The Smoking Bun (Apple Orchard Cozy Mystery Book 10)

by Chelsea Thomas

  “Do you think there was something more going on at the restaurant that could have motivated these murders?” Miss May asked.

  “I think it’s possible there’s an angle we haven’t considered,” I said. “Buck was a bad leader and a horrible boss. He left his job at Hudgens under unclear circumstances. And he’d already made a number of enemies at Land and Sea, including the owner. There’s no telling who else at that place might have wanted Buck dead.”

  Teeny snapped her fingers. “I bet an angry, murderous busboy snapped! He killed Buck because Buck was yelling too much. No. The busboy was in love with Rebecca. When the poor lovesick puppy found out that Rebecca and Buck had been romantic with one another, the kid snapped and killed Buck. Then he killed Rebecca because he knew he couldn’t have her, even with Buck dead.”

  “Is that from North Port Diaries?” I asked.

  Teeny shook her head. “That theory is all mine. Good, right? I’ve been waiting for an evil busboy to pop up in this town. Busboys are shady characters, the lot of ‘em.”

  “That’s a fine theory, Teeny,” said Miss May. “But what about that new chef at Hudgens? Seems like he already knew Buck was dead and played dumb.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “We never really talked about that. As soon as we brought up Buck’s death, that Hudgen’s chef got weird. And how wouldn’t he have found out about Buck’s death? Everyone learns everything immediately these days on social media.”

  “Maybe Buck’s big scandal started at Hudgens and followed him to Pine Grove,” said Miss May. “If that’s true, there could be a whole trove of suspects at Hudgen’s we haven’t considered yet.”

  “We’re already down in the city,” I said. “Should we pop back in to Hudgens?”

  Miss May nodded. “I think we should, yes. But this time let’s avoid the hostess and the chef. I want to go around the back, into the belly of the beast. Something tells me if we can talk to the servers and kitchen staff, they may be able to tell us everything we need to know.”

  47

  Alley Cats

  The three of us snuck down a dark alley toward the open back door of the Hudgen’s kitchen on our tippy toes.

  The sound of angry, heavy metal music blasted from inside the kitchen and sent a shock through my system. The pounding, heavy bass drum thumped in my temples. Squealing guitars raked across my brain. And guttural singing caused my fists to tighten. As we got closer to the restaurant, I felt as though my heart was beating in time with the music and my adrenaline pumped accordingly.

  Miss May crouched behind a dumpster a safe distance from the kitchen door. Teeny and I crouched behind her.

  “I love this music,” said Teeny.

  “You do?” I asked. “It’s heavy metal. It doesn’t seem like your vibe.”

  Teeny shrugged. “I’m surprised, too. But I think it suits my mood right now. I’m amped! I’m ready to go.”

  “Quiet down,” said Miss May. “Someone’s coming.”

  A muscular, bearded man emerged from the kitchen, opened the lid of the dumpster, and tossed in a hefty trash bag. When he cracked the lid of the dumpster, the fumes hit my nostrils and I coughed. The man must have heard me because seconds later, he was standing above us with his arms crossed like an angry prison guard.

  “Who are you?” The man had a thick Russian accent to match what I quickly concluded was a thick Russian beard. “Get up.”

  The three of us got to our feet. Miss May pulled an apple pie from her purse. “Hi. Would you like—"

  The big Russian snatched the pie, opened the container, reached in and grabbed a handful of the dessert like it was finger food. He shoved the pie in his mouth and the sides of his lips turned down in approval. “Not bad. You are here to sell desserts?”

  “Actually, we were wondering if you might know a friend of ours…” Miss May gestured at me with her head and I pulled a picture of Buck up on my phone. I showed the photo to the muscular Russian.

  “Ah! This man is so ugly. I hate his hideous face. He has beady little eyes and his beard is lackluster.”

  “Thank you,” said Teeny. “I’ve always said he’s ugly. He looks like a rat.” She caught herself. “Nice guy, though. Mostly.”

  “No. You were right first time. He looks like ugly rat.”

  I put the phone back in my pocket. “So you don’t recognize him?”

