

  “What’s got you down, sweetie?” Brenda asked as she gave me a one-armed hug. Her other hand was wielding a spatula and staying on top of the potatoes and onions she had cooking. Her line of fans looked ready for a nap. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t make it much longer.

  “I’ve missed you, Brenda,” I said in a whiny voice with my lower lip sticking out.

  “Now, now, missy. Ain’t nothing so bad. What’s this latest mystery you’ve been working on?”

  I hitched a thumb over my shoulder. “I found this guy squashed under my dumpster.” More whining from me.

  “Eh? I can’t hear her. What’d she say?” asked an elderly woman wearing a string of pearls with a crinkly multicolored tracksuit.

  “She said she killed someone, Myrtle,” another woman two seats down answered her.

  I waved my hands in front of them. “No, no… I didn’t kill anyone. I swear.”

  “You could murder me if you want to,” an old man with enormous, flappy earlobes said as he grinned and looked me up and down. He was sitting between Myrtle and her friend.

  “Harold, you old perv,” Myrtle chastised as she elbowed him in the ribs. “You be respectful or I’ll pay the orderly to accidentally drop your dentures in the mop water again.”

  “Oh, you old hag,” Harold hissed at her.

  “Emma,” Myrtle called to the woman on the other side of Harold, “keep your boy toy in line.”

  “We have an understanding,” Emma answered primly. “We can both look as long as neither one of us touches.”

  Myrtle snorted. “He couldn’t do anything even if he did touch!”

  Harold wiggled two of his fingers in the air. “I do just fine, thank you very much.”

  I was too busy being shocked at the education I was getting from the wrinkle-squad to ponder my own troubles.

  “You all behave,” Brenda scolded, “or I’ll sneak chocolate Ex-Lax in with your candy.”

  “Wait a minute,” Harold said, “you got chocolate Ex-Lax? Gimme some.” He held out a hand. When Brenda didn’t move, he said, “No, really. Gimme some. I need some of that stuff!”

  I leaned in to whisper to Brenda. “We should have some prunes in the pantry. Could probably make a dessert out of stewed prunes over ice cream.”

  “That sounds good!” Emma exclaimed. “Can you add in some brandy?”

  I looked at her incredulously. “I thought you guys were half deaf.”

  “Naw, just those guys. Me, I got bat hearing. Works like sonar.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t how sonar worked, but I kept that tidbit to myself.

  Brenda gave me a nudge. “Tell them what you’re working on.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah! These people have all been there and done that, know what I mean? Nothing shocks them and nothing scares them.”

  “Yeah,” Emma snickered, “‘cause we already got one foot in the grave.”

  “What’d you say, Emma?” Myrtle asked.

  “She said you’re going to die tomorrow,” Harold said.

  Myrtle flipped him the bird.

  “Okay, I might as well,” I said.

  “Everybody turn up your hearing aids,” Brenda instructed in a loud voice. Only the middle three—Myrtle, Harold, and Emma—paid her any attention. All of the rest were doing their own thing and weren’t interested or lost in a world of their own.

  Myrtle and Harold put fingers to their ears, which was followed by high-pitched electronic squeals.

  “Back ‘em off,” Brenda instructed, and they did. Then they settled with their elbows on the counter, ready for story time.

  I did my best to run through events, CliffsNotes style. “I found a businessman wedged under my dumpster. He was kind of a big guy, so I have no idea how he even fit under there, but he was dead.”

  The aged trio rewarded me with ohhs and ahhs.

  “Somebody killed him, and I’m trying to figure out who. He was engaged to a much younger woman who nobody liked, and I’d thought she had done it, but someone tried to kill her, too.”

  “She faked it,” Harold said.

  “What?” Emma said.

  “Faked it.”

  “I heard you the first time. What I wanna know is why.”

  “Keep suspicion off of her.”

  I considered what they were saying. It was a good theory, but it didn’t feel right to me. Lara had been packing to leave town when we got to her room. There wasn’t any indication that she’d been expecting anyone to show up, and if we hadn’t showed up, she probably would have died. On top of that, the doctor believed it was a slow acting poison administered a couple of days ago that had shut down her organs. None of it added up to her having poisoned herself.

  “I don’t think so,” I told them. I kept my reasoning short. “She likes herself too much.”

  “Keep going,” Myrtle said.

  “The businessman was pretty important. He was powerful and rich.”

  “Who was his second in command?” Harold asked. “Could have been an attempt to climb the corporate ladder.”

  I wagged a finger at him. “His son had been tapped to take over the business… someday.”

  “Maybe he decided someday should be today,” he said.

