A Game of Cones

by Abby Collette

  I started getting ready for the day, walking around Aunt Jack, reaching over her head and avoiding even glancing at her mound of catalogs.

  She stood in the middle of the floor for a while watching me work, then started walking around inspecting everything. I didn’t know what she expected to find, but I knew if she found something she didn’t like, I’d hear about it.

  “Why is this cat always in the window?” she yelled from the front of the store. She acted as if she’d just noticed Felice. Hadn’t she seen her when we came in the door and I sat there on the window seat with her? “She doesn’t even look real,” she was saying. “You’ll probably scare the customers away with it. She needs to go.”

  I didn’t respond. Felice never left that window seat. Never bothered anyone. In fact, all the customers that even noticed her liked the cat, too.

  I sighed. The only one I thought that needed to go was . . .

  “I’m going to get breakfast,” Aunt Jack came into the kitchen and announced. I was sure we hadn’t been there any longer than twenty minutes. Already she was ready to go.

  I exhaled a sigh of relief. That made me happy.

  “Okay,” I said, smiling as sweetly as I could. “Have a good breakfast!”

  After she left, I went to the front of the store and turned on the jukebox. It sat on the far wall all red, silver and shiny.

  “You want a little music, Felice?” I said, crossing the room. “It’ll calm our nerves after our morning with Aunt Jack.”

  There were fake vinyl 45s that sat inside the glass front, and between songs, there was a clicking sound like the records were changing. But it was all preprogrammed. A customer couldn’t choose what they wanted to hear, just what I had programmed, and that was all Grandma Kay’s kind of music.

  There wasn’t a Pandora or music streaming in my grandma’s day. But there was always music. She used to bring a portable turntable and play her albums all day long. Customers always asked what she was playing.

  And she would always say music that was good for the soul. She loved jazz and rhythm and blues. And singers like Dinah Washington, Brook Benton and Ray Charles, and because of her, so did I.

  And my grandmother liked trying new ice cream flavors. She had a whole recipe box full of them. A box that my grandfather had kept hidden until I took over the ice cream shop. He said he knew my grandmother wouldn’t want anyone else to have them but me.

  Maybe Aunt Jack didn’t like the recipes my grandmother had come up with, or the jukebox I had installed to play her music. But I did. I liked everything about what my grandmother had done. She was still alive and smiling in my heart.

  And even though Mr. Mason might be going through some kind of mental health issues at the moment, I knew that what he said wasn’t too far off from what my Grandma Kay would have said if she was still around. Like he had said, my grandmother would have been proud of what I’d done with Crewse Creamery.

  I was always going to keep her memory alive in the ice cream shop she started, and Aunt Jack with her lottery machines and candy catalogs wasn’t going to change that.

  And as if in agreement, “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles came on the jukebox.

  “I hear you, Grandma Kay!” I said, looking upward. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  I busied myself with checking inventory, washing down the display case and pulling out the ice cream from the walk-in freezer.

  “Morning!”

  My mother came in the side door with Rory and PopPop in tow.

  “Hi,” I said and glanced at my watch. “That was a long cup of coffee.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “You know how your mother gets,” PopPop said. “She pulled out all of the family albums.”

  “Rory, sorry,” I said. “My mother made you suffer through my baby pictures.”

  “She showed her everyone’s baby pictures,” PopPop said.

  “No?” I said and looked at Rory.

  She nodded, saying it was true.

  “She enjoyed it, didn’t you, Rory?” my mother said.

  Rory looked at me and nodded again. Then she smiled.

  “It’s nice to meet one of your New York friends,” my mother said, not noticing the looks Rory and I were passing to each other. “I’m going to take her to my jitterbug class later. I’ve already told my instructor I am bringing a guest.” She pointed down at Rory’s heels. “But she’s going to have to get rid of those.”

  I laughed. “Rory had plans to go to the art gallery this morning,” I said. “Black Market Paper Fine Art. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “It’s okay,” my mother said. “My class is later this afternoon. She’ll have time to do both.”

  I shrugged. “I tried,” I said to Rory.

  She smiled. “It’s okay. I’m sure I’ll enjoy learning how to jitterbug.”

  “A talent you’ll probably use often in your life in New York,” my grandfather said with a smirk. “I’m going up front to my bench.” He held up his backgammon game. “I’ve got things to do.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Rory said. “I want to check on the catalogue raisonné I ordered.”

  “I thought you were looking for an online one,” I said, remembering that was what she was doing when she borrowed my laptop the night before.

  “No. I found a site for one, but it was unavailable online. Seemed to have been some kind of problem. I got to chat with a Becky, and she said she’d try and send me one. Funny, she said that I was the second person that called and asked to have one sent to this zip code.”

  “Others interested in the Florida Highwaymen?” I said. “That was good you reached a real person.”

  “Yeah, it was. And hopefully”—she held up her cell phone— “she’ll call and tell me she’ll be able to get one here in time for the sidewalk fire sale.”

