A Berry Home Catastrophe

by A. R. Winters

  “He didn’t leave you?”

  She shook her head. “I think he hoped I’d get it out of my system and be happy making a life with him. He really was a great guy.”

  In her ever direct way, Zoey challenged her. “Just not a guy you wanted to play Holly Homemaker for.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What is the life you want?” I asked.

  She focused on me with an intense gaze. “I want to go to Tibet. I want to travel down the Amazon river. I want to go parasailing and travel halfway around the world on a sailboat. I want to take pictures and write books about the places I go, the things I see, and the people I meet.”

  “You don’t want children…”

  “No… at least not right now. Maybe when I’m fifty or something. Maybe once I’ve got more life experience to share. But not right now. No. I don’t even want a kitchen or an address. I just want to go.”

  “But that’s not what Hank wanted?”

  She shrugged. “I think that Hank would have loved doing all of that, but he didn’t want to make a life out of it. He wanted to be able to go home—to a home—when his travels were done. He wanted to have a home and a family to come back to.”

  “To have his cake and eat it too,” I said.

  “Yeah…”

  I knew that would have made me want to kill him.

  But I wasn’t Sam. She had loved Hank.

  Then again, people were killed every day by people who “loved” them.

  I hated to say it, but I wasn’t hearing anything from Sam that would make me feel sure that she didn’t kill Hank. She had a reason to want him out of her life. She wanted to break free of him so that she could move forward with living her own life.

  “Sam, what if Hank had been seeing someone else?”

  She laughed, looked up, and blinked tears from her eyes. “I would have been relieved. I’d have been crushed but happy, too.”

  “Not jealous? Even if he’d wanted to have a baby with them?”

  Sam focused on me again, and her expression darkened. “You’re talking about Hot Hannah, aren’t you? That skank.”

  Okay… Found some jealousy in her after all.

  Her anger continued to heat. “You know, you should take a close look at her. She didn’t want Hank’s baby. She wanted his money. I read over the contract she gave him. There was a clause that was referenced by a clause that had been referenced by another clause—three clause calls removed—that had said if she found herself without an income that he would assume financial responsibility for both her and the child until the child was twenty-five years old!”

  I heard the sound of tires screeching as my mental brakes locked into place. “What?”

  “Yeah! It was hidden in this contract that was written in legalese out the butt and fifty-five pages long. That woman saw him as a means to give up having to work while not being saddled with a binding marriage.”

  “What about Ellen?” I asked. Ellen had married Vic. That showed that she had been willing to be someone’s wife. Maybe what she wanted in life lined up with what Hank had wanted in life. That wouldn’t be a reason for Ellen to kill Hank; but maybe Sam’s inability to walk away from hank extended to her not being able to face him moving on with someone else.

  Sam’s anger seemed to ebb away, and she studied her hand again. “Ellen’s nice. I’m glad she got away from Vic. Vic’s an overbearing tool.”

  “Was there anything between Hank and Ellen?”

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, there was. They were friends. Hank would tell me about what was going on with Ellen. She’d been unhappy with Vic for a long time, but it’s like it hadn’t occurred to her that she could leave him. Vic had browbeaten her so much, had her thinking she was nothing. Hank co-signed an apartment lease so that she could get a place of her own and finally move out. He was like her cheerleader.”

  “Any chance that Hank might have gotten together with Ellen?”

  “While he and I were still together?” She shook her head. “Hank talked to me a lot. He shared what was going on in his life. He was great that way.” She stared blankly into space as she thought a moment. “Maybe they would have had a chance someday, if Ellen got her self-confidence back. Hank was great, supportive and all, but he wanted to be with someone he didn’t have to babysit. You know? He wanted to be with someone with a strong, independent mind who could make decisions without him… so that he wouldn’t have to be bothered with the daily stuff. He wanted someone who could manage the home side of life and all the decisions that went with it.” She shook her head. “Vic didn’t like Ellen making any decisions on her own. He hadn’t even let her have a checkbook.”