  I thought about it. Sebastian had been distraught at the loss of his life as he knew it. No more leisurely vacations. No more risky adventure seeking. He was going to have to trade in that lifestyle to sit behind a desk for sixty to seventy hours a week. He hadn’t seemed ready to make that transition, and in fact, his father had chosen him as his business heir because he hadn’t been in a hurry to be in control… and thus responsible for everything.

  “Nooo,” I said, “he wasn’t done being a beach bum. He’d had all the perks with very little responsibility. He seemed to like it that way.”

  “Who’s next?” Myrtle asked.

  I filled them in about Robert Cornish, Daria Cornish, the Romeo and Juliet connection, and Larry.

  “Weren’t none of them,” Myrtle proclaimed.

  All of my attention latched to
her. She’d seen something I’d missed! “Who was it?”

  “I got no clue who it was but weren’t none of them.”

  “How do you know?” I leaned in, eager to learn from her hard-earned wisdom.

  “They’re all too boring!”

  “Well, that’s no help,” Harold said.

  “Yes, it is,” Myrtle declared. “What’s all them people want? Money or power. Greenbacks or control. What do they all have less of now? Money or control. The wifey was going to have her hands around the purse strings of his entire fortune—now she won’t. The son can’t do what he wants to do anymore, so he lost control over his own life. And he had all the money he needed before without any of the work that’s now going to eat up every minute of his day. As for wifey’s brother, well… maybe it was him. He sounds like an idiot. Idiots sometimes do things to get something when what they do will only make them lose everything. So maybe the brother did do it. He’s kinda stupid, right?”

  I hadn’t thought I’d described him as stupid, but nothing William had said about Larry had made me think otherwise.

  If not Larry, Myrtle was saying that it was somebody else, somebody I hadn’t considered.

  I pondered that—really let the idea bounce around the insides of my head. Then I shook my head, hard.

  “No, no… What about Robert Cornish and his daughter Daria? They’re both power-driven.”

  “Ha!” Myrtle said. “People like them, they like the challenge. They want to know they’re the best. You can lie, cheat, steal, and blackmail, but your opponent’s still alive and can counter your moves. But killing your opponent, that’s cheating, and not in a good way. You don’t get the satisfaction of bein’ the best when you win that way.”

  Brenda leaned in and whispered, “Myrtle was a chess champion. An international one.”

  Oh!

  My ears perked up, and I gave her words a little more weight—a fact that I felt ashamed about. The merit of her words should have stood for themselves before I ever knew anything about her. A part of me had discounted her because she was old. If being around Agatha had taught me anything, it should have taught me better than that.

  I really was a terrible person…

  “How about you do a little spin for me?” Harold asked with an obvious leer. Myrtle smacked the back of his head, but Emma looked intrigued.

  “We’re open to threesomes, honey,” she said with a wink.

  Okay… that was my exit bell.

  “Brenda?”

  “I can only stay another hour. Why don’t you head into the kitchen and get dinner started?”

  I hugged her and kissed her cheek and then made my escape.

  Chapter 17

  I was surprised at how good it felt to be back in my own kitchen.

  I looked up a recipe for cream of potato and onion soup and followed it exactly. It turned out pretty good. I made the fixings for steak salad, undercooked the steak on purpose so that it wouldn’t get overcooked later when I warmed it up, and then put it all back in the cooler to offer as a salad option.

  Then I scrolled through a thousand and one recipe options and did my best to figure out what I could handle. I opted for beef stroganoff to be served over rice. I knew I could make a single big pot of rice and use it for all of the stroganoff orders, which would be much easier than making individual servings of egg noodles for every single meal. As for the stroganoff, I could treat it like a stew. I could make a big batch of it and then let it simmer and slow cook through the dinner period.

  To my surprise, the stroganoff turned out delicious. If only it hadn’t been so gray and colorless. I was tempted to put green dye in the rice in order for the dish to not look so monotone, but I instead decided to mix frozen peas in with the rice. Unfortunately, the peas cooked well past perfect and turned to mush by the time the first dinner was served, but the accident got covered up by the stroganoff.

  All in all, the dinner service went well with Sam and Melanie both there to serve the food.

  “I’m getting a lot of compliments on your soup!” Melanie said as she ladled out a big serving of potato and onion soup.

  As cute as ever, her Shirley Temple-like curls bounced and bobbed around her sweet heart-shaped face. She was one of the nicest people I’d ever met, and I wasn’t sure that I’d ever heard a cross word come out of her mouth.

  Lanky Sam with his thick black hair came in and started compiling a salad. I hurriedly cut one of the steaks into strips and then tossed the strips into a hot pan to warm them up.

  Sam didn’t have to wait long for them before he was able to complete the salad. In the meantime, I caught Melanie glancing over her shoulder at him several times. She’d previously confided in me that she had a crush on Sam, and my love-weary heart bled for her. Still, there was something so pure and innocent about young love that had me rooting for their happily ever after—even though they had yet to even have a happily ever now.

