A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  I was tired. The lack of sleep from the night before and all the things that had happened during the day, including—big grin on my face—all the customers we had, were weighing on me. Nowhere near as many visitors as all the likes I’d gotten on my posts, but it was a start. And my marketing magic hadn’t dried up yet. I had more tricks up my sleeve.

  I pulled up one of the stools from the back to the entryway so I could see customers when they came in, and eased down onto it. I really needed that plexiglass to come, then I could see through to the front without sitting in the middle of the floor. The email response the vendor had sent me said early next week. That was disappointing. I just wanted it to get here. You’d think by now I’d be used to delays.

  Maisie, with earbuds, sang softly as she worked. And Wilhelmina, I’m sure thanks to skills learned from her time as a Walmart greeter, was great with the customers. She insisted that she was fine, so I pulled my feet up to rest on the rung of the stool and let out a sigh. I tried to prop my weary eyes open just enough to see out of them. On top of my no-sleep-steady-stream-of-customers day, just being around Maisie and my mother could zap anyone’s energy. They were always buzzing around and into something. Watching them could make anyone tired. But it seemed like Maisie had wound down some. Even her talk of British shows and murderous restaurant owners had dissipated.

  I was just starting to put up the ice cream when the chime went off over the door. Wilhelmina was taking care of two customers. Thought I’d better give her a hand.

  I tried to blink away the sleepiness in my eyes and put on a cheerful smile. “Welcome to Crewse Creamery,” I said, stifling a yawn.

  “Hi,” the woman said. She walked over to the dipping case and peered inside, a smile appearing on her wide, round face. “I’ve heard rave reviews about your ice cream,” the woman said, looking up at me. “It looks delicious.”

  “Would you like to try a sample or two?” I said.

  “May I?” she asked.

  “You sure can. We have a trio of seasonal favorites, but I think you may enjoy this one.” I thought I might have had her pegged. Grandma Kay always knew what to offer a newcomer. I scooped her up a taste of Decadent Chocolate in one of the pink sample spoons.

  “Try this,” I said.

  “Oooh, chocolate,” she cooed. “I love chocolate.” She wrapped her lips around the spoon and her small, wide-set eyes lit up. “Oh boy,” she said, putting her fingers up to her lips, mulling the ice cream around in her mouth. “I have never tasted chocolate ice cream this good. It’s smooth, and creamy and . . . Oh. So. Rich! It has to be bad for me.” She dragged her teeth across her bottom lip. “But I don’t care. I just want more.”

  “It’s Decadent Chocolate,” I said.

  “It sure is,” she said.

  “No.” I laughed. “That’s the name of it. Decadent Chocolate.”

  “Ohhh,” she said, giving her cherry-colored lips one last once-over with her tongue. “That’s a perfect name for it.”

  She stuck her hand over the top of the dipping cabinet. “Hi, I’m Clara Blackwell.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Blackwell.” I shook her hand. “I’m Bronwyn Crewse,” I said. “But you can call me Win.”

  “Win it is,” she said, and gave a firm nod. “You’re just the person I was looking for. And you can call me Clara.”

  “So, Clara, would you like two scoops? A pint?”

  “Actually, I’d need more like a few gallons.” She waved her hand in the air as if it was going to be an endless stream of ice cream.

  “Gallons?”

  “This is going to be really short notice, I know,” she said. “The other place we booked had a problem getting their ice cream.”

  “We won’t have a problem,” I said, not even knowing what she needed yet.

  “I had to come out this way to take care of some business and I heard you make your ice cream here.” She turned her head and looked out the corner of her eye. “I had to see for myself. Is that true?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and pointed toward the back. Oh, how I wished for my plexiglass window right about now. “I make it most every day.”

  “Wow,” she said, delight dancing in her eyes. “You don’t order it and have a big refrigerated truck drive it to you, do you? Because that’s the problem we had with the company we booked.”

  “Why? Did something happen with their refrigerated truck?” I asked.

  “It broke and it wasn’t going to be fixed in time.” She hunched her shoulders and held her hand out. “How do you only have one truck if you want to stay in business?”

  I puckered up my lips and shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well it won’t be open for long, not with how they take care of business, I can guarantee that,” she said. “But you don’t use those, right?”

  “No. No refrigerated trucks used here,” I said. I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “We make it all by hand.”

  “And you don’t pour a premade mixture of flavored milk into a big churning-slash-freezing machine? Because I’m not looking for slushy ice cream either.”

  “We start with fresh, whole products. Most locally grown.” I pointed to the tray of vanilla bean ice cream. “The vanilla used in that was grown in the Village Community Garden.”

  “The one around the corner?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The person that runs the garden, Maisie, put in a greenhouse. We’re able to get some of our products from them even at this time of year.”

  “Professor Kaye told me that, and I didn’t know if it could be true. That you made everything right here. And that you go to local farms all around Ohio for your ingredients. He highly recommended you.”

  “Professor K?” I questioned. I was trying to keep up with the conversation. “Are you talking about someone from Wycliffe University?”