  Suddenly Dan was sounding like one of the best husbands ever. A truly shocking revelation. Holding me back or micromanaging me were things that Dan had never done.

  Zoey spoke up. “What can you tell us about his business partner, Pete?”

  She shrugged. “Pete’s okay. Pretty easy going, actually.”

  “Did Hank and Pete ever argue?” I asked.

  She frowned as she thought. “Sometimes. I think they’d started getting on each others’ nerves. Early on, their vision of what they wanted the online exercise equipment company to be was really in line with each other. But then the company started doing pretty good and Hank wanted to grow it. He was always looking at what his next two or three steps should be to get him to the next level of growth. He wanted to increase prices and offer specialty equipment, but I think Pete wanted to offer discounts and increase profit by increasing the number of sales.”

  She paused, looking like she had something more to say, so I stayed quiet to let silence drag it out of her. It worked.

  “I think that Hank was planning on using his buyout option to break their partnership. He was going to sell it to Pete, or if Pete didn’t have the funds, he was going to find someone else to buy out his half of the business. He was then going to take that money and sink it into another company.”

  “What kind?” I asked.

  “Nutrition supplements made from whole foods. Sustainable growing practices and all like that.”

  “Had you even seen the product?” Zoey asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve got five different formulas of the stuff in my cupboards right now. He was obsessing over it, figuring out which mixes he wanted to go with and which one to do most of his product launch focus on.”

  Maybe one of those was poisoned. Maybe it wasn’t the one at the gym.

  “Do you ever use them?” I asked.

  “About three or four times a day. They give a nice energy boost. Clean energy, not jittery, you know?”

  “How long have you been using them?”

  “Two or three months.”

  So maybe the supplements she had weren’t poisoned.

  “Who inherits?” Zoey asked.

  Sam went back to watching her hand as she played with the hem of the shirt again. “I do,” she mumbled. “Heard from his lawyer today. Everything goes to me.” She looked up. “I didn’t know he’d done that.”

  “Is it enough money to travel on?” I asked, my brain getting ahead of my mouth.

  Sam’s expression went flat. “It is,” she said. She lifted her chin defiantly. “If I lived simply, I’d never have to work again, at least not for a long time.”

  So, Hank’s death gave her freedom in two ways and not just one.

  I’d like to say that when we left I was able to mentally cross Sam off my list of suspects, but instead I drew a box around it with flashing arrows pointing at it.

  Brad’s sister was suspect number one.

  23

  “Hang on. I’m coming,” I said to Sage. She was at the bottom of the stairs leading from our apartment to the café’s kitchen. She was standing on her hind legs and reaching up to the door’s knob with her front paws. She was poking and slapping at it, trying to intimidate it into turning for her
, but that wasn’t getting the job done. “Let me,” I said and turned the handle for her.

  With a chirpy mew, she bounced her way through the open doorway and into the kitchen. It was pre-dawn, and the first thing I did was get some coffee brewing. Jonathan arrived before I’d even poured my first cup, and we got to work.

  I made shakshuka again and was careful to use fewer tomatoes this time. But the sauce got too thick, I didn’t stir it enough and the bottom of the mixture scorched. I tried again from scratch but rushed it, and this time the potatoes turned out underdone and crunchy.

  It was destined to spend another day on the Oops Board.

  In contrast, Jonathan prepped the grill to make French toast. He even sliced and soaked the remaining peaches in bourbon, vanilla extract and brown sugar, which he gave a quick cook on the grill per order. When customers came in and sat at the bar, they got the opportunity to watch him make their breakfast from scratch.

  All of his food went on the full price board.

  Breakfast went smoothly and we prepped a hearty chicken chili to serve for lunch. It was a dish that would be easy for Jonathan to serve without me in case I didn’t make it back in time to help.

