Pelican Cove Cozy Mystery Box Set 2

by Leena Clover

  “What’s that got to do with us?” Heather asked sharply.

  “The Extermination Committee needs volunteers,” Barb announced. “You need something to distract you from this sordid business. I am willing to sign you all up.”

  “Get out,” Jenny seethed. “Just get out of here and leave us alone.”

  “What’s the matter with her?” Barb asked the others. “You do realize I am trying to help?”

  “We don’t need your help,” Jenny said, scrambling to her feet. “We will grieve for Petunia as long as we want and any way we want. How dare you come up here and talk about some useless committee.”

  Barb puffed up with indignation.

  “Useless? The Extermination Committee is not useless. Do you know how deadly mosquitoes can be? We are facing a possible outbreak of West Nile or Zika in Pelican Cove.”

  “That’s fine,” Star said. “But you need to leave now, Barb.”

  “I’m just trying to help!”

  “But you’re not helping,” Betty Sue roared. “Go peddle your project somewhere else.”

  Barb Norton turned red and stomped down the café steps.

  “Unbelievable,” Molly fumed. “That woman is vile!”

  “She’s not entirely wrong,” Betty Sue said.

  She looked at Jenny.

  “I know you have your hands full with the café. But you can’t just sit around crying over what happened.”

  “What do you want me to do, Betty Sue?”

  “Find out who killed Petunia.”

  “She’s right, Jenny,” Star said. “You have done it before. Use your skills to get to the bottom of this. It’s the only way we can get justice for our friend.”

  “Petunia was shot with a gun,” Jenny reminded them. “I have no idea why anyone would do that.”

  “That’s exactly what we need to find out,” Heather said. “I’ll be your wing woman. In fact, we will all pitch in and help.”

  “Star and I can take care of the café,” Betty Sue agreed. “You girls get busy talking to people.”

  “Adam won’t like it.”

  “Since when have you done what Adam wanted?” Molly asked.

  “Don’t let him rule your life, Jenny,” Heather added.

  “We are not detectives,” Jenny reasoned.

  “This won’t be the first time you solved a murder, Jenny,” Star said grimly. “What’s holding you back?”

  “My friend wasn’t the victim all those times,” Jenny said, as a tear rolled down her cheek. “I can’t be objective about this.”

  “That’s fine,” Star said. “Because this is as personal as it gets.”

  “She’s right!” Molly and Heather chorused. “We need you on board, Jenny.”

  Jenny thought of the sweet old woman who had been a guiding force in her life for the past year and a half. She was just beginning to get to know her. Jenny took a deep breath as her heart filled with a new resolve. She was going to do whatever it took to catch Petunia’s killer.

  “Let’s do this,” she said, putting her hand on Heather’s. Molly joined in, followed by Star and Betty Sue.

  Jenny’s eyes burned as she looked around at her friends.

  “Best of luck to us.”

  Chapter 3

  Jenny tried to run the Boardwalk Café by herself. She had known Petunia silently did a giant’s share of work at the café. She didn’t mind the extra work. But she hadn’t realized how much she relied on Petunia for the little things. She found herself turning around to ask questions – how many batches of muffins to bake, how much flour to order – only to find out that she was on her own now. Petunia wasn’t going to offer any advice in her soft voice.

  The Magnolias clung to their routine with a tacit agreement. Betty Sue arrived at 10 AM every morning, lugging her knitting, with Heather close behind. Star and Molly completed the circle.

  “Who would you say knew Petunia the best?” Jenny asked one day as they sat out on the deck.

  September had brought cool breezes to Pelican Cove but it was still warm enough to sit outside without a jacket or sweater.

  “She was a quiet one,” Star said. “We knew her well, Betty Sue and I. We have been meeting here every morning forever.”

  “Even before I came back to town?” Heather asked.

  Heather had been away at college and then she had worked in the city for a few years. She had come back to Pelican Cove in her late twenties.

  Star nodded.