  “Yes, I work there.”

  Wycliffe was a local university, the next suburb over. I started thinking that it would be a great place to market our wares.

  “I don’t think I know a Professor K,” I said, “but we’ve had lots of customers from there over the years.”

  How could I have forgotten about the college right down the road? I made a mental note to do some marketing at the school. Maybe whatever Clara Blackwell wanted me to do would get that ball started and get our name out around the campus.

  “He’s at the law school,” she said. “I’m sure you know him, he certainly knows you. Morrison.” She wrinkled up her face. “Oh! You probably just call him O.” She nodded. “I forgot, that’s what his friends call him.”

  “Oh. O,” I said.

  “You do know him, right?” Concern flashed across her face.

  “Um, yes,” I said. “I do. I know him. He was just in the store today playing backgammon with my grandfather.”

  Striking up a conversation with a guy in a soup line might not have been such a bad thing to do. But him stalking me is a different matter . . .

  “And you can help me?” she asked.

  “I’m sure we can,” I said. I was holding my breath that that statement was true. Could I really be able to provide what she wanted? “When do you need your gallons of ice cream?” I joked, half of me wanting it to be true, the other half not so sure.

  “I’m the dean of student affairs, the chaplain for Gamma Phi Pi sorority and the chairperson for this year’s President’s Dinner.”

  Good lord, I hope she doesn’t need ice cream for all of those things. At least not all at once.

  “And as our mascot is a polar bear, I was thinking that the theme should be frosty and festive.”

  “For which event?” I asked. Doing a quick analysis in my head, I knew there’d be more students during a student affairs event, and a lot of high-wheeling benefactors at a President’s Dinner.

  “I though
t about setting up a malt-slash-milkshake station.” She was still talking. “A sundae station and maybe even a banana split station might be fun.” She had taken a breath reciting her laundry list and hadn’t answered my question, so I tried again.

  “For which event?”

  “I see you already have a soda fountain. Is it portable?” She stood on her toes to peek over the dipping case. “It’s adorable. Does it work?”

  “Yes, it does.” I stopped asking her questions. I figured she’d get to the point sooner or later.

  “Or we could go classy and do cakes. Do you do ice cream cakes?”

  “Yes. We do a variety of ice cream cakes.” I had said the words out loud, but they didn’t really mean anything. What I had was Grandma Kay’s recipes for ice cream cake, not the actual cakes. I didn’t even have a display freezer for any.

  “Maybe even ice cream pies.” Her mind was moving faster than the blades on my mixer.

  “All of that sounds yummy,” I said. “We can do just about whatever you need.”

  “Good,” she said. She pulled her hand away and placed it over her chest, then blew out a breath. “You are a lifesaver.” She gave me a megawatt, all-white smile.

  I thought I’d try again. “When is the event?” Maybe a different question would elicit an answer from her.

  “That’s the thing,” Clara said. “With such short notice, the other vendor pulled out.”

  “The delivery disaster.” I had already heard about that.

  “Yes. The delivery disaster. I could have just marched over to their store and choked someone.” She made the choking motion with her hands, gritting her teeth. “Seems like they’d have some backup plan, doesn’t it?”

  “You would think,” I said. I figured I’d agree with her until she told me what I needed to know.

  “But I guess it might have been for the best.” She shook her head. “I’m sure I would have let them go anyway if I had found out first.”

  “Found out what?” I asked.

  “There’d been some shake-up in management. Shady dealings and all that may have reflected badly on the school. And in hindsight, I think that may’ve been the real reason they pulled out.”

  I nodded while she talked.

  “Still, they got their comeuppance for backing out so close to our event.”

  “Without the choking on your part?”

  She chuckled. “Oh, heavens yes. I wouldn’t do anything like that. Couldn’t. It just isn’t in my nature. But my assistant . . .”

  “That’s a different story?” I finished for her.

  “Yes!” she said. A glint in her eye. “She pulled out her phone and left a few choice words to let people know and a one-star rating that will hurt them way more than me going over to inflict any bodily harm.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Online?”

  “Yes! Online!”

  “She left them a bad review, huh?”

  “Scathing,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll make anyone else think twice before they book that company for anything.”

  chapter

  SEVENTEEN

  Winter hours for the shop were not in effect with Clara Blackwell in the store. It took nearly twenty minutes for her to tell me what she needed and that was after a fifteen-minute discussion about Felice being a real cat. It seemed Clara had a stuffed one when she was a child. Felice couldn’t take it anymore and sashayed out mid-event-info discourse, as did Maisie. She promised to come back the next day if I needed help, though. Felice left no indication when she’d return to her window seat perch.

  I had popped in the back to get a pad and pen and found Maisie packing up to leave. She told me she was thinking about quitting Molta’s. She couldn’t fathom working for a murderer.

  I didn’t have time, but I knew I’d have to have a talk with her to convince her that Ari wasn’t a murderer and that there hadn’t even been a crime committed. And, I thought, I should probably see if I couldn’t encourage her to stop watching those British sleuth television shows.