  “You’re sure it’s okay if I leave right after lunch again, boss?” Jonathan asked. He looked worried.

  “Of course!” It made my stomach hurt to tell him that, but it wasn’t like I had much choice. He was too valuable for me to lose. I’d take whatever hours he could give me.

  To my surprise, the shakshuka sold out with more orders for it than the day before. Of course, it didn’t compare to the number of orders for French toast that Jonathan got. He had people coming in just to get some to go, but that crowd had died down by the time I left.

  “Did you find out where Ellen works?” I asked Zoey as I climbed into her car. She’d parked and waited for me right outside the kitchen’s back door.

  “She works at an open-air market for fruits and vegetables out near the interstate.”

  “Nice!”

  “No,” Zoey said.

  “What?”

  “We’re going there to investigate, not add to your culinary demise.”

  “Hey! I resent that remark!”

  “You mean you resemble it,” she said, flashing me a brilliant smile with a wink.

  We got there less than twenty minutes later, and I marveled at the selection of produce. It wasn’t as pretty as what I could get at the grocery store, and it wasn’t as clean, but wow was it fresh.

  I picked up a bundle of radishes and smiled at the fresh dirt that dusted the small red bulbs. Then I scowled and narrowed my eyes at Zoey and her orders for me not to turn this into a shopping trip. So, trailing behind, I picked as I walked, loading up my arms with fresh butter lettuce, baby kale, sugar peas and eggplant.

  It was the eggplant that was my downfall. My eyes got too greedy. I loaded up five of the purple beauties on top of everything else I had in my arms.

  “Can I get you a basket, ma’am?” asked a young woman wearing a heavy green cotton apron.

  “No, no. I’m fine. Not really shopping.”

  She eyed all the stuff I had in my arms.

  “Just gonna grab one more,” I hoarse-whispered conspiratorially. I leaned back to provide a makeshift shelf for all the stuff that I was carrying while grabbing another eggplant. But the one I got caused another one of the stacked beauties to roll over the table’s raised wooden railing.

  “Oh! I’ve got it!” I proudly caught the runaway with my hip. From there, I’m not sure what happened. I guess I pressed too hard because I heard a click, and then when I shifted to try to maneuver the eggplant back up onto the table with all its siblings, the railing dropped forward on hinges and half of the table’s contents cascaded over me and onto the packed dirt floor. They bounced, tumbled and rolled everywhere.

  The girl standing next to me went stiff as a board and squeaked.

  I wanted to run away, but I was trapped in a sea of purple.

  Zoey waded in, took everything in my arms, laid it on the table, then took me by the hand and waded out. “You’re like Calamity Jane. How have you lived this long?”

  We found Ellen a few minutes later. She was working one of two registers at the far end of the market. She had shoulder-length, mousy brown hair and big, doe-like brown eyes. Her nose was small and turned upward at its tip, and her skin bore a warm tan. She wore no makeup that I could see, and I guessed her to be under twenty-five years old.

  She smiled, pleasant and bright, when we approached her, but confusion quickly set in when she saw that we’d picked out nothing to buy.

  “Are you Ellen, Vic’s ex-wife?” I asked.

  “His soon to be ex.” The look of confusion on her face intensified and mixed with concern. “Is something wrong?”

  I glanced around. The market had a few shoppers, but no one was heading our way to check out with their goods.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” I asked. “We could really use your help.”

  She perked up when I mentioned needing her help.

  “Oh, sure! What can I do to help you?” Her smile was back at full wattage, and her concern and confusion were gone.

  “We’d like to ask you about Hank,” I said.

  Ellen instantly took a step back and her smile fell. “I can’t help you with Hank,” she said. “He’s dead.” She looked like a scared rabbit, ready to run.

  I couldn’t tell if Ellen had simply been incredibly sheltered and was super naive or if she wasn’t as bright as her smile.

  “Ellen, did you have anything to do with Hank’s death?” I asked, speaking with a gentle tone.

