A Food and Wine Club Mystery Boxset Books 1 through 5

by Cat Chandler

  “Huh. No wonder he kept the stamp down here.” He pointed to the humidifier in one corner. “Temperature controlled.” He walked over to the nearest wine rack and started pulling out bottles and reading their labels before pushing them back into place.

  Skirting past him so Ben and Sam had room to join them, Nicki sidestepped around the card table and went to stand next to the chief. He motioned for the two stamp collectors to descend the last few steps and join them in the cramped space.

  “This is where you two and Eddie would come and have a drink and talk about stamps?” The chief gave them a skeptical look. “Not as inviting as the corner bar.”

  “But so much more secretive and mysterious.” Sam’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “And we got a free meal.”

  “Best burgers in town.” Ben walked forward and leaned a hand against the back of one of the metal chairs. “The sheet of stamps was always out and in the center of the table whenever he felt like showing it to us. We never saw where it came from.”

  “Not a lot of places to hide something down here,” the chief said.

  They all looked around the cramped room. Except for Matt. He was still busy pulling out bottles and then shoving them back into place.

  “What are you looking for, Matt?” Nicki craned her neck to watch what he was doing.

  “I’m not sure,” Matt threw out over his shoulder. “I’ll let you know if I find it.”

  Only the sound of bottles sliding in and out of the wine racks bounced around the walls of the basement as they all stood and waited, while Matt slowly made his way around the room.

  About halfway through all the wine racks, he pulled one bottle out and held it in his hands, staring down at the label. He set it on the floor and pulled out a second bottle that was nestled in a spot next to the first one. He looked at the label and nodded, then pulled out a third and a fourth. Nicki walked over and picked up one of them then glanced at Matt and smiled.

  “Bottled in 2013. The same year the Jenny stamp was issued.”

  Matt nodded. “It’s the only 2013 wine I’ve found. The rest are only a year or two old.” He glanced over at the chief. “Like you said, there aren’t a lot of places to hide anything in here, except behind the wine.”

  When he had nine bottles lined up on the cement floor, he took a small step back. “Okay. That’s it. All the other bottles around these are more recent.” He bent over and peered into the empty niches with Nicki leaning over his shoulder. “A flashlight would be helpful.” He reached into his back pocket and grabbed his cell phone. After tapping out a few keys, a light came out of its back. He handed it to Nicki. “Point this in here.”

  Nicki aimed the flashlight where he’d indicated and held it steady as Matt took a good long look before he reached an arm in and pulled out the wooden pieces separating the niche.

  “These have been cut through, and there’s something tucked in the back.”

  Everyone leaned forward as he tugged a square object through the now enlarged opening. He carried his prize over to the card table and placed it in the center, face up. It was a plain, square case, with four prongs mounted on the inside.

  “It’s empty.” Sam’s statement fell flat into the silent room as they all stared at the case with the glass front. “We just saw the stamps. They were here last week.”

  “Is that a fact? I don’t recall you mentioning that until just now, Sam.” The chief raised a questioning eyebrow at the stamp collector.

  “I didn’t think it was important. I wouldn’t believe in a million years that anyone besides the three of us knew those stamps were even in this room, much less be able to find them,” Sam said.

  “I saw them last week, too,” Ben volunteered. “And I agree with Sam. It never crossed my mind. I mean, who would think to look behind the wine bottles? Who would have known what wine bottles to even look behind?”

  The chief pointed at Matt. “He did. So someone else could have figured it out too.” He looked at the empty case. “Or the killer may have gotten Eddie to tell him.”

  Ben gasped. “Are you saying that poor Eddie was tortured, and once he told what he knew, he was killed?”

  Nicki leaned closer to Matt’s ear. “Ben has a very vivid imagination,” she whispered.

  Matt grinned. “I can tell.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Ben,” Chief Turnlow said. “I didn’t see any signs that Eddie had been tortured. We’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report before we know for sure, but I doubt it.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I’ve seen that before.”

