A Berry Clever Corpse

by WINTERS, A. R.

  A Berry Clever Corpse

  A.R. Winters

  Contents

  Blurb

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  A Berry Clever Corpse

  Copyright 2018 by A. R. Winters

  www.arwinters.com

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

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  Blurb

  Welcome to Sarah’s Eatery, where the food is to-die-for!

  Kylie’s move to Camden Falls didn’t go quite as she expected: now she's got two hunky men fighting for her affections, more burnt food than can go on her cafe's Oops Board, and an ex aunt-in-law who won't leave her alone.

  And of course there’s the latest murder Kylie gets drawn into…

  When local real estate bigshot “Mean Mike” Pratt is found dead in his office, accusations fly from every other storefront—in no small part because he owns them!

  Kylie’s hairdresser, Susie, is dragged into the accusation game as one of the many business owners whose shops were owned by Mike. He and Susie were spotted squabbling in the street over rent negotiations, and word travels fast in little Camden Falls…

  Did Susie really kill Mean Mike? Did Susie’s boyfriend, trying to protect his girl from Mike’s predatory practices, have something to do with it? Or maybe it was the hip coffee shop owner, or even Susie’s rival beauty salon owner? And why is Mike’s neighbor Tina, behaving so strangely?

  While she learns the secrets of baking, Kylie, with help from her best friend Zoey, searches high and low to learn the secrets of who really killed Mean Mike!

  Chapter 1

  It’s going to cost how much?”

  Barely a month ago, I, Kylie Berry, became the brand new owner of an entire city block thanks to my cousin Sarah. She fell in love and moved away from the tiny southeastern Kentucky town that I now called home, but before she went, she sold me her café—and everything attached to it—for nothing down, which was good because I’d had nothing to put down. I’d been destitute and homeless up to five seconds prior.

  While no longer homeless, I was still destitute and standing in the sub-basement of my newly acquired building. Before this morning, I hadn’t even known that my building had a sub-basement.

  Standing next to me was Lou Sizemore, a local plumber. Only he wasn’t a local plumber, he was the local plumber, as in the best, the guru, and the most expensive. I’d been lucky to get him to come out on a Saturday morning. Together, we were staring up at and around the side of something that put me in mind of a train locomotive. It was huge and complex, and if open on both ends, it was big enough to drive a car through.

  “Your boiler’s busted. You’ll need a new one,” Lou said. He was middle-aged, close to six feet, and had a round beer belly. He was wearing a button-up shirt tucked into jeans held up with suspenders and a John Deere baseball cap that he adjusted by lifting its front rim and then pulling it back down. “It’s an explosion hazard. It’s got to be replaced. Can’t be used ’til then.”

  “Are you sure it’ll cost that much?” He’d quoted a price that had left me feeling faint. I really needed to sit down. The quote was enough to buy a high-end minivan.

  He shrugged, clearly not affected by my soaring anxiety. “Labor, parts, and transport, not to mention the removal and transport of your current system.”

  But he had just mentioned it. I had no idea how he was going to get the old one out of the building and the new one in, but I wasn’t going to ask. At least not right now, maybe later. When I was calmer. When I had a pound of chocolate sitting next to me and a large glass of merlot in my hand.

  “What if I didn’t replace it right away and we just shut the current system down and went without for a little while?”

  He looked at me like I’d asked if my farts smelled like candy canes. “You lose heating for the entire building, have no hot water, and your pipes will be at risk for freezing. If they freeze, they might burst. If they burst, they’ll flood your sub-basement and parts of the rest of the building. That’ll lead to mold, property damage, unsanitary conditions and the possible evacuation and quarantine of the entire building.”

  I gulped. “Right. So… payment plans. Do you offer them?” If he said no, I was toast. Burnt toast. Charred and bitter and good for nothing. The one part of the building that I had anything directly to do with was the café, but it was still operating in the red—deep in the red. