A Berry Baffling Businessman

by A. R. Winters

  Chef John’s expression was absolutely grim.

  “It was either Daria or Lara who killed Oliver—and I’d rather it be Lara. I can’t get the thought out of my head. I keep going round with it over and over. It’s like a broken record in my head. It’s her or something to do with her. I know it is. I just have to figure it o—”

  Chef John’s lips were on mine in a passionate kiss that had his arms around me, molding my body to his. “Forget about her,” he whispered when he pulled away. “Don’t let someone who doesn’t matter ruin your life when you’ve got so much more in front of you.”

  And the person in front of me was him. I was breathless and surprised at his strength. He felt so solid and sure, and his gaze had the intensity of a thousand suns. I’d watched him make a hollandaise sauce with that same intensity—but now he was looking at me. Only at me.

  I thought of Brad. I thought of Joel. Even the warm depth of Detective Gregson’s eyes filled my mind.

  I untangled myself from Chef John’s embrace.

  “A lot is happening really fast,” I said. First I learned that he wanted to buy my place, now this.

  My cell phone buzzed with a text. I looked at the screen, then hissed.

  “What’s wrong?” Chef John asked.

  “Lara’s gone missing. She checked herself out of the hospital. Larry’s going nuts looking for her. Zoey says his Twitter feed is blowing up with his meltdown. He’s frantic.”

  Chef John swore. Then when I looked at him, he said, “You have to choose your life. At some point, you have to choose you instead of throwing everything away worrying about somebody else.”

  He was sounding a little like Joel. The words were different, but the message was the same. Thing was—I didn’t appreciate it when it had come from Joel, and I didn’t appreciate it coming from Chef John now.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said and then called for Jonathan. I hoped he’d be able to stay at the café, because I couldn’t. Even if I had no one to take over, I still couldn’t stay. I had to go.

  Jonathan appeared at the doorway that linked the café’s kitchen with its open grill. “Yeah, boss?”

  “I have to go. Can you stay? Can you take care of everything?”

  “Yeah, boss, but… what should I tell the lady waiting for you?”

  The lady!

  A cold chill ran through me. Lara was here. The killer had come to me!

  Chapter 29

  Chef John and I both ran for the kitchen door. When we got there, we both leaned forward to peek around the edge.

  “No…” I whispered. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Sitting out in the café lobby was not a death-warmed-over Lara, it was a vibrant and healthy Daria.

  I’d been trying to pin her down for a conversation for days, and now she’d finally come to me—right when I needed to be somewhere else, looking for someone else. The woman had the worst timing!

  Chef John said a few choice words under his breath and headed back into the kitchen. “Your life’s too crazy for even me, Kylie. Call me when things calm down.” He let himself out through the kitchen’s back door.

  I texted Zoey. “Daria’s here.”

  “On my way.” Her response was almost instantaneous.

  I gave Jonathan a twenty-second rundown of what had been prepped to serve for lunch, then made my way over to Daria. She was standing looking awkward and out of place a few feet in from the front door. She seemed ready to bolt.

  “Jonathan, can you bring us both sweet teas?” I asked.

  “Sure, boss. I think there’s still some cookie batter that Patty made up. Want me to bring some out? Cranberry and blood orange sandies.”

  “That’s perfect.” I knew that the oven would still be warm from the bread I’d tried to bake and that the cookies wouldn’t take long at all.

  Daria took a step toward the café’s front door, and I stepped into view from the kitchen.

  “Daria,” I called out.

  Daria halted her attempt to escape, but she still looked ready to run.

  “I’ve got sweet tea,” I said, “and the cookies will be ready in a few minutes.”

  Daria looked hesitant. “Could I have coffee instead?”

  Got her! She was going to stay and talk.

  We sat at my usual table next to the front window, and Jonathan brought us coffee with all the extras to go in it. She took her time adding sugar and cream to her coffee until it was just the way she wanted it. I did the same with mine and managed to keep my mouth shut instead of hitting her up with a barrage of questions.

  Zoey waltzed in the front door, but instead of coming to the table, she sat down at the grill’s bar. She must have seen what I saw—a scared bird ready to flee.

  “I didn’t murder him.” Those were the first words out of Daria’s mouth when she finally did start talking. She picked up her coffee cup to take a sip, and her hand trembled.

  “Sometimes things happen—things we don’t mean to happen. Maybe Ollie’s death was an accident.” The man had been crammed under a dumpster. I wasn’t sure how accidental that could have been.

  “I didn’t murder him at all. I mean… I didn’t kill him. He… he was already dead. Somebody had gotten to him before me.”

  “So you had planned to kill him but somebody else killed him first?” I supposed that might be an argument she could make in court to try to keep herself off of death row.

  “No, no… I didn’t mean to kill him. I mean, I didn’t want to.” She let loose with a garbled scream through gritted teeth. “I did not kill Oliver. When I saw him, he was already dead.”

  “Have you told the police any of this?”

  She stared out the window as she shook her head. “I was scared to. I can tell you and you won’t put me in handcuffs. I’ll be able to say what I came to say and still be able to get up and walk out of here when I’m done.”