  “You and Molly were in the city. My Jenny wasn’t here either.”

  “She never talked about where she came from?” Jenny asked, surprised.

  “She was from somewhere up north,” Betty Sue said. “I think she was a widow.”

  “You think?” Heather pressed. “You don’t know for sure?”

  “Petunia wasn’t very forthcoming about her past life,” Star explained. “We realized that early on. We didn’t want to pester her about it.”

  “You think she didn’t talk about it for a reason?” Jenny mused.

  “I always thought something painful had happened to her,” Betty Sue said sagely. “Clearly, she didn’t want to relive her past. And I didn’t think it was my place to remind her of it.”

  “I get what you’re saying …” Jenny began. “But she never volunteered anything in all these years?”

  Star and Betty Sue shook their heads sadly.

  “Now we will never know, I suppose,” Betty Sue added.

  The talk turned to finding out who had murdered Petunia.

  “Have you thought of how you are going to begin your search?” Molly asked Jenny.

  “Well, I start with people close to the victim. In this case, that’s us. I try to learn about any recent events in the victim’s life, ask if the victim had any enemies.”

  She looked around at her friends.

  “Can you think of anything out of the ordinary that might have happened this week?”

  “Why was Petunia on the beach that morning?” Betty Sue asked immediately.

  “And what was she doing there?” Star added. “Shouldn’t she have been here at the café, helping you with the morning crowd?”

  “Petunia liked to watch the sun rise over the ocean,” Jenny told them. “She lingered on the beach sometimes before coming in. But she was always here before me.”

  “What time was that?” Molly asked, pulling out a notebook and scribbling in it.

  Jenny was glad Molly was taking notes. She was too distracted to keep all the facts straight in her head.

  “Well, she was here around 5 every day, or earlier. She came in before me and opened the café.”

  “So when did she watch the sunrise?” Heather asked. “Did she go out during the breakfast rush?”

  “She would step outside sometimes,” Jenny shrugged.

  “She didn’t come in at all on that day, right?” Betty Sue asked. “Do you mean to say she had been on the beach all along?”

  “We don’t know the time of her death,” Jenny reminded them. “That’s something the police will have to tell us. And it’s anybody’s guess when that will happen.”

  “Have you talked to Adam?” Molly asked.

  “Not since that day,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “He can call me whenever he wants.”

  “You know how Adam is about his job,” Heather said. “Don’t let it come between you, Jenny.”

  “Says you?” Jenny asked, rolling her eyes. “Since when did you start giving relationship advice, Heather?”

  “Since I learned a bitter lesson or two,” Heather shot back. “Ego has no place in love.”

  “If Adam loves me, he has a weird way of showing it.”

  “Can you be sure Petunia never came in that day?” Betty Sue asked, setting her knitting aside.

  Jenny thought back for a minute.

  “I didn’t use my key, so the café wasn’t locked. She must have come in for a few minutes, I guess.”

  “So she opened the door for you and
then went on the beach right away? Did she do that a lot?”

  “Never,” Jenny told them. “Petunia brewed the first batch of coffee before I got here. And she used to prep everything for me and turn the oven on.”

  Jenny held up a hand when she saw her aunt lean forward to ask the next question.

  “None of it was done that day. I made the coffee myself.”

  “I’m writing this down as an outstanding question,” Molly remarked. “Why did Petunia go out that morning?”

  The group broke up soon after that. Jenny had to get ready for the lunch rush. She chopped vegetables and added them to a big stock pot for making soup.

  Her aunt mixed the crab salad.

  “You should be at the gallery, or out on a beach somewhere, working on your art,” Jenny told her.

  “Hush, Jenny,” her aunt said. “I am exactly where I need to be.”

  “How long am I going to impose on you?” Jenny asked. “I have to learn to handle everything by myself.”

  “Give yourself some time,” Star said. “Have you thought of hiring some permanent help?”

  Jenny and Petunia hired some students to help them with the summer rush. The kids were back in school.

