A Berry Cunning Conman: A Laugh-Out-Loud Cozy Mystery (Kylie Berry Mysteries Book 4)

by A. R. Winters

  “Oh…” She turned her attention to Joel and me. “Um, he made the women laugh a lot. He was real expressive, telling stories. The women, they kinda seemed in awe of him. Looked like they were having the best night they’d had in years.”

  That was all good information, but it didn’t point us in a direction of where to go with the case. We needed more.

  “Do you know what they talked about?” I asked.

  Tammy’s gaze shifted up, like she was searching the heavens for the answer. When she had it, she focused on me. “He talked about world events a lot. Stuff that was happening with oil or what Europe was doing with green energy. Oh, and while I was serving dessert, he talked one woman into going out with him again. He wanted to take her to Tandoori Nights, out on the other side of town.”

  “Do you remember what the lady he was with looked like?” I asked.

  “Mmm,” she scrunched up her face. “Older than him. A lot older. Blue hair.”

  “She had blue hair?” I asked, surprised. It sounded like a style choice a much younger woman would make.

  “You know, like a rinse. My grandma used to use one. She had white hair, and she’d put a rinse on it to brighten it up, but it would end up looking kind of blue.”

  We thanked Tammy and Joel got another big, lingering hug from Marla before we headed on our way.

  As soon as we stepped outside, the bright sun I’d loved so much earlier felt harsh on my eyes.

  “Do we know where we’re going next?” Joel asked.

  I texted Zoey and gave her an update. I told her about the woman with the blue hair.

  Zoey texted back, “One sec,” then wrote back, “Found her. It’s Calista Jones. Agatha mentioned her.” My phone tinged with Calista’s address a moment later.

  I flashed Joel with the lit face of my phone. “Found our lead.”

  Chapter 20

  Sitting inside the cab of Joel’s old truck, it took thirty-five minutes to drive to Ms. Calista Jones’. That included stopping for directions twice, directions like “turn left at the dogwood that’s gettin’ ready to bloom” and “drive past the fillin’ station, then take the lane with the pond next to it.”

  Through it all, I had two burning questions in my mind: How did Joel know Marla, and what was the nature of their relationship? I was teetering on the fence about whether or not I actually wanted to know the answers. I liked Joel. It was fun. I enjoyed it, and I didn’t want to stop enjoying it.

  And I didn’t know what I was getting so upset about. I certainly didn’t have the right. Joel was an incredibly handsome man. It stood to reason that he would have had his fair share of romantic interludes. I had no idea why Marla possibly being one of those interludes bothered me so much, but it did. It just did.

  Finally, I took a breath, and when I let it out, I let it form whatever words it wanted to. “So you and Marla…”

  Joel chuckled. “I wondered how long that would take.”

  I rolled my eyes, glad that he was focused on the road and unable to see my childish response.

  “I used to date Marla’s older sister,” he said. “Marla will forever be her younger, really cute and super flirty younger sister, but nothing else.”

  “Ohhh…” I hadn’t expected that answer.

  “Her sister died, by the way. Marla’s really only got herself. Tough as nails.”

  So much information was coming at me so fast. Marla didn’t have any family to fall back on, she’d lost a sister, and Joel had lost someone with whom he’d been romantically involved.

  “I’m, uh, sorry,” I said. I didn’t know what kind of sentiment would be enough. Had Marla’s sister been somebody he’d gone out on a few casual dates with or was she the missing great love of his life?

  “It’s okay. A lot’s happened since.” He looked at me when he said it, and he looked for so long that I got nervous that he might drive us off the road. But then faced forward, and I was once again left scrambling to figure out the appropriate thing to say.

  A gas station came into view, and I jumped on it a little overeagerly to fill the void in our conversation. “The, uh-uh, the ‘fillin’ station. We’re almost there.” Sure enough, less than a minute after passing the station we came to a driveway that was indeed a lane. It stretched the length of a football field to a two-story country home with a huge, brightly painted red barn to the side. A tractor was parked outside the barn, and it had a contraption hooked to its back that I couldn’t even begin to name or describe. All I could say is that the thing looked like it belonged in a giant’s kitchen, for use when he wanted to cut fresh pasta sheets into noodles.