  That was true. She would have a chance to run if she confessed to me. She came from money. There was no telling how long she’d be able to evade the police. Her father would do whatever he could to protect her, I was sure. He’d get her out of the country if he could.

  “Daria, what happened?”

  “Sebastian and I have been seeing each other for a while now. We’re in love, but we’ve hid it because of our fathers. They hate each—hated each other—so much. We wanted to be together but couldn’t. And it was stupid. It was all so stupid. There are other companies out there who do what we do, but they’re more progressive, more nimble. They’re able to change and adapt as packaging and shipping needs change. We’re going to be left behind. Not just PaperMore but Paperworx, too. If we want to stay at the top of our field, we need to merge. We need to put the squabbling and useless rivalry behind us and become one company. I realized this over two years ago. When I did, I reached out to Sebastian. I’d hoped he’d be open-minded enough to see things my way.” She shrugged. “And he did, but one thing led to another and we fell in love. We didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “You were afraid of what Oliver would do if he found out?”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out before slouching down in her chair. “Sebastian was afraid of what his dad would do. He wanted what I wanted, but his dad wasn’t going to give up any control. What’s worse is Sebastian couldn’t even talk to him about it. If he did, Oliver would have built provisions into his will to keep Sebastian from running the company the way he wanted to. I was sure of it.” Her eyes turned shiny and red as they filled with tears. “It wasn’t premeditated. I was sure of that. Sebastian hadn’t meant to do it.”

  My hands gripped the edge of the table. Either Daria had killed Oliver and she was trying to pawn the murder off on Sebastian… or Sebastian had killed his father.

  “I was sure he hadn’t meant to,” she went on. “If I’d thought he’d planned it, I wouldn’t have done what I did.”

  “What did you do, Daria?” I asked, breathless.

  “When I met with Sebastian that night out
back, he’d told me he had a plan for how to make everything okay, that he was going to get us what we wanted. I didn’t spot Oliver’s body until Sebastian had already left—that’s when I knew what he’d done… what I’d thought he’d done. I panicked. I tried to get Oliver’s body in my car so that I could take it off somewhere where it wouldn’t be found for a long time, but I couldn’t pick it up. I needed more time to figure out what to do, so…” She took another sip of coffee, and this time her hand was shaking so hard that the coffee spilled over the rim.

  Jonathan silently brought a plate of Patty’s cookies and left without a word.

  Daria took one of the cookies and broke it in half before breaking that half in half. She popped the quarter in her mouth and chewed with her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she seemed to have calmed down.

  “I pushed the dumpster on top of Oliver. I used my car to push it. He wasn’t going to fit at first. The bottom edge of the dumpster started to push Oliver across the pavement, so I poured motor oil on him to make him slippery. I didn’t mean for him to be found that way. I was going to come back for him the next night.”

  “Why’d you do it at all?”

  She gave me a look that said I was crazy for not having caught on. “To protect Sebastian. I couldn’t let anyone figure out what he’d done.” She shook her head. “What I thought he’d done. He didn’t kill Oliver—but at the time, I’d thought he had.”

  My head started pounding at the temple. “What a minute. You’re telling me that you did not kill Oliver.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you’re telling me that Sebastian also didn’t kill Oliver.”

  “That’s correct again.”

  “So then who killed Oliver?” I managed to keep my voice even, although I felt like yelling the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  Chef John’s litany of curse words sounded through my head, and I wanted to say them, too.

  At least we now knew how Oliver ended up under the dumpster.

  “Okay. What time did you arrive behind the café?”

  “About fifteen after midnight. Sebastian was already here.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Sebastian and I spent time together. Talking. Just stealing time, dreaming about a future. Making plans. He wants to marry me.”

  “Then what?”

  “We said goodbye. It was almost 2 AM. He left on foot. I was in my car. We couldn’t risk leaving together. We couldn’t be seen together. That’s how it’s always been for us. But when I started my car and began pulling out of the parking lot, my headlight swept over Oliver’s legs—and I knew, I just knew, that Sebastian had killed him.” She shook her head. “But I was wrong. The only reason I didn’t call for help and tried to hide Oliver’s body was that I thought I was protecting Sebastian. But I wasn’t. Sebastian didn’t kill his father.”

  “Is there any way that Oliver could have shown up after the two of you arrived at fifteen after midnight?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  That meant that Oliver died prior to fifteen after midnight.

  “You’d thought that Sebastian had killed his father. What makes you so sure now that he didn’t?”

  She shrugged. “He said he didn’t.”

  To her, it was as simple as that. The man she loved said he was innocent.

  “I get that you believe him, that you trust him, but is there anything more concrete that you can tell me to prove he didn’t do it?”

  She thought a moment, then shook her head no.

  It was my turn to slouch in my chair.

  I went through it all in my head, trying to see a way clear to discount Sebastian as the killer. I couldn’t do it, yet something about it all bugged me. What did Lara have to do with any of this?

  “Is there any chance that Sebastian tried to kill Lara?” I asked.

  Daria pulled her head back and frowned. “Why would he want to kill Lara?”

  “She inherited shares in the company—maybe a lot.”

  “But why would that matter?”

