A Deadly Inside Scoop

by Abby Collette

  “Okay. Go,” Maisie said, and gave me a push. “I’ll tell O what we know.” I could tell she couldn’t wait to do that.

  “Then I’ll call Liam,” O said.

  “It’s a plan,” I said with a firm nod. “Okay, then. Be right back.”

  * * *

  - - - - -

  I went out the stairwell door. My mind focused on getting to PopPop and back up so that we could call the detective and let him know who the real killer was and save my father.

  I didn’t even hear her come through the door behind me.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’ve been up to,” she said, her voice ricocheting, echoing off through the tight space.

  My foot, going for the next step, dangled in midair. My breath caught in the back of my throat. I turned and looked upward, right into Althea’s eyes.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to mask my fear. “You mean the desserts?” No way she knew I’d figured out what she’d done. “Yep.” I felt my throat tightening, my words barely able to eke out. “We did a lot of work.”

  “Don’t play with me.” Her lips barely moved when she spoke, her eyes cold and menacing.

  That was when I saw the steak knife in her hand.

  “Oh,” I said with a fleeting breath. Tiny balls of pain formed inside my forehead, trying to push through. They were making me nauseous and weak. My legs trembling, I felt my knees buckling. I held on to the rail to keep steady.

  “I—I have to . . . uhm . . . to meet my grandfather,” I said, and pointed down the stairs. “He’s waiting for me.”

  “Why? So you can tell him what I did?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. I eased down a step. “He has something for me.” I swallowed. “I—I wouldn’t . . . don’t have anything to tell him about y-you.” I pushed up against the wall, leaning on it for support, and took another step down.

  “Now you want to act as if you don’t know that I killed Stephen.”

  I gulped. “Y-you what?” I couldn’t get the words out. I shook my head so hard I felt my brain hitting the sides of it. “Please! I . . . I . . .”

  “Yes, be afraid,” she said. She took another step down. Calm. Measured. She taunted me as she got closer. “You shouldn’t have been snooping.”

  “I—I didn’t . . . wasn’t . . .” I sucked in as much air as I could so I could force my words out. “How could I”—I tried to speak above the pounding in my head—“think you did that when you were with Ari that night?”

  “I know you know I wasn’t his alibi.” She looked off for a moment. Distracted. “But he needs me. He’s in as deep as I am.”

  “He helped you k-kill . . . him?”

  “No! I didn’t need help to kill Stephen.” Then she smiled.

  Oh my God, this lady is crazy!

  “But Ari was the reason Stephen was back in town. Stephen wanted him to help him with a job.”

  I already knew that, but how that figured Ari in on the murder, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out. Get away from her. I used my hands to guide me as I slid down the wall, taking two more steps down. I needed to get to the first floor fast. It was the first door I could get to that was unlocked. I edged down one more step. Taking my eyes off her for only a second, I glanced down the stairwell. I still had three flights to go.

  “Take another step,” she warned, and jabbed the knife in the air at me, “and you’ll be sorry.”

  I was already sorry.

  Sorry I’d tried to figure this stupid thing out.

  I felt my bottom lip starting to tremble. Tears were welling up in my eyes and my breath was only coming in short bursts.

  She was going to kill me.

  I glanced up over her head. Back up the steps. Where was Maisie? Hadn’t she seen this woman come through the door behind me? Why hadn’t she sent help?

  “When did you figure it out?” she said, making me focus on her again. “When you saw me in the alley between you and the flower shop?”

  “The flower shop?” Oh yeah, that was when she’d told me about the alibi. She must’ve known then what I was doing. What we were doing. She was the one who’d broken into the shop. To get the drugs. The drugs she used to kill Stephen Bayard.

  “No,” I said, a foam of saliva forming around the corners of my lips. I cleared my throat. “That’s not when I knew.”

  She found that funny. I guess it was. I had just admitted that I did know. Surely, I wasn’t helping my own cause.

  “He wouldn’t have had to die. All he had to do was let me in on the job. But no, he laughed at me,” she said, her eyes seemingly reliving the conversation. “Said I had given him up after the LaGrosse job. Ratted on him.”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, trying to make nice with her, hoping she’d forget about killing me. I started clicking my nails.

  She frowned. “Stop that!” Her words filled with spite, she pointed at my hand with the knife.

  “Sorry,” I said, and balled my hands into fists. Hoping to placate her, I kept talking. “I read in the newspaper that you said you didn’t know anything about that robbery.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?” A creepy smile spread over her face. Then she took another step down. “And neither one of you would have had to die if you hadn’t tried to make me look like a fool.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, tears running down my face. “I don’t want to die.” I went down another step, ending up on the landing between flights. “I wouldn’t. I was just . . .” I swallowed again. “They thought my father . . .” I inched my way along the wall to the next set of stairs.

  “Yes, you did.” Her voice was so calm that it made me more afraid. “You tried to make me look foolish.”

  How in the world did I do that?

  “I knew I didn’t have to worry about that Maisie,” she was saying. “She’d never figure out anything.”

  She sure doesn’t know Maisie.

  “But you!” she shouted.

  My nail clicking went into overdrive.