  “Sam,” I said, determined to play matchmaker at least a little bit, “if you’ve got a special girl, you should bring her in some time for dinner. I’m sure I’ve got one or two dishes under my belt that I could get right enough.”

  “Oh,” Sam said, stopping what he was doing and straightening up from arranging the strips of steak just so. He seemed to ponder the invitation a moment, then his brows rose and he smiled. “My mom loved that ice cream you made. She used to take me out for mom and son dinner dates when I was a little kid to teach me how to treat a lady—pull out chairs, open doors, stuff like that. I bet she’d love to revisit those days.”

  My heart melted. It literally melted. He was so cute! And I wanted to hug his mom and tell her thank you on behalf of all the women everywhere. I had to get him and Melanie together!

  I glanced at Melanie. She was quiet, but I could tell that she’d enjoyed learning something new about Sam.

  I played it cool. Smooth. Totally subtle. “So you don’t have a special girl other than your mom?”

  This question seemed to pique Melanie’s interest, too. She’d stopped what she was doing to listen. She was actually biting her lower lip.

  “No,” Sam said, a hint of sadness in his voice. “We broke up a few months ago. We figured out that we wanted different things from life.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to say what’s a guy to do.

  Melanie was smiling from ear to ear when she walked out of the kitchen with her customer’s soup, and I was smiling for her.

  I called it a day a little before nine and headed upstairs for a long soak in the tub, a glass of wine, and cheek snuggles from Sage before crawling on top of my floor mattress—no pesky and oh so useful bedframe for this girl—and falling deep asleep.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, Sage and I stepped bright and early into a kitchen that smelled of lavender and lemon. My knees went weak from the heavenly aroma, and I had to swallow fast and often to keep drool from dripping off my chin.

  Patty was at the counter, aggressively hand-whisking something in a batter bowl. She was stout, short, and a little thick, but she had the energy of a freight train in motion. Although in her mid-fifties, her hair was baby-fine straight black, and it hugged her head like a cap.

  “I’ll have you some coffee, toffee, pecan cookies made before I go,” she said.

  I knew I wasn’t smelling any of those things right now. “What’s that you’re making?”

  “Lemon-lavender cupcakes. I’ve already got you some oatmeal raisin cookie dough in the cooler, and I’ll make some brown-butter ricotta cookie dough, too.” She stopped stirring and stared straight ahead. I was afraid to say anything in case someone who had taken up permanent residence inside her skull was already talking to her. But then just as fast as she’d stopped whisking, she went back to stirring again. “Right, I’ll bake the brown-butter ricotta cookies myself. You can bake the coffee, toffee, pecan cookies when you’re ready.”

  “You gonna make them so you can take some home with you for Aunt Bella?”

&
nbsp; “No,” she answered simply.

  Aunt Bella was Joel’s great aunt. Patty had been homeless when Joel found the talented baker a home with his great aunt, and it was one of the best things to ever happen to either one of them. They had become wonderful, supportive, and much-needed companions of each other.

  I frowned. I was wondering why she had changed her mind about which cookie she was going to bake and which ones she was going to leave for me to bake.

  “Are you thinking my early morning customers will like the butter-ricotta cookies more than my later day customers?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Will chilling the batter mess it up?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?” I blurted out, resorting to being an adult and asking the actual question that I wanted answered.

  “You’ll mess ‘em up.”

  Oh…

  I wished I hadn’t asked. It wasn’t like I could refute her claim. My ability to mess food up was very well established. I’d look foolish if I tried to make an argument to the contrary.

  “Is there anything I can help with?” I asked, hoping to re-add a sense of value to my culinary life.

  Patty stopped her whisking and looked up and to the side. Then, “Nope,” and she went back to whisking.

  I scowled at her. I wanted to say bad things. Not just not-nice things but actual mean-girl things.

  Sage chirped and rubbed herself against my ankle before flopping over onto her back and attacking my sneaker with her claws and teeth. She reminded me that it was better to get the best out of people through kindness and generosity of self.

  Sage sucked, but Sage was right.

  I gently shook Sage free to cease her attempt at disemboweling my shoe and got to work making a pot of chunky oatmeal stuffed full of pecans, almonds, chopped apricots, apples, raisins, cinnamon, three types of sugar, maple syrup, and dark chocolate chips. I’d offer it with the option of adding peanut butter and a freshly cut banana.

  Once I’d gotten that made, I started on an egg casserole made with sun-dried tomato, spinach, onions, and feta cheese. While it was in the oven, I set up the grill area with sausage and bacon that could be made per order.