  Joel parked, and we went up to a side door off from the house’s garage rather than go around to the front of the house. I thought it was odd but there was a well-worn welcome mat right in front of the door.

  Joel opened the screen door and knocked on the solid door behind it before letting the screen door close back into place. The inner door opened a moment later. Standing where it had once been was a woman slightly taller than me. She was stocky and looked sturdy. There was nothing frail about her, despite looking as though she was in her late sixties to seventies. She wore a floral cotton dress paired with sensible loafers. And, as promised, on top of her head was short, curly, blue-tinted hair that I was sure would be otherwise white.

  “Yes?” she said. “If yer sellin’ something, you can head on. I’m not interested.”

  “Mrs. Calista Jones?” Joel asked.

  “Who wants to know?” she asked.

  “My name is Joel Mullen. I’m Nick Mullen’s nephew.”

  “Oh, well hello,” Calista said. Everything about her changed. Instead of looking ready to grab a broom and chase us off, she smiled and leaned her head forward at an angle. She had time for us now. “I knew your uncle, or rather my husband did. They got drunk one night when they were boys, up in the hayloft of Gerald Smith’s old barn. They’d gotten themselves some smokes and ended up burning the thing down.” Her smile had deep, arching wrinkles at the corners of her laughter-filled eyes.

  Joel’s laugh was out loud and not just in his eyes. “He told me a thing or two, but he never told me that.”

  “Come on in,” Calista said, pushing open the screen door that had separated us, and we followed her through her large kitchen and into her living room. Her kitchen could have housed a small New York apartment, but her living room was a little smaller. It had a couch along one wall and then another couch facing it that was backed by an enormous window that looked out over a gigantic front yard. A coffee table sat between them.

  Joel and I sat on the couch with our backs to the wall, and Calista sat across from us.

  “I buried Thomas just a month after you buried your uncle,” Calista said. “I was glad to hear you took the paper over. I was afraid it’d get shuttered up. People need their jobs, and they need news they can trust.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I totally agree,” Joel said. “I worked a long time learning the business from my uncle. I was sad to have to take it over so soon, but I was glad that I could.”

  “He was a good man,” Calista said.

  “Yes, ma’am. He was.”

  “This your wife?”

  “No, ma’am, just a good friend. She’s Sarah Bradley’s cousin. She took over Sarah’s café when Sarah moved ‘cross country to get married.”

  “Oh.” Calista’s gaze looked me up and down and her lips thinned. There wasn’t even the hint of a smile.

  I thought about asking if she was friends with my ex-aunt Dorothy—who lived to bad mouth me—but decided it was best to leave it alone.

  “What brings you two out this way?” Calista asked. It was clear that the formalities were done. Everybody knew who everybody was, and now we were getting down to the business at hand.

  “We heard that you knew Morgan Bleur,” Joel said.

  Calista’s expression changed. She looked as though she’d just bitten into something sour. “What happened to that poor boy,” she
said, shaking her head and leaning on the armrest beside her. “Nobody deserves what happened to him.”

  “It was awful,” I said, testing the waters to see if she would be warm to anything I had to say. She didn’t shoot me any dirty looks, and I took that as a promising sign.

  “Calista,” Joel said, “I don’t mean to offend you, but it’s come to our attention that Morgan had been making investments on behalf of some of the folks he met through the shoe store he worked at. We were wondering if you were considering having him invest some of your money.”

  “I did give him some money to invest for me.” Then she added under her breath, “Won’t be seeing that again.” She didn’t seem personally heartbroken that Morgan had died.

  “Mind me asking how much you gave him?” I asked.

  Her gaze shifted to me, and it was so intense that it made me want to hold a mirror up to reflect it back at her. If one of us was going to be turned to stone, I’d much rather it be her. “I do mind. It's none of your business. I don’t discuss my finances with my children, and I’m not discussing them with you, either.”