  The chief looked grim as he gestured toward the staircase. “Let’s go.”

  They trooped back up to the main dining room and then, at the chief’s insistence, out the front door. Once they were in the open air again, Nicki took a deep breath. Eddie may have liked his little wine cellar, but she certainly wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time down there.

  “I’d appreciate it if you two,” the chief paused and pointed at Sam and Ben, “would follow me down to the station so we can chat for a while longer?” He looked over at Nicki and Matt. “And you two should go home. Find something else to do besides talk about murder. It isn’t healthy.”

  He nodded at them and put his hands into his jacket pockets before turning on his heel and walking toward his cruiser.

  Nicki looked up at Matt. “Nice work, Dr. Watson.”

  Matt laughed. “Elementary, Sherlock. Although I think that’s usually Sherlock’s line.” He gazed after the chief. “So what would you like to do? Something healthy?”

  She followed his gaze and watched Chief Turnlow climb into his cruiser. “I’d like to go back home and update the murder board.”

  “Something unhealthy then. Okay, Sherlock. Let’s go talk murder.”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  “How did you know that was Sherlock’s line?”

  Nicki slid half of the thickly sliced and grilled sandwich onto the plate in front of Matt, and the other half onto her own. He took in a deep appreciative sniff before grinning at her.

  “That looks and smells amazing, what’s in it?”

  She leaned her elbows on the counter and rested her chin on her raised hands. “Bread, cheese, turkey and apple butter. Do you want me to write out the recipe for you?”

  Matt picked it up and admired the cheese dripping over the sides of the thick slices of bread before taking a big bite. Closing his eyes, he chewed slowly, making a humming noise in the back of his throat. “If the kitchen renovation Maxie did helped you to cook like this, I might pay for another one.” He looked around. “What else do you need?”

  “Nothing,” Nicki laughed. “And for your information, Mathew Dillon, I cooked like this before Maxie had the kitchen redone. Now I’m just doing it in the new surroundings.”

  “A happy cook is a better cook.” Matt took another huge bite of his sandwich.

  Nicki eyed the last bit of her creation that he still held in his hand, amazed he’d managed to down the whole thing in a couple of bites. Especially after he’d nearly burst at the seams from eating hamburgers all morning. Shaking her head at how much food Matt could consume, she silently switched her plate for his. He looked at it and sighed.

  “You need to eat that. You hardly eat much anyway, and haven’t had anything since breakfast. And that probably was one bite of a muffin and a cup of coffee.” He glanced at her coffee maker. “Although you do make really superior coffee.”

  She smiled at the sincerity in his voice. “I make really superior everything and paid a lot of money to be sure I could. Culinary school wasn’t cheap.” She leaned forward again on the counter. “And I did have something to eat at the diner. I tried that last hamburger that you and Jenna declared the winner.”

  Matt grinned. “Actually, Jenna said it was better than Eddie’s, but close enough to get by. I didn’t have any idea if it was close or not. I just thought it was good.”

  “And you couldn’t eat another bite,” Nicki laughed. “You�
��d both turned green.”

  “Well, I had a lot more bites than the single one that you bothered to take.” He shoved the plate with the half sandwich toward Nicki.

  She pushed it right back. “Think of it as a bribe.”

  Matt eyed her suspiciously. “Bribe for what? And if you’re using a food bride, it’s probably something I’m not going to like.”

  “I only want you to answer the question.”

  “What question?”

  Nicki’s mouth twitched at the corners. Matt was clearly stalling. “How did you know that ‘elementary’ was more Sherlock’s line than Watson’s?

  A faint red stain crept up the editor’s cheeks. “That? Everybody knows that.”

  “Not unless they’ve read the books, or at least seen one of the Sherlock Holmes movies, which you told me you hadn’t.” Nicki’s eyes sparkled with amusement as the red on Matt’s cheeks got deeper. “Did you do something incredibly sweet by reading a book that I told you about?”

  “I read a lot,” Matt mumbled. When Nicki continued to smile at him, he sighed. “Okay. I did pick up one or two.”