  And that’s when she lunged. She vaulted over the railing, her knife slicing downward as she came. I shrieked and grabbed my arm. Bright red blood trickled down it.

  But, even with her managing to cut me, Althea had lost her balance when she jumped over the banister.

  It was time to run.

  Before she could right herself, I scrambled down the stairs, holding on to my arm, tripping over the steps, stumbling over my own feet. “No!” I yelped. “Help! Somebody help me, please!”

  I got to the second floor just when I heard her feet hit the stairs, but I knew that door wouldn’t open. Rushing past it, I ran into the wall and pushed myself off to get momentum to get down the next flight.

  I heard her hit the second landing and then I heard a thud! Then another and an “Umpf.” Something metal skidded across the floor and hit the wall.

  “Win!” I heard my name, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I had to get out. “Win!”

  I knew that voice.

  “PopPop?” I sobbed. I stopped and leaned against the rail, squeezing my arm. I tried to calm down. Is he really there? “PopPop.” My voice barely audible.

  “It’s me, Win.” I saw someone leaning over the banister. “Look at me!”

  “How?” I said. I’d started to hyperventilate. I looked up.

  “I hit her with the door. The door smacked her, then she smacked the wall. She’s out.” He turned away for a moment, then his eyes met mine again. “I’ll stay here.” He held up the knife she had brandished. “Go get help.”

  I looked at the door below me. A big “1” painted in black.

  My way out.

  “But . . .” I looked back up the stairs. “How did you know where I was?” I asked.

  “Some boy at the front desk told me the President’s D
inner was on two, and then I heard you scream.”

  Epilogue

  I didn’t need O to call that not-so-bumbling detective. The 911 dispatcher did it for me. He came so quickly to arrest Althea that she hadn’t even regained consciousness. EMS bandaged my arm, and that student who’d sent PopPop to the wrong floor got a lifetime supply of ice cream, compliments of Crewse Creamery’s founding father.

  Luckily, the dinner wasn’t disrupted. The rest of the night went off without a hitch. Ari kept on serving during the arrest like nothing had happened. If he was her boyfriend, he didn’t seem the least bit concerned about her fate.

  PopPop didn’t leave my side the rest of the night, even after all my jitteriness wore off.

  Our desserts were a hit. Of course. I passed out the business cards that PopPop had brought. They doubled as loyalty cards—another one of my fantastic marketing ideas—and I got so many promises that people would use them. Heck, it seemed like the entire campus was abuzz with praise for Crewse Creamery and my heroics, capturing a killer.

  They didn’t know Althea had captured me, and it was my grandfather who was the hero.

  And more good came out of it. One guy, who saw our minivan with a plastic sign on the side, offered his business card in exchange for mine. His name, company name and contact info were on one side. “Flip it over,” he said, nodding at the card. “I can get you a good deal.”

  We Make Food Trucks was embossed on the other side. “Nowadays you can’t run a food business without it,” he said.

  So says you and Maisie.

  I tucked his card safely away.

  The night was a hit, and that translated, in my opinion, to sales.

  Cha-ching!

  In the days that followed, things didn’t slow down.

  Noah Bean working two jobs—at Lakeside Memorial Clinic and Falls Park—was due to him taking care of his sick mother. That was the reason he didn’t date (but clearly he fooled around)—he didn’t want to get distracted from her care. But thanks to his using Riya’s number, he was fired from the clinic. Riya, feeling bad (yes, she does have a sweet side), made it her mission to make sure his mom got the medical care she needed. She started volunteering at Bobby’s clinic so Noah’s mom could be her patient.

  Danny Clawson, good man that he was, got Mrs. Keller a puppy. The cutest little dachshund. She named him Max Two and quickly corrected me when I thought she meant she was naming him that also. Two, she said, was part of his name.

  Maisie had to rethink her opinion about Ari. It seemed he may have done wrong in the past, but was now trying to turn his life around. Maisie said she’d consider reconsidering how she felt, but she wouldn’t ever step foot in that restaurant again, let alone work there, and she was serious about signing on with us permanently. That was fine with me. With all the business we’d soon have, I was going to need another employee at Crewse Creamery anyway.

  Jasper turned out to be Althea’s son, and she was who he’d seen when he went running off that night Stephen Bayard died. She’d lost him in the dark and snowy night, which turned out to be a good thing for him since she was on her way to a rendezvous with murder. Glynis had been a friend of Althea’s who had taken the boy in because she wasn’t a very good role model. With guardianship papers filed when he was still an infant, she’d been the only mother he’d known. I had to admit, all Glynis had been trying to do was keep the boy safe, happy and mentally stable. That puppy, Blake, she’d thought would be good therapy and she’d welcomed it when Althea gave him to her.

  Althea, aka Barbara Niven, was the wife interviewed by the detectives after the heist at the LaGrosse Warehouse. She’d been a good liar. The police officers had walked away from her none the wiser. And Stephen Bayard matched the profile of the David Niven the police in Franklin County had been looking for. How he’d gotten away without leaving any fingerprints was anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, when he was arrested a year later and spent time in prison, no one knew he was the one they’d been looking for.