  “Control? Didn’t Sebastian want control of the company so that you two could merge your father’s companies together?”

  “She’s never shown an interest in running the company, and the merger would most likely make her a lot more money. It just wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “Her making a lot of money that would have otherwise gone to Sebastian didn’t matter?”

  Daria again looked at me like I was an idiot. “Sebastian had his inheritance. He’s known what he’d be getting since he was a kid. Same with his siblings. Anything extra would have been given to charity. His father was crystal clear about that. He didn’t want any inheritance fighting. What was given to Lara didn’t come out of anybody else’s inheritance. It came out of whatever amount is set up to go to charity. Lara showing up in Oliver’s life didn’t change anything for Sebastian.”

  I was starting to believe her. Sebastian didn’t kill his father, and Daria didn’t kill Oliver either.

  But Lara might have. She could have. She was already in Oliver’s will. She didn’t even have to marry him to have the life of the lavishly wealthy widow.

  The arachnid kind with venom and fangs ready to kill her most devoted suitor.

  I swiveled in my chair to look back at Zoey.

  “We gotta find Lara before she kills again.”

  Chapter 30

  The woman was desperate. If Lara had killed for money in hopes of creating a better life for herself, it made sense that she’d kill again—this time to ensure that she didn’t go to prison.

  “Any idea where to start?” I asked. Zoey was staring at her phone. We were sitting in her car in the parking lot behind her apartment building.

  “Top choices are the amusement park in Austin, Texas, and the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s trolls, posting on Larry’s Twitter feed. He’s going nuts looking for his sister, and they’re making fun of him.”

  Zoey handed her phone to me. Larry had posted a picture of his sister, and I scrolled through the insane listing of Lara sightings. Someone spotted her with a Bigfoot, which sparked a heated debate about whether or not it was actually a dark-furred yeti. Another person swore they’d seen her with a shaved head entering a closed-gate monastery. Someone else had photoshopped her face into a photo of a woman marrying Elvis at a wedding being officiated by Elvis.

  I stopped scrolling and frowned. One of the posts wasn’t nuts. “This person says they saw her at a junkyard.”

  Zoey leaned over. “They say anything more?”

  “Yeah, they said that they thought she was looking for a car.”

  “A car?” I had Zoey’s full attention. “That makes sense.”

  I nodded. “She could try to find some old jalopy and just drive. Without the car being registered to her, her whereabouts would be a lot harder to track.”

  “And she could ditch the car for something else later on.”

  “She could be heading for Mexico. She had wanted Larry to get himself set up there as soon as possible,” I said.

  “That could have been part of her plan all along. Throw suspicion off of herself and then make a run for it.”

  “Any idea where a junkyard is?” I asked.

  Zoey took her phone back and started tapping through a series of screens. “I only know of one.” She remained focused on her search for a couple of minutes before adding, “Yeah, there’s just one in the area. Outside of town, past the interstate.”

  She put her phone away and started her car’s engine.

  I pulled my phone out and stared at it. I teetered on what to do.

  Zoey and I were on our way to catch a killer. But catching bad guys was Brad’s job. Plus, he had a gun. Neither Zoey nor I had a gun.

  But I also knew that we could be wrong. Lara might not even be at the junkyard. I didn’t want to look foolish.

  Cringing, I blew out a dee
p breath and then typed out a message. I hit send and then tightened the car seat around me. “I let Brad know we’re going after Lara.”

  “Bold move,” Zoey said, looking me up and down. “Want to sit this one out? Let them handle it?”

  I thought of Lara. I thought of my ex-husband Dan. Then my mind filled with images of what they had done together. “No way. If anyone’s going to ruin her life, I want it to be me.”

  Zoey put her car into drive, and we were off. We drove through traffic lights, past people shopping, and past parking lots until the little town fell to leave us surrounded by forest, grassy fields, and a lot of nothing. Then almost out of nowhere, a line of corrugated metal appeared, creating a fence only a few inches off the road. Zoey slowed and made a sharp left through the open gate. In that instance, the world I knew fell away to surround me instead with a dystopian wasteland.

  “I can’t believe this place is out here. I would have never known.” It was huge. I’d been to the Mall of America once. This place wasn’t that big, but I could easily imagine it being half as big. There was the fence behind us and the gate we entered through, but other than that all I saw was junk. Towering piles of it. I couldn’t see the other side of the junkyard. The fence was swallowed up by it in every direction. “There’s no way we’ll be able to find her in here.”

  “There’s the manager’s trailer,” Zoey said, pointing.

  I looked in the indicated direction, then stepped to the side in order to see around the edge of a volcano-shaped pile of tires. “No way,” I said when a trailer came into view. It was well kept and had a cultured yard of designer rock and pristinely manicured miniature evergreens. It was downright picturesque.

  We started walking in its direction. When we were almost there, a disembodied voice materialized out of the sky. Pick your deity of choice, preferably one with a presumably deep voice. It came from everywhere and nowhere.

  “State your business,” it intoned.

  “Uh,” I said looking around us and seeing no one. “We’re here to see the Wizard of Oz?”

  “State your business,” the voice intoned again.