  The Russian man turned, spat and looked back at me. “Lucky me I do not know the ugly man.”

  Miss May took a gentle step toward the Russian. “Do you think we could show this picture to some of the other kitchen employees?”

  “Why?”

  “Um… Um…” Miss May stammered.

  “He’s my long-lost brother,” I said. “I did one of those genetic tests on the Internet and that’s how I found him. Crazy, I know. After conducting more research I learned that my ugly missing brother worked, for a time, in the kitchen at this restaurant. You might not have expected that we’re related because of his beady eyes and rat-like qualities and my comparably soft and sweet face… But make no mistake, that man is my brother. I want to know if anyone in your kitchen has seen him. Please. He’s my only family.”

  The Russian crossed his arms and looked me up and down. The weight of my ridiculous lie was heavy on my shoulders but I tried to stand up straight and look innocent and hopeful. It must have worked because the Russian invited us in with a grunt and a wave.

  Miss May accepted the Russian’s invitation into the kitchen but I grabbed her arm and stopped her before we entered. “We can’t just walk in there. Jeffrey is going to recognize us.”

  Miss May peeked inside the kitchen. “We’ll stay back near the dishwasher. Jeffrey won’t have any reason to visit that area. I think we’ll be able to fly under the radar.”

  I took a deep breath. “OK.”

  Seconds later, we were huddled behind an enormous, industrial dishwasher along with five nearly identical Eastern European men. The Russian explained my predicament about the long-lost brother to his co-workers, or at least that’s what I think he was saying, because he motioned for me to pull up the picture on my phone.

  I opened to the picture of Buck and handed it to the Russian, who then allowed the other men to pass the phone among themselves. One by one, each man looked at the photo, muttered something in Russian, shrugged and passed the photo on. Finally, the Russian returned the phone to my possession. “They do not know your ugly brother. My apologies.”

  “They have to know him,” said Teeny. “He worked here for a long time. If they don’t know his face, maybe they know his name.” Teeny took a big step toward the group of dishwashers and spoke at her maximum volume. “Buck Johnson. Buck. Johnson.”

  The men grumbled in Russian and shrugged, once more one after another, like they were doing the wave at Yankee Stadium with only their shoulders.

  The big bearded Russian stepped between Teeny and the other employees. “They do not know of the ugly brother. I already said.” The Russian’s eyes tightened as his nostrils flared. “Now stop harassing us. We are busy at work.”

  Teeny repeated Buck’s name once more, as loud as she possibly could, as though the volume of her voice would somehow change the truth of the situation. But she was a little too loud, because the sound of her voice lured Jeffrey toward us from deeper in the kitchen.

  “Hey!” Jeffrey said, pointing a finger at us. “What are you doing here? Stop badgering my staff.”

  Miss May widened her eyes. “Oh! Hello. Sorry. We just loved our meal here the other day so much we dropped by to thank these men for their hard work.”

  The Russian scrunched up his nose. “What about ugly brother?”

  I grabbed Teeny and Miss May by the wrists and pulled them out of the kitchen. “OK. Bye. Thanks for everything!”

  We emerged from the alley back onto a busy New York Avenue and I let out a deep exhale. “Oh my goodness, that was close. Teeny. You were yelling so loud. I didn’t know you could reach that decib
el.”

  Teeny shrugged. “I was inspired by that metal stuff. Those guys can really scream.”

  “You did a great job,” said Miss May. “We got some important information in there.”

  “How is that?” I asked. “None of those guys recognized Buck in the slightest.”

  Miss May waved my concern away. “Kitchen staff changes all the time. It’s entirely possible those guys never met Buck. But did you see the way Jeffrey reacted when he saw us? When he heard Teeny screaming Buck’s name? He freaked out. There must be something more to this restaurant and Buck’s position there than what we’ve learned so far.”

  “What we do now ?” I asked. “It’s not like we can go back and have another meal now. The guy hates us.”

  “We’re going to have a good, old-fashioned stakeout,” said Miss May. “Right behind our favorite dumpster.”