  “And which one or two would that have been?” Nicki asked sweetly, enjoying how adorable he looked when he was clearly embarrassed to be caught in something so innocent as reading a Sherlock Holmes novel.

  “A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four.” Matt shrugged. “I thought I’d try them in order.”

  “It’s a good thought.” Nicki pointed to the sandwich. “I’d say you earned that.” When he shook his head, she reached over to her knife block and pulled out one of the smaller ones. She cut the remaining sandwich in half, picked up one piece and pushed the plate back to Matt. “Here, we’ll compromise.”

  He looked at the quarter sandwich and then back up at her. “Compromise in a relationship is always a good thing.”

  Nicki blinked. Relationship? As in friends? But the tone in his voice and the look in his eyes wasn’t saying “friends”.

  The sound of her front door opening echoed down the short hallway to the kitchen.

  “Hey? Saw your car out front. Where are you two?”

  “Brace yourself,” Nicki warned in a whisper before raising her voice. “We’re in the kitchen, Jenna.”

  In the next second the door slammed shut, rattling on its hinges, and was followed by the slap of flip-flops hitting the floorboards. Jenna appeared in the doorway, dressed in her usual attire of tight jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. Her long kinky hair was pulled into an unruly ponytail at the nape of her neck.

  “Why didn’t you call when you got here?” She spied the sandwich and gaped at Matt. “You have got to be kidding me?”

  Matt grinned. “I’m a growing boy.”

  “Who apparently can eat his weight in food every twenty-four hours,” Jenna shook her head before switching her gaze to Nicki.

  “Well? Did you find the stamp?”

  “No. Unfortunately we didn’t.”

  “Yoo hoo? Nicki, dear, are you here? Your door’s wide open.”

  “Now all we’re missing is Alex and Ty,” Matt observed. He picked up the quarter sandwich and downed it in one bite.

  Nicki rolled her eyes at Jenna then walked around the large island, intending to intercept Maxie and make a detour into her office. “We’re coming your way, Maxie. We were about to start updating the murder board.”

  “Splendid. I’ll meet you in your office.”

  “Okay.” Nicki looked back over her shoulder. “Are you two coming, or do you need more to eat?”

  Jenna made an abrupt about-face and followed Nicki while Matt stepped into line behind her. By the time they’d reached the office, Maxie was there with one hand holding a black marker poised over the large whiteboard.

  Making her way to her desk, Nicki took the office chair and swiveled around to face Maxie, while Jenna settled herself on the small sofa. Matt chose to lean against the edge of the desk, next to Nicki.

  Maxie beamed at the two of them and then looked over to smile at Jenna. “So? How did the hamburger mix experiment go this morning?”

  “Great,” Jenna said. “We have a winner. Suzanne is going to order the meat we need, and whatever else was on Jake’s list, and we should be ready to open tomorrow.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Maxie exclaimed. “My Mason called an hour ago. He’ll be home the day after tomorrow. They went further up the coast than they’d originally planned. I told him Paul wanted to talk to him, and he wasn’t concerned at all about it. He said he’d call the chief and let him know about the delay. My Mason even said that talking to Paul would give him a chance to find out the inside scoop about what was going on.”

  Nicki smiled. Maxie calling the Soldoff Chief of Police by his given name of “Paul”, was a good sign that myMason had managed to rid his wife of her anxieties. And with Jenna back to slamming doors and throwing good-natured digs at Matt, everything was returning to normal. Well. Except for the dead diner owner, the missing stamps, and a murder that was making less and less sense to her.

  “So, do we have anything new?” Despite the depressing topic on the board, Maxie’s voice held a decidedly cheerful note.

  “They didn’t find the stamp,” Jenna said.

  Maxie’s face fell. “Oh, that’s too bad. I’d hate to think Eddie was murdered for money.”

  “What do you think he should have been murdered for? Hey!” Matt rubbed the spot on his arm where Nicki had delivered a solid poke with her fingernail.