  I tried again. “It’s just that he got money from some other women, too.”

  “Well that’s what investors do, innit? They get money from people and invest it. Why shouldn’t a woman invest her money? Why should it only be men making money off of what they already have?”

  “You’re right,” Joel said, scooting forward to sit on the end of the couch. He rested his elbows on his knees. “You are absolutely right. Women should invest. Women should take charge of their own financial future. And I’m sorry we’ve taken up so much of your time, but if you could humor me, please, could you tell me if Morgan took you to dinner at Tandoori Nights?”

  Calista threw her hands down on the couch. “Well for Sam blazes!” she exclaimed, exacerbated. “Now you want to know about my dating life, too!” She shook her head. “Kids nowadays. They think they got the right to know everything.”

  To say that we left soon afterward doesn’t quite do our exit justice. Joel did his best to make nice on our way out, but I still felt the wind at my back when Calista slammed the door shut behind me.

  Standing outside, Joel shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets. “Well, that went well.”

  I looped my hand through his arm and started us walking back to his truck. “Oh, I don’t know. I think we did pretty good. Calista might hate us, but she still told us that she had given Morgan money. And… she insinuated that her relationship with Morgan had become romantic.”

  Joel gave me a side glance out of the corner of his eye. “How do you get that?”

  “You asked Calista if she’d gone to dinner at Tandoori Nights with Morgan. She didn’t give you an answer, but she did get super upset about being asked, and people don’t tend to get upset about something that means nothing to them. What’s more, when she responded, she’d used the word ‘dating.’ You hadn’t used that word. That was her word, and it’s one that implies romance.”

  Joel was smiling now. “So you think that she did go to Tandoori Nights and that Morgan had started turning up the charm.”

  “I do. And what’s more than that, I think that she’s gotten some flack about it from somebody else. Her reaction to us asking was so strong. I got the feeling that her being upset was some blowback from a fire that somebody else had lit.”

  Joel opened the passenger-side door of his truck, and I hopped up inside of it. But then he lingered, standing in the opening of the door. “No wonder you get keep involved in all of these homicide cases, Kylie. You’re good at it.”

  I started to demur, but Joel didn’t give me enough time. Instead, he leaned in and kissed me right on the cheek… oh so close to the corner of my lips. My heart burst into a hundred butterflies and flew away, leaving tingles in their wake.

  Chapter 21

  I was still walking on cloud-nine two hours after I’d gotten back to the café. I couldn’t stop smiling. Thankfully Jonathan simply smiled with me instead of prying into what had me so happy.

  Jonathan had done great during the lunch service without me. He’d sold out of the spaghetti with meatballs and he’d switched over to improvising eggs made to order, served with sausage, toast and jelly. He’d listed the dish on the Oops Board at a discount so that customers wouldn’t mind so much that eggs were all we had to offer as a late lunch, and he’d been afraid I’d be upset about that. Instead I’d been thrilled.

  Together we got the dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, caramelized onions, and peas ready to serve. Having done most of the prep that morning, finishing things off was a snap, especially with Jonathan’s help.

  The mashed potatoes turned out a bit bland and the peas were a little mushy, and the caramelized onions cooked down so much that there wasn’t going to be enough for everyone, but they were delicious. I listed the dinner on the regular priced board, but I did have some day-old cupcakes, and I listed them on the Oops Board at a discount.

  “Jonathan, will you be okay here on your own?” I felt silly even asking it, but I didn’t want to make assumptions. I needed to head over to the local mega store and stock up on things for the café. I was doing my best to emphasize never-frozen options, and that meant going to the store on a pretty regular basis. I hadn’t gotten so bold as to emphasize local grown yet, but I was eyeing a local butcher shop and I was considering starting a garden on my building’s flat roof. But those weren’t solid ideas. They were more “hmmm, maybe…” ideas.

  “Yeah, boss. Good as rain!”