  Her expression was one of complete incomprehension. “No, I wasn’t there when he jumped. I didn’t know he was going to do that. I would have tried to stop him if I had.” Worry lines gave character to her otherwise perfectly smooth skin.

  “Ellen, honey,” Zoey said, “how long had you and Hank been sleeping together?”

  Ellen’s mouth fell open and her eyes got huge. “Who told you that?” she asked in a panic. She looked around us, and then stepped closer. “Whoever told you that was lying! Hank was a friend, a really good friend, but that was it.” Worry and fear took over her lovely features. “Did Vic send you here to question me? Because I wasn’t sleeping with anyone. I never cheated. Not once!”

  “Ellen,” I said, “I’m sorry.” Her fear at thinking Vic had sent us seemed on the edge of hysteria. Her hands were shaking and she’d grown pale. I tried not to let my pity for her show. “I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Kylie Berry, and I own The Berry Home.”

  “That café that used to be called Sarah’s Eatery?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes,” I said excitedly. I had to clear my throat and calm my exuberance at somebody finally recognizing the name of my café. “You see, Hank jumped… I mean, Hank fell out of the second-floor window of my building.”

  “He fell?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It was an accident, then?”

  Oh, how to say it?

  “It wasn’t so much of an accident as someone hurting Hank.”

  “He was pushed?”

  I inwardly groaned. I hadn’t told any of the suspects that Hank had died of poisoning, and I didn’t want to start now. “Not exactly,” I said. “It’s more like someone did something to make him awfully, terribly sick.” Ellen was getting a whole lot of information out of me, I realized, and I was getting none out of her. It was time to turn the tables. “Ellen, how long had you been having an affair with Hank?”

  Ellen’s face scrunched up in slow motion and then she hid it in her hands. She shook her head violently. “No!” she finally said, dropping her hands. “Hank wasn’t like that. He was good and decent. He never tried anything with me. We were just friends. Only friends.”

  “Was Hank sleeping around with anybody?” Zoey asked. I could hear the exasperation in her voice. We’d heard about Hank being a big ladies’ man, but so far only one person had
claimed to have been in a relationship with him. That had been Sam, his actual and publicly known girlfriend.

  Ellen shrugged. “I don’t know. He never said anything about it. He just mostly listened while I talked.”

  “What did you talk about?” I asked.

  “Vic.”

  “And what kinds of things did you say?”

  Ellen pressed her lips together like she didn’t want to say, but then she told us. “I said I wasn’t happy. I told Hank what life was like with Vic and that Vic had said it was normal, but Hank told me it wasn’t normal.”

  “Not normal how?”

  She shrugged. “I guess all the control Vic had over me and how little say I had over stuff. Vic wanted everything his way. Everything. If he didn’t like an outfit I had on, he’d make me change clothes. He’d give me cash to go to the store, but then he’d check the change against the receipt when I got home. I didn’t have keys to the car even though there was more than one set. He kept one for himself and locked the other one up.”

  “Did Vic ever hit you?” I asked.

  “No, nothing like that. He put a bunch of holes in the wall and sometimes threw stuff, but he never hit me.”

  “Then why are you so afraid of him?”

  Her eyes traveled left and right. She looked embarrassed. Finally, she answered. “I left Vic a couple of times before and he always just came and got me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “I was staying with a girlfriend once. He broke the door down, put me over his shoulder, and took me back home. He did the same thing when I went back home to my parents. He just came and got me.” She looked around. “I keep thinking he’s going to show up and do it again. I keep a broom handle wedged against my apartment door so that it won’t open even if it’s unlocked. I wanted to get a big dog, but the landlord wouldn’t let me.”

  She seriously wanted out of that relationship, and she had earnestly tried to get out of it in the past. If she was at risk for killing someone, I’d say it was Vic. All Hank had done was be a good friend.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Hank?” Zoey asked. “Did he ever say anything about his business partner, Pete?”