  “A sidewalk fire sale?” my mother asked.

  “Yes, for some of the artwork at the gallery,” Rory said.

  “You didn’t notice the flyer in the window?” I asked my mother.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll have to check it out.”

  “Then,” Rory said, “I have to figure out how I’m going to get the money to buy something.”

  Rory walked out front with PopPop. I could tell my mother waited until they were out of earshot.

  “She doesn’t have money and she wants to buy something from Baraniece and Ivan’s shop?” She shook her head and turned up her nose. “They are expensive over there and what they sell isn’t even appealing.”

  “They’re having a fire sale.”

  My mother laughed. “There’s been no fire. They probably just realized that their stuff is so overpriced that no one is buying it.”

  “Maybe too much for us to afford on an ice cream shop salary, but she’s got a New York income.”

  “I remember what you made,” my mother said. “And unless she’s robbed a bank or killed a rich uncle, Rory won’t be going home with anything from that gallery.”

  chapter

  SEVENTEEN

  Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!” Maisie came barreling in through the front door of the ice cream shop. Late but excited. “Did you guys hear?” She stood on the customer side of the display case, bracing her hands on top of it—I think it was the only way she could stay still.

  “What is going on with you?” I said. My mother came over and stood next to me. Rory and my PopPop were seated at his bench. He’d talked her into playing a game of backgammon with him before she headed over to Black Market Paper.

  “Oh my goodness! They found a pair of bloody shoes.”

  “A pair of—”

  “In a dumpster. In the alley.” She didn’t let me finish, talking over me. “What a clue!” She was out of breath, her cheeks flushed, you would have thought she’d found a million dollars. “Now we know it had to
be a woman that killed Zeke Reynolds.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “And you don’t know that I don’t know that,” she said.

  I switched gears. “Are you the one who found them?” I asked. I knew it hadn’t sounded like that was what she meant. But I knew that she’d been talking about solving Zeke Reynolds’s murder, and I wouldn’t have put it past her to go dumpster diving.

  “You found shoes?” Rory got up from the bench, leaving in the middle of a game.

  “No,” Maisie said. “I didn’t find them.”

  “Then how do you know?” I asked.

  She ducked her head and cringed, pulling her shoulders together and crunching up her face. “I was kind of lurking around.”

  “Lurking around?” Rory said. She seemed concerned. “Where?”

  “I went to see the crime scene and there were people there.”

  “People?” I said.

  “You know,” she said, “the forensic team.”

  “Oh my,” Rory said, licking her lips. “Like on CSI?”

  “I don’t think Chagrin Falls has a forensic team,” I said.

  “I have to go,” Rory said, her voice shaky. She swiped a hand across her forehead and I could see it trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  Rory shook her head, but no words came out.

  “Are you okay?” my mother said to her and started around the counter to see about her, but Rory was already headed out the door.

  “And she takes off again,” Maisie said, like she was announcing a horse race.

  “Rory!” I called after her. “Rory!”

  “She’s gone,” Maisie said.

  “Look what you’ve done,” my mother said to Maisie.

  “I didn’t do anything!” she protested.

  “Maybe not to Rory,” I said. “But you’re going to get into trouble with the things you do.”

  “With who?” she asked.

  “Me, if you keep being late to work, especially if it’s because you’re snooping around in things that don’t involve you.” I hated sounding like the grown-up, but I did have to manage the shop.

  And to be honest, with Aunt Jack snooping around, it made me even more aware of my duties in running the place.

  “Detective Beverly—” Maisie began.

  “Oh, here we go again!” I had to chuckle. She was still convinced that Detective Beverly had asked us to help him investigate. I just couldn’t seem to make her understand that the police would not recruit amateurs to solve a crime. Yes, he accepted our help on the first murder, but not in the way she was trying to get involved. We’d given him information we had, but this time, like I’d told the detective, we didn’t know anything. And it seemed what Maisie had found out, she had found from sneaking around following the investigators. I jerked a finger toward the back. “Get an apron and come help me out. I’m swamped.”

  Maisie looked around. “There’s no one here.” She glanced over at my grandfather on the bench. “Except PopPop.”

  “It’s my shop,” PopPop said.

  “Customers will start coming in soon. I’m expecting a line out the door.” I said that so my mind could overcome Aunt Jack’s earlier statement about no one coming in. “And,” I continued, “if you’re not back here helping me, Aunt Jack will try to.”

  Maisie took to whispering. “Oh, is she here?”

  “She was,” I whispered back. “She hates my ice cream.”

  “Why?” Maisie asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “She hasn’t tasted any of it.”

  “She hated the window in the back, too,” Maisie said.

  “I know,” I said, disgust in my voice. “She hates everything.”

  “Everything except the idea of her taking back the management of the shop,” Maisie said.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Like her ideas and skills are so much better than mine. She even said we should go back to selling lottery tickets and candy.”

