“Talk me through what you saw this evening.”
So, I did. From the moment I’d walked downstairs for the cupcakes to the argument with Sherise and the thumping afterward.
“And this Sherise is staying at the inn?” Crowley asked.
“Yeah, on the second floor. I can show you to her room if you want to talk to her.”
“Hmm.”
“But, Detective, I don’t think it was her. The noise I heard came after she’d left.” Granted Sherise could’ve poisoned Darling and then gone up to her room, the thump afterward coming only when the poison took effect. But that seemed far-fetched.
“You don’t think it was her?” Crowley asked. “Think what was her?”
“You know…”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, Detective. I’m not an idiot.” Although I had a penchant for getting into trouble. “You’re here after Darling collapsed, and you wouldn’t be unless you had reason to believe there was foul play, right?”
Crowley didn’t answer. He removed a notepad and pen from his pocket and scribbled down something, flipping the cover up so I couldn’t make out what it was.
“Did you see anyone else around the library this evening? Before or after you found Mrs. Gould?”
“No one,” I replied.
So, Crowley wanted to play coy with me. Pretend he was just here covering bases? I didn’t buy it for a second. Someone had murdered Darling Gould.
A rich, famous woman like that? Suspects would abound. People motivated by money and greed, or power and jealousy.
What about the husband? There’d been a lot of tension this afternoon between him and that younger British guy, Brixton. And hadn’t Sherise said Brixton was currently involved with someone?
What if it had been Darling?
“Detective,” I said, “I’m sure Georgina will furnish you with a full list of people staying at the inn, if you want it.”
“I’ll ask her,” he nodded.
“So, this is a murder investigation.”
“I’m not at liberty to say yet. I’m, uh, doing my due diligence, Miss Smith. You do the same.”
Oh, so I’m back to Miss Smith, am I? Interesting. “And how might I do that, Detective?”
“By staying out of whatever happened to Mrs. Gould. If I have questions for you, I’ll be in touch, and if you think of anything else that might be relevant,” he said, raising a finger, “think of, not find, call me. I don’t need interferences.”
“Since when have I ever interfered in your investigations, Detective?”
Crowley snorted then got up and thanked me for my help. And then he was off, out into the hall to find his next “victim.” Ironic given the situation.
Brian materialized next to me a second later.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing and everything,” I replied, eyes narrowed at Detective Crowley’s back.
6
The following morning…
“I’m so sorry this has happened, Georgina,” Lauren said, from her spot in front of the oven. It was off since the baking of the cupcakes had ceased the minute Darling had passed. We weren’t sure whether Gerry, the husband, would hold her memorial service at the Gossip Inn, or if he’d pay for the cupcakes.
My grandmother sat at the worn kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. Despite her sadness, she was composed in a black turtleneck sweater and a matching pair of jeans. She wore pearl earrings, her gray hair perfectly curled.
I’d always thought my grandmother could give Helen Mirren a run for her money in the looks and grace department.
“I’ll get through it,” Georgina said. “I’m just so…”
“Sad?” Lauren suggested, wiping her palms off on her apron.
“No,” Gamma replied. “Well, yes, of course I’m terribly sad Darling is gone, and in such a horrible fashion, but the emotion I feel now is on the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m furious.”
I leaned against the wall nearest the kitchen doors, occasionally peeking through the porthole windows and into the dining area. It was empty, but the lunch service was in an hour and a half. I’d be interested to note who attended, who was upset, who wasn’t. Darling must’ve had enemies.
“—Darling would have wanted, Georgina?” I caught the tail-end of Lauren’s question.
“Darling was a vengeful creature,” my grandmother said. “A woman after my own heart. If I had been murdered, she would’ve moved mountains to find out who’d done it.”
And she’d have found out a lot she didn’t want to—like the fact that my grandmother was a spy, and her only enemies were men so powerful they curled the toes and sent terror through the heart.
Not that I ever wanted to think of my grandmother hurt or gone.
“What are you suggesting?” I asked.
Gamma’s gaze was shrewd, and she swept it toward me. “That I simply can’t sit back while the detective does his achingly slow work.”
“I like Detective Crowley,” Lauren said, stifling a yawn. Her baby was with a sitter.
“It’s not about liking the man,” Gamma replied. “It’s about having someone else control the fate of something you care deeply about.”
“But, Georgina, he’s qualified for the job.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”
I cleared my throat. This conversation would go nowhere fast. Lauren didn’t understand how qualified Gamma was, because she’d been kept safe from that truth. Georgina Mission’s history at the NSIB made Detective Crowley’s training look like a weeklong bootcamp. She’d tracked the worst of the worst. Enemies of our country.
And if she wanted to figure out what had happened to her good friend, well, I was more than happy to help her.
My selfish motivation being that I couldn’t stand another week of quiet nothingness at the Gossip Inn. And if Gamma cared, I cared.
“We should probably get started with lunch, right?” I smiled at Lauren. “What’s on the menu for today?”
“I wasn’t sure if everyone would be here,” Lauren said, softly, brushing her fingers over her apron. “You know, I think folks are upset about what happened.”