  Just as Mr. Clawson had said, the pair had hidden their ill-gotten loot in the back of his store. And with it being vacant for so long, they just went in and out as they pleased, no one ever knowing they were in town, selling the drugs, as Maisie surmised, on the street and through the black market. They had free rein until an investigation into their drug vials being expired prompted them to lay low. Still, an expiration date hadn’t stopped Althea from using the drugs to kill Stephen Bayard. And being expired, per my father and the Cuyahoga County coroner, didn’t necessarily hinder a drug’s efficacy.

  Stephen Bayard had come back to town wanting Ari in on another job he was plotting to commit, but Ari refused to be a part of it. Althea, on the other hand, was raring to go. Only Stephen didn’t want her help. Seemed like she hadn’t been such a good wife during the eighteen months he’d been locked up—she’d gone through most of their stash without sending him a dime. But him excluding her just made her mad. Mad enough to kill. And, Detective Beverly told us one cold, snowy day when he came in for ice cream, for her, there was no coming back from that idea after Stephen Bayard took her puppy!

  Acknowledgments

  Without God, my keeper and my friend, I wouldn’t be where I am today. My mother, who keeps Him company, as do my sisters: I miss you much.

  I want to thank my agent, Rachel Brooks, who found me, and I’m so happy she did. I also want to thank the whole BookEnds Literary Agency team. They rock!

  And I couldn’t ask for a better editor than Jessica Wade. She helped me through this whole process with encouragement and helpful emails and phone calls. I appreciate her so much. Thank you. To my publisher, Penguin Berkley, thank you, thank you. I am so happy to be a part of the family. And I just love having a penguin in my book.

  I’d like to thank Dr. Alexia Gordon for her invaluable information on succinylcholine, how the emergency department is called the ED and not the ER by professionals, and how passing meds in the ED really works.

  And I want to thank the wonderful cozy mystery authors who read my book and gave a blurb: Jenn McKinlay, V.M. Burns, Sofie Kelly, Bailey Cates and Juliet Blackwell.

  As always, I want to thank my writing group, #amwriting, at South Euclid-Lyndhurst Public Library—Bernard, Rose, Molly, Melissa, Zach and Nicole—you guys are the best. And, of course, to Laurie Kincer and Kathryn Dionne, my friends and confidants through this writing journey—kisses, hugs and much love. And a special thank-you to Erin George. You set my feet on this path and I will always be grateful.

  Crewse Creamery

  ICE CREAM RECIPES

  For these recipes, you don’t need an ice cream machine. But if you do use one, be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions. And if you don’t have one, remember to use whipped cream to create a better texture. It’ll take a little longer for your mixture to freeze properly, but it’ll be fine. Just check on it every couple of hours and give it a good stir.

  Here are a few other tips before you get started:

  TIP #1: When it comes to the milk you add, embrace the fat content. Low-fat products don’t freeze as well, don’t taste as good and give the ice cream an icy texture. Always use heavy cream, whole milk or half-and-half.

  TIP #2: If you use an ice cream maker, never pour your warm (or even room-temperature) base into your ice cream machine. A base that isn’t chilled prior to going into your ice cream maker won’t freeze. The colder, the better!

  TIP #3: Don’t overfill your ice cream machine. Remember, liquids expand as they freeze, and if your machine is filled to the top, it will end up spilling over the sides. Fill it no more than three-quarters of the way full.

  TIP #4: Don’t over-churn your ice cream. The ice cream will start to freeze as it churns in your machine, but it won’t freeze to the right consistency. Churning too much will cause your ice cream to have an icy texture. Churn just enough until the mixture is thick, about the consistency
of soft serve, before transferring it to the freezer.

  Grandma Kay’s Snow Ice Cream

  1 cup milk

  ⅓ cup granulated sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract (store-bought or homemade)

  1 pinch salt

  8 cups clean snow (during the summer or in warm climates, just use shaved ice)

  Whisk milk, sugar, vanilla and salt together in a bowl until combined. Do not heat.

  When it starts to snow, place a large bowl outside to catch falling snow, or scoop up fresh, clean snow from the ground.

  Stir milk mixture into snow until the ice cream is fluffy.

  Freeze or dive in!

  Riya’s Upscale Cherry Amaretto Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

  1¼ cups milk

  2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

  1 cup sugar

  Pinch of salt

  2 cups heavy whipping cream

  3 cups fresh, ripe cherries, pitted and quartered

  ¼ cup amaretto liqueur

  1 cup dark chocolate chunks

  In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine milk, vanilla and sugar. Stir occasionally until the sugar completely dissolves. Take off heat and add salt. Allow to steep and cool.

  Whisk in the heavy whipping cream. Cover with plastic wrap and place in fridge about two hours, until completely chilled.

  Using an ice cream maker, add the chilled ice cream base according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Once the mixture has thickened, add the cherries and the amaretto. Continue churning until it is the consistency of soft serve, then mix in chocolate chunks and place in a freezer-proof container and freeze for at least two hours.

  Enjoy!

  Chagrin Falls Pumpkin Spice Roll Ice Cream

  ⅔ cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)