  Miss May skulked back toward the dumpster adjacent to the Hudgens rear entrance. Teeny and I had no choice but to follow, so we did. Then the three of us sat with our backs against the cold metal of the dumpster and waited.

  For the longest time, nothing notable happened. The bearded Russian took out a few more bags of trash. A couple of the other Russian guys leaned against the back door and smoked cigarettes while muttering in their surly native tongue. A server stepped out back to engage in an angry phone call with her boyfriend and called him a few choice names.

  Then someone zipped through the alley on a messenger bike and hopped off behind Hudgens. It was a man in his thirties wearing tight, cuffed jeans and a leather jacket.

  The man lurked in the shadows, pulled out his phone and fired off a text. A few seconds later, a busboy emerged from the restaurant holding a brown paper bag. The busboy looked both ways to make sure that he was alone in the alley. Then the bicycle messenger emerged from the shadows and met the busboy right beside the dumpster.

  “You got the stuff?” asked the bike messenger.

  “Two pounds. Just like you asked. But remember… You didn’t get it from me.”

  The bike messenger handed the busboy a generic paper bag, then the busboy disappeared inside and bike messenger road away.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Miss May. “But we better catch that bike.”

  I nodded, sprung to my feet, and started after the bike messenger. He turned onto the street and I lagged at least fifty feet behind him. But then the bicyclist got caught at a red light. I reached him just as the light turned green again. He began to pedal but I jumped out and tackled him sideways. It was not my most graceful move, but it was effective. We both crashed to the ground with a thud and the paper bag the bike messenger had gotten from Hudgen’s tumbled onto the sidewalk.

  “Whoa! You’re crazy, lady! What are you doing?”

  “I’m solving a murder, I think,” I said. “What did you just buy from Hudgens Restaurant?”

  “Baseball cards, dude! Relax. The busboy put an ad online. He said I had to meet him at work.”

  “Baseball cards. Oh. Really?”

  “Really!”

  The bike messenger grabbed the brown paper bag, shoved it into his backpack, and pedaled away. I watched him go, confused. Then Miss May and Teeny arrived at my side and I told them all about my altercation.

  When I finished, Miss May shook her head, skeptical. “I don’t think that guy bought baseball cards from Hudgens,” she said.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Miss May squatted down and gathered a few items from the roadside. “Because these are high end truffles. And I don’t think truffles grow in the streets of New York.”

  48

  The Trouble with Truffles

  Teeny snatched a truffle from Miss May’s hand, brought it to her nose and sniffed. The sides of her mouth turned down and she looked away, trying to stifle a gag.

  “There’s something wrong with these truffles,” Teeny said, choking out the words. “They smell horrible. And not just because they’re truffles. There’s something off. Why would that guy have paid for these?”

  Miss May shrugged. “Can I smell?”

  Teeny recoiled. “You don’t want to smell these. If you’ve ever trusted me in your life, trust me now. It’s horrible. Putrid.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Miss May insisted.

  “OK,” Teeny said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you as hard as I could.”

  Teeny held out a palm full of truffles to Miss May. Miss May leaned in and smelled. It was a long, deep whiff. I cringed. Then, Miss May turned away and coughed for a long moment.

  Teeny shook her head. “Told you so.”

  Miss May wiped tears away from her reddened eyes. “That’s horrible. Chelsea, you have to smell.”

  “No way.”

  “Come on,” said Miss May. “You can’t be the only one who wouldn’t smell it.”

  “You’re acting like a third-grade boy,” I said. “I don’t want to smell the nasty thing. Thank you very much. I want to figure out who killed our victims and why.”

  Miss May stepped out of the street and onto the sidewalk just as an angry cabdriver yelled expletives in her direction.

  “You have a nice day, too,” said Miss May. “Things like that really make me miss the city. Such character. Such passion, everywhere you look. We should come down more.”

  “I don’t know if I could handle running into that kind of passion every single day,” said Teeny. “I have a bit too much passion of my own.”

  A few angry pedestrians pushed their way past us, then Miss May led us over to a vestibule where we could talk relatively unmolested.