“It’s lucky we’re permitted to stay open,” Gamma put in.
Detective Crowley had sealed off the library and told us the forensics team would be done soon—we’d have it back by the end of the week—but for now, we could keep the inn open as long as not a soul touched the library door.
Gamma wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Lauren gave a little sigh. “I’m thinking something light and flavorful.”
“Cupcakes,” I suggested. “We have loads of them.”
“For dessert.” Lauren opened the drawer that held her special recipe book and placed it on the counter. She flipped through it. “Ah! I know. Crumbed mushrooms. Panko crumbed mushrooms.”
“That sounds great.”
“With a tartar sauce.”
“Delightful,” Gamma said.
“And we’ll do chicken fried steak on the side for those who want something heavier. With French fries.” Lauren’s face had lit up with the talk of food. Hungry or not, nothing made her happier than cooking meals for the inn’s guests. Nothing apart from baking cupcakes for them.
My happy place was eating everything she created.
“Sounds divine,” I breathed.
“Charlie, could you go out to the Shroom Shed?” Lauren asked, removing the special ornate key she kept close to her heart at all times. She handed it over, reverentially.
“Sure.” I tucked it against my palm.
The Shroom Shed was Lauren’s personal project. Hidden beneath the inn, right next door to Gamma’s weapons stash, not that the chef knew it, the Shroom Shed held all the varieties of mushrooms one could imagine.
“I need five dozen button mushrooms,” she said. “Only the biggest ones, please.”
“Back in five.”
I left my grandmother and Lauren in the kit
chen, happy to be out in the afternoon sun, even if it was chilly out here. It was better than obsessing over what had happened to Darling. Or was it? Shoot, I’d prefer to obsess over that than the lack of communication from Special Agent in Charge Grant about my ex-husband.
The path that wound round the inn, past its side and toward the sheltered back with its overgrown bushes and trees, settled my mind.
If Gamma wanted to investigate this, I’d be right there alongside her.
And if Brian didn’t approve, he couldn’t report me to our boss if Grant wasn’t even answering the phone.
I reached the basement’s storm doors, unlocked the decorative lock on the front, and descended into the gloom. The Shroom Shed waited to my left, drawing me in with the smells of moist soil. The quiet of this place, deep under the inn with its noisy and chaotic goings on, was a relief.
I unlocked the Shroom Shed then stepped onto the tiny path inside leading between the beds of shrooms on either side of it. I grabbed the flashlight from next to the door, switched it on, and searched for the little sign that read “button mushrooms.”
Shock stopped me.
There was nothing in the moist beds of soil.
Not a single mushroom.
No button mushrooms, brown mushrooms, or oysters. And the chanterelles that had taken Lauren years to grow? Gone.
“What the…?” I clicked the flashlight on and off again, as if that would rectify the situation.
This wasn’t possible. These mushrooms had been here two days ago when I collected a few for a mushroom sauce.
There was only one answer.
Someone had stolen them.
Lauren’s going to flip out.
7
If anyone would know what had happened to the mushrooms in the Shroom Shed, it was Brian.
I tried not to fixate on how ridiculous that sentiment was. A year ago, I wouldn’t have envisioned Brian doing anything gardening related, but he’d taken to his cover here at the inn—babysitting me—like a duck to water.
Or like a mushroom to a darkened, moist shed? Poor choice of metaphor, since the mushrooms were gone.
I traipsed round the corner of the inn, heading for the greenhouse to check in with him before I went inside and delivered the bad news to Lauren.
A flicker of movement from under the trees in the Gossip Inn’s expansive yard caught my gaze, and I slowed, frowning.
Two figures stood along the top of the embankment that led down to the creek.
One was a tall, handsome man, and the other a shorter woman, who occasionally tugged on the hem of her dress.
Callie?
The woman I’d settled into the inn yesterday—timid, blonde, and pretty, with milk-white skin and freckles. She was the one who’d asked me where Brixton was staying.
And that had to mean the tall dude, with his back to me, was Brixton himself. The handsome and in-control British fellow who’d linked arms with the star of the show, and murder victim, yesterday.
Didn’t Sherise say something to Callie about Brixton yesterday?
I cast my mind back.
Sherise, the battle-ax, had told off Callie about being interested in Brixton because he was already involved in a love affair.
What are they doing together?
Brixton stood stolid, glaring down at Callie, unmoving apart from an occasional tap of his foot.
Callie clasped her hands together, beseeching him and shuffling closer.
He took a step back, shaking his head, emphatically.
It was like something about of Pride and Prejudice.
What’s this about?
I had to get closer to them. Find out if they were up to something nefarious. Whatever it was, Brixton didn’t want any part of it. I glanced at the door to the greenhouse, but it was shut, and Smulder’s outdoor work boots were outside it. He wasn’t here.
The perfect excuse to do a little snooping.
Shoot, maybe it was Callie and Brixton who’d stolen the mushrooms. You don’t really believe that. Either way, I was curious.
I sneaked around the side of the greenhouse, bringing myself closer to the trees and into the shade.