  “Ignore him, Maxie. He’s on food overload.” Nicki pointed at the board. “The missing stamps should go under motive. Whoever took it was very neat, and knew something about valuable stamps. The stamps, and the special sleeve they were in, were removed from their case which was put back into place behind the wine bottles.”

  Matt raised a hand and rubbed it across his chin. “That’s true. Most thieves would have left the case out after grabbing the stamps and the sleeve.” He frowned. “And they knew the stamps were valuable. I didn’t. I had to check it out online while we were waiting for the chief and Nicki to find the key to the wine cellar.”

  “Where was it, by the way?” Jenna asked as Maxie wrote on the board.

  “In the file cabinet, under Holland Wine Club.” Nicki nodded at her friend. “Jake was waiting in the hallway once for Eddie to get the key, and he heard the file drawer open and close. Which was very strange.”

  “Why is that, dear?”

  Nicki shrugged. “Because the rest of the office was sort of trashed, but the file cabinet didn’t look as if it had been touched.”

  “So the killer must have known where the key was,” Jenna said triumphantly. “Who knew that?”

  “Jake knew about the wine cellar and generally where the key was, but he didn’t know much about the stamps,” Matt said. “Eddie never told him about them, other than saying they had a plane on them.”

  “Or so he says,” Jenna declared.

  “Yes, that’s true. But Roberta knew about the cellar and the stamps, but not where they were, or where the key was hidden,” Nicki added so Maxie could note it all on the board. “And she called it ‘a stamp’. She didn’t know it was a whole sheet, so I’m guessing she’s never seen them. She also thought Eddie kept the stamp and the key hidden in the apartment.”

  “But Ben and Sam knew about the cellar and that the stamps were there, but not exactly where they were hidden, or where to find the basement key.” Matt dropped his hand and looked over at Nicki. “But they did know the value of that sheet of stamps.”

  “And the bookkeeper might have known, but we haven’t had the chance to talk to him yet. He told Maxie that he was too busy to meet with us until tomorrow. Which is also very strange,” Nicki said.

  “Why is that strange?” Jenna asked.

  “He can’t be delayed because of his business,” Maxie chimed in from her place in front of the board. “He doesn’t have many clients. At least not in Soldoff.” She shrugged at Nicki’s questioning look. “H
e’s a nice mild man, but has never had much energy for building his business. He prefers to sit on his porch or stroll around the square. It wouldn’t surprise me if Eddie was his biggest client.”

  “Then he’s not showing much interest in what happened to his biggest client,” Nicki pointed out. “That’s why he’s going on the list.”

  Maxie turned around and started writing, although Nicki smiled when her landlady put the “nice and mild” Gordon Twill at the bottom. Even below Sam and Ben, who Nicki knew Maxie liked very much.

  “So what we’ve learned is that no one knew all the pieces to be able to steal the stamps.” Matt smiled at Nicki. “Is there anything else, Sherlock?”

  “Indeed there is, Watson.”

  Jenna groaned. “Maybe we could cut down on the cuteness and get on with listing out the clues?”

  Nicki laughed. “Certainly. So murders are either about money or relationships or simply for the thrill of it.” She smiled at Maxie’s stare. “I’ve gleaned that much from reading mysteries all my life.”

  “I don’t think this was a thrill killing,” Jenna said slowly. “At least I hope it wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t,” Nicki assured her. “Otherwise the apartment wouldn’t have been torn apart along with the office.” She glanced over at the board. “What we know is that Eddie was either attacked or killed in his office and then put into the freezer. And that the killer took his apartment key and his cell phone.” Nicki started ticking off points on her fingers. “His office was neatly searched, and his apartment was very violently ransacked. Eddie didn’t like to spend money, but he did have a valuable sheet of stamps. The stamps are missing, and the wine cellar wasn’t broken into, or look as if it had been searched. Eddie also had an oddly distant relationship with his long-standing girlfriend. At least he didn’t seem to tell her much. And according to her, they’d recently broken up.”