  “OK,” I said, once we were safely nestled in the vestibule, “who has a theory?”

  Miss May held up her hand like a kid in school. “I do.”

  “Share,” I said.

  “Buck got hired to turn things around at Peter’s Land and Sea. At first, Buck thought his Culinary Institute of America-approved cooking skills would bring in more diners. But he was wrong. He knew he needed something flashy and unique to convince the people of Pine Grove to give him a shot, and to attract diners from the city and the rest of the Hudson Valley region.”

  “Oh my goodness,” I said, realizing where Miss May might be headed. “So you think—"

  Miss May nodded. “Buck was buying expired truffles, meats and other ingredients from Hudgens at a discount and then serving them at Peter’s Land and Sea. He figured us country folk would be too stupid to tell the difference between quality ingredients and trash. And at first, it worked. All those fancy ingredients packed the restaurant. But things got more complicated when the patrons of Land and Sea began getting sick from Buck’s food.”

  “And you think Buck did all this behind Petey’s back?”

  Miss May exhaled. “He was the kind of man who didn’t like taking orders from a young restauranteur, you overheard as much when you were hiding in the dumpster that day. I would bet anything that Buck demanded total control of sourcing ingredients and budgeting at the restaurant, so I suspect Petey didn’t know a thing.”

  “I don’t know,” said Teeny. “Something about that theory doesn’t add up. Buck is this renowned, fancy chef. He was a star pupil at the Culinary Institute, remember? Why would someone like that feed their customers rotten food? Seems to me like that kind of thing goes against everything Buck would have believed in.”

  Miss May looked up with a start. “Maybe it was against Buck’s ethics, but what about Hannah’s? Chelsea, you said there were ingredients lists and prices on her computer in the back office?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but it seemed liked the office was shared by Hannah and Petey.”

  “But suppose I was wrong about Buck maintaining control over the inventory and purchasing,” said Miss May. “Petey might have maintained control over that part of the process. Or maybe he delegated to Buck and then Buck delegated to Hannah. Either way, whoever sourced the foul ingredients didn’t tell Buck what they were up to. My suspicion is t
hat they mixed good truffles in with bad truffles, for instance, so Buck wouldn’t notice. Or maybe they just gambled that the second-rate ingredients would still be edible. That way the restaurant saved money on top shelf product and the angry head chef never needed to know.”

  “That’s so short sighted,” I said. “Who would ever think rotten ingredients could help a restaurant succeed in the long run?”

  “Maybe a new restaurateur?” said Miss May. “I hate to say it. But Petey is suddenly our prime suspect.”

  “You’re right,” said Teeny. “Hannah had no financial interest in Land and Sea. So she had no motive to save the restaurant money. But Petey had plenty of motivation to try to save some cash. I can see it now. Buck found out about the rotten ingredients, so he quit and threatened to report Petey. Petey couldn’t allow that. The fate of his restaurant rested on its reputation. So he tried to kill Buck in a way that might seem innocent… Through a cinnamon bun. Petey didn’t realize a poisoned cinnamon bun and a dead chef might also damage his reputation. Ever since then he’s been a sneaky little mongoose, lying to our faces, scurrying around, and trying to cover up his evil crime.” Teeny looked up with a big pout planted on her lips. “I raised a killer.”

  Miss May gave Teeny a hug and sighed. “We don’t know that Petey is the killer, Teeny. And you didn’t raise him. He worked at your restaurant for a few months.”

  Teeny pulled away from the hug. “You’re right. This isn’t my fault. I should stop being so hard on myself.”

  Miss May and I chuckled. Then we walked back to the car and sped back to Pine Grove with the destination of Peter’s Land and Sea in the GPS. We called the restaurant a few times on our way up, but no one answered the phone. Weird, considering we were in the heart of the Sunday afternoon rush. Teeny tried Petey’s personal phone but didn’t get an answer there, either.

  I glanced at the speedometer. I was already going well over the speed limit, but I pushed a little harder. We needed to get home fast because it seemed our killer, or killers, might have already been on the run.