  He’d been waiting outside for me when I’d come downstairs to start the day, and he was still here. I had never had anyone tackle a whole day with me before. It made me want to cry, and this was only Jonathan’s second day.

  “I’m going to head to the store to get some things for the café. Know of anything we need? Are there any dishes that you consider your specialty?”

  “Oh no, boss. Not me. I’m just a chop and wash guy.”

  I already knew that wasn’t true. He’d done everything from cooking to mopping the floors. He was an everything guy.

  I rummaged around the kitchen, making a list of things to get, then called a cab and headed out. Two and a half hours later I was checking out of the mega store, You Name It—as in you name it, it had it—while wrangling three large carts, stuffed to the point of heaping. The bill made my heart beat erratically, but the café was doing well enough that I had the funds to cover it all.

  It felt odd to be so “wealthy” while being so very, very poor. Everything the café made went back into its operational costs. Now on top of the costs that I already had was the new cost of Jonathan’s employment, but he was worth it. Even in his first two days, the work that he had done had earned the café money. He was well on his way to covering the cost of his own employment and he was keeping me from having a mental breakdown or being hospitalized from exhaustion.

  And yet the store’s huge name, emblazoned everywhere I looked—YOU NAME IT—felt like a hammer on my senses, reminding me that I needed to move forward with renaming the café. It was no longer Sarah’s Eatery. It was my eatery, and I had the terribly cooked food, rampant fatigue, and the dishwaterchapped hands to prove it. But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. I didn’t have the time or energy to figure out how to do it, and I didn’t have any extra money to pay the necessary fees.

  I’d have to stick with using Sarah’s Eatery a little while—or lot while—longer.

  Outside, night had fallen, and I tried not to shiver against the chill. I hadn’t replaced my coat after it got set on fire—with me still in it. I used it as a blanket now, but I didn’t want to be seen walking around with huge holes scorched into my clothes.

  With a cab on its way, I slow-walked my three carts down the gently sloping sidewalk to the far corner. We’d have a lot to load and this spot would be out of the way of the steady flow of in and out traffic of shoppers. When I’d reached the corner, I had to park the carts at a cross angle to the slope to
keep them from rolling off. Of course, that didn’t stop a huge, round jug of bleach from doing just that. It hit the ground like a runner, its roll picking up speed because of the sloping parking lot.

  “No you don’t,” I said, abandoning my carts. But two steps into my chase, the explosive sound of twisting metal, breaking eggs, and thudding produce froze me in my tracks, and the swooshing air of a car whipping past nearly knocked me off balance.

  I turned in a circle with my hands up protectively near my head, but by the time I got turned around there was nothing to see except for my destroyed basket of goods. A burst bag of flour had dusted me, the air and everything around a ghostly white.

  In the distance, driving toward the back of the You Name It, I could just make out the outline of a car. Barely. It didn’t have its lights on—and it wasn’t using its brakes. In fact, I was pretty sure it was speeding up, and the squeal of its tires confirmed that it had taken a turn at the back of the store at high speed.

  Tires screeched to a stop in front of the sidewalk, jerking my attention away from the retreating car.

  “Lady, you okay?” a man asked as he jumped out of his car. He had his cell phone in his hand, and he was already dialing. “I saw everything. That guy—whoever that was—they would have hit you if you hadn’t stepped away from your baskets. They plowed right into you! Had to jump the curb to do it! I’m calling the police…”

  “No, no…” I didn’t want the police. I wanted to salvage what was left of my purchases, go home and crawl under my blanket coat. So someone tried to kill me. Big whoop. I’d add their name to my growing fan club and cross-stitch them a pillow… as soon as I figured out how to cross-stitch. But I did not want the cops. I didn’t want to see that look of hurt and frustration in Brad’s eyes when he learned that I was once again putting myself in the line of danger.

  “Hello? 9-1-1? Yes. I just witnessed an attempted hit and run. Injured? Hang on…” He turned to me. “Are you hurt?”