  “Oh no,” Maisie said, scrunching up her nose. “Did you tell her you put candy in your ice cream sometimes?”

  “I know. That makes no difference to her,” I said. “But this time I had buttermilk and tea. And per her that was terrible.”

  “She doesn’t like that?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “She says no one likes that. Brought in a bunch of catalogs so ‘we’”—I did the air quotes—“could pick out the stuff we needed to order to set it up.”

  “Ugh!”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Where is she now?” Maisie asked.

  “She went to get breakfast.” I rolled my eyes. “She hadn’t been here ten minutes, long enough to irritate me, before she left.”

  Maisie looked up at the clock. “How long has she been gone?”

  “Two hours!” I shook my head. “Where did she go to get breakfast? Pittsburgh?”

  Maisie chuckled. “I’ll get my apron.”

  I heard the jingle of the door as soon as Maisie came back out from the back. “Welcome to Crewse Creamery” was out of my mouth before I realized who it was.

  “Morning, O!” Maisie said.

  Morrison “O” Kaye was a law professor over at Wycliffe University and the first person to come in and buy ice cream after we’d opened in the midst of a snowstorm. He’d told us he’d gotten his nickname as a child because he was always saying “okay.” After I’d gotten to know him, I realized he still had that habit.

  And after his first visit, he’d been in the shop almost every day since.

  Like my grandfather, O came by the ice cream shop just to hang out. I didn’t mind too much, it was good business for customers to see people inside sitting down. My grandfather enjoyed his company, but of course, my mother and Maisie teased that it wasn’t the ice cream he liked.

  “Morning, you two,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He glanced over at the seat usually occupied by PopPop and nodded a hello to him. O had quickly made friends with my family and friends, but if he was hanging around fishing for something more from me, he was going to be disappointed. I had a business to run. Added to that, commissioning and overseeing my new food truck, I didn’t have time for anything else.

  He stood in front of the display case and, lowering his eyes, he studied what was inside like he did every time he came. I didn’t change ice cream that often, but like my father, he was thoughtful before making decisions.

  I liked that he was like my father.

  O wasn’t bad looking. Dark with skin as smooth as the chocolate I melted in my double boiler. He wore his curly black hair cut low. He was tall—nearly six feet—with deep-set brown eyes and teeth that were white and straight.

  He wore a bright smile always on display from the moment he walked in our door. But I wasn’t going to let that wear me down.

  “So, Maisie, you keeping up with the Zeke Reynolds murder?” O asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Detective Beverly asked me to help him.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was tired of arguing with Maisie about whether the detective wanted her help or not. Cable television shows with everyday kinds of people solving complicated crimes had already taken over and devoured any common sense or reasoning she had. Plus, O was good friends with Liam Beverly and an advocate of the rule of law. He wouldn’t believe that a legitimate law enforcement officer would recruit two girls from the local ice cream parlor to solve a gruesome crime.

  “You got your favorite sidekick working it with you?” O asked Maisie.

  “No,” I said, answering as the sidekick. “And I’m not her sidekick.” I heard a jingle at the door. “Welcome to Crewse Creamery,” I said and left Maisie and O to their conversation. While I waited on the steady stream of customers, she gave O a double scoop of
the mint mojito coffee with a squirt of chocolate syrup over it and talked about the shoes that had been found in the dumpster and how Veronica and Zeke had argued.

  Oh, I thought, not wanting to confirm by getting into the conversation. But now thinking Maisie must have been the one who told my mother about the fight at her grandmother’s restaurant.

  I shook my head. If gossip could solve a crime, my mother and Maisie would win a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for solving the most crimes ever.

  chapter

  EIGHTEEN

  I was sitting at my little makeshift desk in the kitchen, arms folded across my torso, and one leg on top of the other. I was supposed to be working on QuickBooks—doing invoices and expenses, busy backroom kind of work, but necessary if our little business was going to have a good standing in the business community.

  But my laptop’s screensaver had popped up at least a full thirty minutes ago. Hand perched on mouse, I stared at the bubbles bouncing around and tried to wrap my head around my friend’s erratic behavior.

  Rory.

  Something was definitely going on with her. She wasn’t her usual self. I had thought maybe it was because she’d gotten a demotion at her job. Or what she called a demotion because she couldn’t work with art anymore. When you’re unhappy with your job, it can affect so many other areas of your life. And someone would have to be very unhappy to travel over four hundred miles to try to woo someone back that had quit. That someone being me. She must be really desperate and maybe all those things were affecting her.

  She was acting so strange. She’d left in what seemed like a panic and, it seemed, for no apparent reason. All that was said was that shoes were found. But now mulling it over, I had noticed a pattern with Rory. And with Maisie’s news about those shoes being found in a dumpster, things were starting to come together. And not in a good way.

  “What are you doing?” It was Maisie. “Thought you were doing some office kind of work.” She pointed at my computer screen. “You’re not doing anything.”