  “I haven’t considered that yet,” Jenny admitted. “I feel it’s too soon.”

  “You can never replace Petunia,” Star read her mind. “We all know that.”

  Jenny stirred the pot of soup and stared at the wall, lost in thought.

  “I need to order supplies for the week ahead,” she sighed.

  Star pointed to a drawer.

  “Petunia was a meticulous record keeper. You should find all her lists in there.”

  Jenny rifled through the drawer and pulled out a small notebook titled Supplies.

  “It’s all in here,” she nodded.

  Petunia had kept copious notes about what needed to be done every week of the month. There was a list of wholesalers she worked with at the back of the book with a rating for each of them.

  “There’s a treasure trove of information here,” Jenny marveled as she pulled out more stuff from the drawer.

  Her eyes fell on an appointment book.

  “What’s this?” she muttered.

  It was a small diary with a blue leather cover. Jenny hesitated a bit before opening it.

  “Have you seen this before?” Jenny asked her aunt, waving the blue colored book at her. “It looks like a planner of sorts, or an appointment diary. There’s a note for a doctor’s appointment here, for example. And a dentist’s appointment.”

  “You know we don’t use phones or computers to write down our appointments,” Star said. “It’s how we keep track of the calendar the old fashioned way.”

  Jenny flipped the pages furiously, searching for something.

  “Did I say anything wrong?” Star asked her.

  “Not at all. You just gave me a big clue.”

  Jenny pulled up a page and jabbed her finger at what was written down there.

  She sat down next to her aunt and showed her what she had found.

  “5 A. M, P/W,” she said out loud. “So Petunia was planning to meet someone on the beach that day.”

  “At 5 in the morning?” Star asked, raising her eyebrows in disbelief.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Jenny said.

  She flipped through the diary again, going slow this time.

  “She has this appointment listed on the same day of every month,” Jenny said triumphantly. “Who is this ‘P/W’? Can you think of anyone?”

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around this,” Star muttered. “Why meet someone at 5 in the morning?”

  “I need to think about this,” Jenny said.

  She went out on the deck and began pacing. If Petunia had kept her appointment, she must have been at the bench by 5 AM. That meant she had been killed any time between 5 and 8.

  Jenny looked up and saw a familiar figure sitting in the sand. He wore tattered clothes that had clearly seen better days. His salt and pepper beard was as dirty as his face. Jenny had been surprised to see a homeless person in Pelican Cove. The man turned up on the beach sometime in the morning and walked around all day. She would find him writing something in the sand with a stick, then wiping it off with his foot. He did that over and over again. Jenny had wondered if she should offer him anything to eat.

  The man turned around and stared directly at the café. Jenny tried to ward off a sudden nervous feeling.

  “Hello there,” she called out. “How’s it going?”

  The man shrugged and looked away.

  A group of people walked up to the café and Jenny went in. It was time for the lunch rush.

  Star was sitting at the kitchen table, looking smug. There was a pile of blue colored notebooks in front of her.

  “Look what I found in that drawer.”

  “Old diaries?” Jenny asked listlessly.

  “Old appointment books,” her aunt corrected her. “These go back five years. And all of them list the same appointment.”

  Jenny’s eyes gleamed with interest.

  “You mean Petunia was meeting someone early in the morning for the past five years?”

  “At least that,” her aunt nodded.

  “She must have trusted this person,” Jenny said thoughtfully. “You think he or she is the one who shot her?”

  Star shrugged.

  “We need to find this person,” she said. “Only they can tell us what happened that day.”

  “But how do we find this ‘P/W’?” Jenny asked, sounding defeated.

  Jenny got busy filling lunch orders with her aunt’s help. The two ladies finally sat back in the kitchen to eat their own lunch.

  “Ready to call it a day?” Star asked.

  “Why don’t you take the car?” Jenny said. “I need to stretch my legs a bit. I will go to the seafood market on my way back.”