Snippets of conversation drifted over, and I stilled, listening hard.
“—understand you’re upset, Brix, but I—” Callie’s tone matched her stance. Pleading. “—anything happen. You know—”
“—time for liars—”
“If you’d just listen to me, you’d see that”—Callie’s voice rose—“wanted the best for you. For us.”
“—no us. Never has been. Never will—”
“—don’t mean—”
Ugh, this is super frustrating. I can’t hear enough.
But even the briefest snippets of this conversation led me to believe that whatever was being said was suspicious. Callie’s attempt to convince Brixton she didn’t want “anything to happen?”
Intriguing.
“Please,” Callie continued, practically shouting it. “Just give me a chance to—”
Brixton’s reply cut across her words but was quiet.
I cracked my knuckles.
Brixton gave one last shake of his head, drawing his hand through the air in a gesture of finality then turned on his doubtlessly designer heel and walked off through the trees.
Callie stood frozen. A pretty, pale statue.
Show’s over, folks. Looks like—whoa!
Callie had gone red. She raised two fists and thrust them into the air repeatedly, punching. The legs followed. She kicked out and tripped over backward, landing heavily in the grass under a tree. She let out a frail cry then kicked her legs and pounded the ground with her fists.
“What in the name of all that is sweet and delicious?” I murmured.
The calm, timid Callie I’d met the day before, throwing a full-blown terrible-twos-toddler tantrum?
I was so stunned, I watched until she’d finished, half-worried it was a seizure and I ought to help.
But no. Callie got up, cheeks pink and eyes wild, then brushed off her dress and marched off toward the front of the inn, taking a course that followed Brixton’s.
“Looks like somebody’s got a temper.”
A figure I hadn’t noticed during the interlude stepped out from behind a tree. He wore a pair of thick brown gloves, and his fingers reached up and tugged on his hair, shifting it across his head. A toupee.
Gerry?
Darling’s husband?
He stared after Callie for a few minutes then walked off between the trees, shoulders sagging.
What on earth was going on with these people?
Callie and Brixton arguing, and now, the husband of the murder victim sequestered among the trees, watching it go down?
I made a mental note of it and—
“Charlie?” Brian spoke behind me.
I didn’t jump, even though he’d scared the cupcakes out of me. As he’d pointed out over the past couple months, I’d grown lax in the comfort at the inn.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Just enjoying the weather.”
“Right,” Smulder said, drawing the word out.
Darn it, why was it so difficult to lie to him nowadays? Not that I was big on lying—just that it wouldn’t be good for Brian to find out my grandmother was interested in the case. And that I wanted to help her figure out who had done it.
“Actually, I was looking for you,” I said, shaking my arms out. “I went to check out the Shroom Shed, and all the mushrooms are gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone. I wondered if you knew what happened to them?”
“No,” Smulder said, his tan forehead wrinkling. “No idea. Lauren keeps that shed under lock and key. The last time anyone went in there was… I think you? Or, no, wait a second, Lauren went in yesterday afternoon before lunch. I remember because she asked me to call her if she was needed.”
“And did you see anyone else around?”
“Nope. No one,” Brian
said, drawing his fingers over his frown. “That’s really weird. Bet Lauren’s not going to be too happy about it.”
“Those mushrooms are her pride and joy, along with the recipe book.”
Brian nodded. “Sorry I can’t be of more help.”
“No problem. I’ll talk to her about it.” Meaning I’d take the brunt of Lauren’s anger and sadness over the mushrooms. Could it be that Jessie Belle-Blue, my grandmother’s sworn enemy, had paid the shed a visit?
But how? And why?
I kissed Brian on the cheek, butterflies bubbling in my stomach, then headed for the kitchen door.
“Charlie,” Brian called.
I looked back over my shoulder.
“Don’t do anything that’ll get you in trouble.”
Shoot. How does he always know?
8
After receiving the terrible news about the mushrooms, Lauren had raged for a few minutes before coming back to her normally cheerful self for the lunch service. Instead of mushrooms, we’d prepared the chicken fried steak and French fries, served fresh-pressed coffee and green tea, and paired it all with the mint-chocolate cupcakes for dessert.
A full belly had improved our moods, and Lauren had left to check out the Shroom Shed afterward.
Man, it was terrible what had happened. Poor Lauren had worked so hard to grow those mushrooms, and someone had swept in and stolen them, right from underneath her nose.
“Who do you think might’ve done it?” I asked my grandmother, who was at the kitchen table, working out the details of the bill for the catering provided for Darling’s cancelled birthday celebration.
“Which crime are you referring to?” Gamma asked, tapping away on the calculator in front of her. “The murder or the theft?”
“Theft,” I replied.
“That, I’m unsure of. It’s mighty offensive that they did so right under our noses. Whoever it was didn’t get close enough to the front of my area to set off any alarms.”
The area Gamma was referring to? The armory she kept hidden underneath the inn.
“Head-scratcher,” I said, amiably.
Mint Murder (A Mission Inn-possible Cozy Mystery Book 5) Page 3
