“Yep.”
I flipped to a fresh page of my notebook and wrote “Suspects” at the top. I then wrote “Samantha,” Brad’s sister’s name. “Who else?” I asked Zoey.
“Don’t know. Agatha said he was a womanizer. Could be there’s a lot to choose from.”
“How do we figure out who to add?”
“I’ve put together footage that tracks Hank’s activities on the day that he died. The only social things he did were go to the gym and to the juice and coffee bar next door before heading here.”
“That doesn’t leave us much to go on,” I said.
Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be more than we think. I traced the footage of the gym dating back three weeks. He went to the gym almost every day.”
“Did he stop by the juice bar every day?”
“Not every day, but a lot of days. Has anyone else died after getting food from the juice bar?”
“Oh, good one.” I pulled my phone from my back pocket and texted Brad the question. His response was almost immediate. “He says no.”
“So not a random attack then,” Zoey said.
“Mmmm.” There was a distinction I thought we were missing. “Someone specifically targeted Hank. Maybe randomly, but maybe not. We only know that they weren’t out to commit mass murder.”
“But probably not a random murder,” Zoey said.
“I think you’re right. People usually kill because they want a specific person dead. And we don’t know for sure that the poison came from the juice bar.”
“In terms of public places he could have been poisoned, he was at the gym the most.”
“So we find out who was there with him—”
“And we get our list of main suspects,” Zoey finished for me.
Excitement surged through me. We had a lead!
Then I remembered where it was that Hank had died. He’d died on the sidewalk in front of the building that I owned. And he hadn’t clutched his heart and simply fallen over, either. No, he’d fallen from a height high enough to crack his skull like an egg.
“But what about here?” I asked. “Were you able to find anything that shows exactly what happened to Hank when he died?”
Zoey pulled out her phone. She swiped and tapped its screen until she’d found what she was looking for. She handed the phone over to me. “That’s the café in the minutes before Hank’s death. Got the footage from a camera embedded in the traffic light system meant to capture people who run the light.”
I looked at the images play across Zoey’s phone. I could see the storefront and the temporary banner with the café’s new name, The Berry Home, but nothing was visible beyond the ground floor. My building was two stories tall. There were huge windows on the second floor, and there was the roof. Hank could have fallen from either.
On the video, I watched as Hank walked down the sidewalk and into my café. He’d come in alone.
I ran through the exchange of meeting him for the first time in my head. He’d come in and introduced himself. Then he’d started talking almost as if he were picking up where we left off in the middle of some conversation we never had. It had been odd, but it hadn’t been so odd that it had stuck out like a sore thumb within that moment.
On the video, Roberto—the man who had been my chef for a day—ran into view. Literally. He was running. He rushed right up to the café’s door before dropping to a fast walk. He disappeared inside and then reappeared within seconds, this time with Hank in tow.
Watching the video was like watching two movies run simultaneously. There was the video on Zoey’s phone, but there was also my memory of what had happened inside the café. I had been in the middle of talking with Hank when Roberto had rushed in and ushered him back outside.
I held Zoey’s phone closer to my face when I saw what happened next. “Dorothy.” My ex-aunt-in-law hurried past Roberto and Hank. Hank didn’t notice, but Roberto and Dorothy shared a long glance at each other as she ran-walked past them into the café. It had been rumored that Dorothy and Roberto were dating. It was possible that their shared look was a jilted lover’s glance. But that didn’t explain what had happened after that.
Dorothy had come inside and ordered a cup of coffee. “Dorothy’s never eaten here before,” I mumbled as my brain strained to make sense of it all.
Of course, she still hadn’t eaten here, at least not since I took over the café from my cousin, Sarah. Yet, she’d ordered coffee… that she didn’t drink. She hadn’t even looked like she wanted to touch the cup.
“Why did she order coffee?” I mumbled again.
Outside the café, Roberto and Hank were standing close together and Hank was pointing up the side of the building. He was pointing, I guessed, to the spot from which he’d most likely fallen.
I paused the video by tapping the face of the phone.
“Do you remember any bruises on Hank when he was in here?” I asked.
Zoey shook her head. “His face was fine. I think he had on long shorts. I didn’t notice anything about his legs.”
“I never even looked at his legs,” I said regretfully. The first time I’d ever had remorse about not ogling a super cute guy from head to toe. “I do remember he was sweating… perspiring. On his face. And he winced once.”
“It was a cool day.”
“Think it could have been leftover sweat from having been at the gym?”
“I had a boyfriend who had to take a cold shower after his workouts or else he’d just keep sweating.”
I tapped play on the phone’s face again. Hank and Roberto walked down the sidewalk, around the corner of the building and out of view.
Watching the next several minutes of video had my heart beating faster and heavier. I shifted in my chair, brushed my hair repeatedly away from my face, and resisted the urge to tap stop on the video and put the phone down. Instead, I made myself watch.
I sucked in a breath when I saw Dorothy storm back out of the café. It happened within seconds of her showing back up on the video. Hank’s body fell in a rapid blur and then immediately made a sudden and hard impact with the ground.