  Maisie wanting to be an amateur sleuth to solve an undetermined death surprised me. She never wanted to fix anything. If something was broken, she’d say not to use it. Whether it was a sink, the banister at her house or a clock, repair wasn’t an option. Now she wanted to fix something that wasn’t broken.

  I closed up shop after getting Clara out. Nicely. Didn’t want any one-star scathing reviews from her or her assistant. I put the ice cream in the freezer, even though I’d decided I would replace most of it the next day. I dusted, mopped the front and back of the store, and wiped down the dipping cabinet and countertops before bundling up and heading up the hill to walk home, humming the entire time. All my thoughts were on the big event I was going to do at Wycliffe, and that made me feel good. Professor Kaye, although I hoped he wouldn’t show up again so soon, had gotten me more exposure than my tweets.

  It was only when I got as far as my parents’ house that I realized I had driven to work that morning. I stopped, turned around and looked back down the hill. Did I want to go back and get my car?

  No, I decided. But I was going to stop and let the family know about the catering job we’d gotten. I turned and cut through the neighboring lot to go around to PopPop’s. I wanted to tell him first.

  The walkway and stoop in front of PopPop’s place was shoveled and salted. I was sure he’d done it himself. He always wanted to make sure that we knew he could take care of himself.

  I knocked at the front door. There was no answer.

  I glanced over at the three-car garage. PopPop rarely drove anywhere. Like me, he enjoyed walking. I probably picked that up from him. The car being there wouldn’t have meant he was at home, so I skipped looking inside the garage for it.

  I stepped off onto the grass and crunched through the snow to peer into his front room window. The curtains were drawn and there was no light from inside peeking through.

  He had left the shop abruptly and I didn’t know why. He’d been hanging around all day and then, poof! He was gone. Every time the bell jangled on the door to the store, I looked up, expecting him to walk back in.

  Now he still wasn’t around. And I had good news.

  I doubted if he was in my parents’ part of the house—he’d rather people come to him—but I decided to check anyway. I hadn’t seen my mother since before lunch and I was excited to tell her, too, that we’d not only gotten a few more customers in, but that I was going to be a party planner. She’d love that.

  I came around to the back door. I remembered that I wanted to put the gloves my mother had given me back into the cubby in case I ever needed them again. I’d know right where to find them. Today, I had remembered my own.

  I came out of the mudroom into the kitchen, but it was eerily quiet. I looked around. Pots sat on the stove. The cutting board had yellow and red peppers partially diced. It looked as if someone had been in the middle of cooking and had been interrupted. My parents took late-night snacks to a whole new level.

  I heard voices toward the front of the house. One was familiar, but not one that belonged to our house.

  As I came down the center hall toward the front, I realized who it was.

  Detective Liam Beverly.

  What is he doing here so late?

  “Where were you last evening?” the detective was asking.

  Detective Beverly’s presence made me nervous and I didn’t want to interrupt. I pressed my back up against the wall, and tried to still my hastily spent breaths so I wouldn’t be heard.

  “That depends on what time you’re asking about.” My father didn’t seem as rattled by the detective as I was.

  “Before seven p.m.”

  “I was at work,” my father said.

  “And you weren’t anywhere near your family’s ice cream shop?”

  “I was there,” my father said.
“I arrived after you did.”

  “You saw me?” the detective asked.

  “I did.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “My daughter, Wi—” my father paused, seemingly hesitant about saying my nickname. “My daughter, Bronwyn, called and asked that we come down. She told us what happened.”

  “She did.” That was my mother’s voice. It sounded just as calm as my father’s.

  My chest was rising and falling like a yo-yo. My father hadn’t come with my mother. He didn’t arrive until later and hadn’t been dressed the same as he had when he’d left for work that morning. I wondered if he was going to mention that to the police . . .

  “How long had you known him?” the detective asked.

  “I didn’t know him,” my father said.

  Known who? Who are they talking about?

  “You didn’t know Stephen Bayard?” the detective responded, his voice threaded with disbelief.

  Stephen Bayard . . .

  Why did that sound familiar?

  “Not personally, no,” my father said. I could just picture him there with his arms crossed across his chest. He could stay calm under most circumstances. I, on the other hand, was starting to sweat bullets.

  I didn’t know what Detective Beverly was after, but the whole conversation was making me queasy.

  “He was a menace,” my mother said. No spit or fire in her voice, she spoke matter-of-factly. That was unusual for her. “No one around here cares what happened to him.”

  “Let me answer the questions, Ailbhe,” my father said.

  “I may have some questions for you as well, Mrs. Crewse. I hope that’ll be alright with you, Dr. Crewse.”

  I didn’t hear a response from either one of them.

  The detective sounded more official than he had the night before or when he’d come into the shop earlier in the day. “It’s interesting,” he said, his words coming out slowly, “that your wife knows him, Dr. Crewse, and you don’t.”

  Neither one of my parents said a word.