  Jenny checked the next day’s menu and prepped as much as she could. She closed the café and walked to Williams Seafood Market. Her friend and Molly’s fiancé Chris Williams greeted her.

  “How are you holding up, Jenny?” he asked kindly.

  Jenny shrugged, swallowing a lump in her throat. She had plodded through the day somehow but it was all coming back to her.

  “I’ll have the usual, please,” she told Chris.

  Chris packed a pound of shrimp and three fillets of the catch of the day.

  “The catch just came in,” he assured her.

  Jenny took the package without a word and started walking back home.

  A stream of big black SUVs suddenly passed her, stirring up a cloud of dust. Jenny stopped in her tracks, thrown aback by the onslaught. The car windows were so dark it was impossible to see inside. The lead car screeched to a stop with a spin of its tires. The other cars followed suit.

  A man jumped out of the car at the front and summoned Jenny.

  He was tall and wide and his gigantic belly wobbled every time he moved. He wore a dark shirt and trousers and a black leather jacket. He held out a small piece of paper and asked Jenny for directions.

  “What’s the holdup, Six Pac?” a high pitched voice demanded from inside.

  “Just a minute, Boss!” the man yelled, snatching the paper from Jenny’s hands.

  “Thanks, doll,” he crooned as he climbed back into the car and slammed the door.

  The tires spun again and the cars sped off, leaving Jenny standing in the middle of the road, her mouth hanging open.

  Chapter 4

  Jenny began her day at the Boardwalk Café the next morning.

  She chopped sweet peppers for her crab omelet. It was the most popular breakfast special at the Boardwalk Café. She tore off some fresh dill from a bunch and ran her knife through it.

  She heard someone come into the café and went outside to take their order. Adam Hopkins stood in his uniform, his hands behind his back.

  “Morning, Jenny,” he greeted her. “How about a spot of breakfast?”

>   “Why not?” Jenny said sweetly. “This is a café, after all.”

  She pulled out a pad and pencil from her apron pocket and asked Adam for his order.

  “I’ll have whatever you are cooking,” he grinned.

  Jenny refused to smile back.

  She went in and started cooking the omelets. She toasted some whole grain bread while the eggs cooked and put everything on a tray. She added small pots of butter and preserves. She placed the tray before Adam with a bang.

  “Thank you,” Adam said, picking up his knife and fork.

  Heavy footsteps sounded outside. A group of men came in with much fanfare. Jenny assumed they were tourists.

  A brown haired man of medium height strode into the café. He wore a three piece suit the color of butter cream. A fedora sat on his head and a cigar dangled from his lips. He was flanked by three men, all wearing neatly pressed shirts and trousers and leather jackets. Jenny recognized the man who had asked her for directions.

  “There’s no smoking in here,” she said.

  “Relax, sweetheart,” the guy wearing the hat said. “It’s not lit.”

  His high pitched voice grated on Jenny’s nerves.

  “Can I get you a table?” she asked.

  The man in the hat held out his hand.

  “Vincenzo Bellini,” he offered. “Call me Vinny.”

  “Hello,” Jenny nodded.

  She was feeling mystified.

  “I’m here to talk about my Ma.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your mother.”

  “Sure you do,” Vinny said. “She owned this café, didn’t she?”

  “What nonsense!” Jenny exclaimed.

  The three men flanking Vinny sprung into action. Jenny found herself surrounded by them all of a sudden.

  “Hey, hey, take it easy, boys,” Vinny drawled. “We’re just talking here.”

  “My Ma ran this café for twenty five years,” Vinny spoke up. “I’m here to take her home.”

  Jenny sat down with a thud.

  “Are you talking about Petunia?”

  Vinny nodded.

  “That’s the name she went by here. But her real name was Leona.”

  “I didn’t know Petunia had a son,” Jenny explained. “She, err, didn’t mention she had any kids.”

  “She had two boys,” Vinny said in a matter of fact voice. “The other one lives in California.”