I closed my eyes and put the phone down. It took me a moment to compose myself, but when I did, I was filled with a new sense of purpose and determination. I’d seen something that I hadn’t noticed before and hadn’t even thought about.
“Roberto left with Hank,” I said.
Zoey nodded. “The last person to see Hank alive.”
I slid my notebook back in front of me and under the heading of “Suspects” I wrote Roberto’s name in big block letters and drew a circle around it.
I looked up at Zoey. “Let’s go catch a killer.”
9
It only took Zoey a few minutes of tapping her phone to figure out where we could find Roberto. After abandoning his job at the café, he’d gotten hired on as the county health inspector. Given that it was early afternoon on a Monday, chances were we would find him at his office.
Since I didn’t have a car, Zoey drove, and when we pulled up to the health department, I was once again in awe of how different it was to live in a small country town. Prior to my divorce, I’d lived my entire adult life with my husband in Chicago. There, government bureaus were found in large concrete buildings containing lots of other government offices. But here, in Camden Falls, someone had chucked those rules right out the window.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked despite the fact that we had passed a sign that read “Camden Falls Health Department” on the way into the parking lot. In front of us sat a building that looked more like a ranch-style house than a government building. It was made of red brick, was the same size and shape as an average house, and even had a modest front porch with a column framing each side of the front door.
“This is it,” Zoey reassured me.
Inside there was a receptionist, and she directed us to Roberto’s office. He had just enough time to look up from his computer before Zoey closed his office door
.
“You can’t be here,” he said. There was an edge of panic in his voice. He picked up the receiver of his desk phone. “Turn around and get out or I’ll call security.”
Zoey and I glanced at each other and then Zoey said, “Call them.”
“Would a building this size even have security?” I whisper-asked Zoey loud enough that I knew that Roberto would also be able to hear.
Zoey shook her head no.
Roberto kept his phone’s receiver gripped tightly in his white-knuckled hand as he got to his feet. He shook it in the air. “Leave now or I’ll call the cops,” he threatened.
Zoey and I looked at each other again.
“Does that work for you?” I asked her.
“Works for me.”
We returned our attention back to Roberto. He was wearing a crisply pressed white button-up shirt, dark blue pin-striped slacks, and black suspenders.
“I’m sure that the police would love to hear about how you were the last one to be with Hank before he died,” I said.
“Why’d you kill him?” Zoey asked.
“You rushed him out of the café awfully fast,” I added. Then to Zoey, I said, “I guess he didn’t want Hank to drop dead right there in front of everyone.”
“Poison does tend to have that effect,” Zoey said.
I looked at Roberto. “You’re a food guy. Especially now that you work here, at the health department, I bet you know all kinds of ways to sneak poison into a person’s food or drink.”
“I did not ki—”
“We don’t care,” Zoey interrupted. “But we will make your life hell if you don’t start telling us what happened. Your phone will be tapped. Your credit cards will be canceled. Your credit rating will be destroyed. And… you might be declared legally dead.”
Roberto blanched. “You’d kill me?”
“Only legally. On paper. Hard to get a paycheck from the government when their system tells them you’re six feet under.”
“Hey!” I said. “Can you make Dorothy his life insurance beneficiary? We could frame her for his non-death.”
“I like that,” Zoey said. “Let’s do it.” She reached for the door. Time to leave and put our plan into action.
“Stop!” Roberto cried out.
We gave him our full attention.
His shoulders slumped, his head hung down, and his once-brandished phone receiver hung limply at his side. He sat down heavily in his chair and put the receiver back in its cradle.
“Start talking,” I said. I was pretty sure that Zoey would be just as happy working her cyber voodoo on him as she would be hearing his confession. If he didn’t start talking, I was convinced that she really would make his life a lot less fun.
Roberto lifted his head and focused his weary eyes on us. “I didn’t kill Hank,” he said, “but I was there when it happened.”
I stepped forward, outraged. “You let that man be beaten to death?”
Roberto’s head jerked back. “What? No! He killed himself!”
“He killed himself?” I repeated incredulously. This I had to hear. I couldn’t imagine a scenario where Hank poisoned himself and then threw himself out a window for good measure. I supposed it would be a good insurance plan in the event he survived the fall. Maybe he was being extra thorough to be sure he got the job done. But why? And that didn’t explain the heavy bruising he’d had all over his body on the coroner’s table.
“I was there with him in the banquet hall,” Roberto said. “He wasn’t looking good and said he needed some air. He went over to one of the windows, opened it and was leaning forward with his hands on the banister. I looked down at my phone for just a second, and when I looked back up all I saw were his feet disappearing out the window.”
Two things stuck out about what Roberto had just said. I clamped my brain down on the first one and focused on the second one. Roberto had mentioned looking down at his cell phone. When Dorothy had been in the café right after Roberto and Hank had left, she seemed distracted. Actually, she’d seemed absorbed… with her cell phone. She’d kept looking at it. She’d been more interested in it than in insulting me or driving away my customers. That had been an absolute first.
“You were working with Dorothy,” I said. Then to really stick it to him, I added to Zoey, “Dorothy’s an accomplice to Hank’s murder.”
“Ohhhh,” Zoey said, her face lighting up. “Two birds with one stone.”
“Stop it! Stop it,” Roberto raged. “Dorothy Hibbert is a fine woman, and I will not have you speaking about her that way!”
I turned an equal anger on Roberto. “What was she doing in the café, because I know she wasn’t there for my coffee?”
“I told you, she has nothing to do with this!”
I turned to Zoey. “Call the police.” There was no bluff in my voice or my intention.
“Wait! Wait… please. Just wait,” Roberto said, holding up his palms imploringly. “Dorothy was there to distract you from noticing me with Hank. I didn’t want you to see where I took him.”
And that took me back to the first thing that Roberto had said.
I stepped forward and asked my question, my voice low and menacing. “And where had you taken him?”
Roberto shrank before me. “The banquet hall.”
“Whose banquet hall?” My head was throbbing with the certainty of his impending answer.
“Your banquet hall…”
My eye twitched. I turned to Zoey. “Son of a biscuit!” Next, I was going to find out that I was the proud owner of a dresser that doubled as a magical doorway to Narnia. I really had to get around to reading the sale of property contract I’d signed when I bought the place!
Zoey put a soothing—and restraining—arm around my shoulders. “Up, little man,” she said to Roberto. “It’s time to show us this banquet hall.”
10
“This place is mine?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was standing in a room that seemed long enough to double as a landing strip for a small plane. It was enormous! Its walls were the same beautiful red brick that comprised the building’s outer facade, and the wall that faced Main Street was lined with huge windows that allowed a tremendous amount of natural light to fill the space. The floor was a pale knotted pine except for in the galley-style kitchen that shared a wall with my apartment. There, the floor was a slate-colored heavy duty ceramic tile.
We had made our way up to the banquet hall by coming up a door that was a short walk down past the café’s back door that led into its kitchen. I had assumed that the other door back there led into one of the other stores that inhabited my building. In fact, I had thought that the other stores in my building had an upstairs and a downstairs, just like my café. Well, not exactly like it, since the floor above my café was my apartment. I had assumed that the second floor above the other stores was simply a second floor of more store.
“What exactly was your plan?” I asked, turning to Roberto.
He cleared his throat before speaking and shuffled his feet. It was obvious that he was not looking forward to any confession that lay ahead of him.
“You are overwhelmed with the café, yes?” he asked, and I barely fought back the urge to hit him. He was going to try to play this as him doing me a favor.
“Roberto,” I said with a deadly calm, “are you about to tell me that you were looking out for my best interest? Is that what you’re about to tell me? Can you guess what my reaction will be if that is your answer.” My hand started to ache from how tightly I was clenching my fist.
Roberto cleared his throat again, and his gaze darted worriedly to Zoey before returning to me. “I thought that you would quit the café, close it and sell it. I thought I was going to be able to haggle you down and get it cheap. I thought you would… give up. I never thought that people would like your food.”
My heart surged, and I took an eager step forward. “Somebody likes my food? Who?” I wanted to know!
Roberto scowled. “P
eople… Things have been said. The pastries, people love those. They like the Oops Board discounts. They even like your spaghetti and meatballs.”
I had made that dish almost as many times as all the others combined. I was shocked that people weren’t sick of it! As for the pastries, no way I could take credit for those. That was Patty’s genius. Or, maybe I should say her geniuses. I wasn’t sure how many people were living in her head.
Zoey cleared her throat this time. “Get to it, Roberto.”
He gave her another flickered scowl before refocusing on me. “I thought you would quit and that the café would be mine to take over. But you didn’t quit.” He shrugged. “I had to come up with a Plan B.”
“And that’s what this is? A Plan B?”
“I still cook, you know? I’m not just the County Health Inspector.” He said the title with scoffing derision. He tapped his chest. “I opened my own catering business, and this… this place”—he pointed at the floor—“was where I was going to make my mark as a caterer.”
“But this isn’t your place. This is my place.”
“You don’t deserve this place!” Roberto screamed, and his face turned red. “I worked at the café for nine years! That café was mine! It was mine, and you stole it.”
My whole understanding of the universe shifted, and I was no longer the thing at its center. My ego took a step sideways, and I realized that people had lives before, after, and without me.
When Sarah had given me a tour of the café, she’d introduced me to Roberto and had told me that he was the secret to her success. It had been so naïve of me not to realize his personal investment in the business. To see me—someone who had known painfully little about the food industry—walk in and take over had to have seemed like a cruel joke to Roberto. For me, Sarah selling me the café (for nothing down) had given me a future. For Roberto, it had stolen his.
“Roberto, I’m so sorry.”
It was his turn to take an eager step forward. “You’ll sell it to me?”
“No!” I said it so fast, so emphatically, that any goodwill I’d been creating with my sympathy for Roberto’s situation was wiped clean away.
A Berry Home Catastrophe Page 5
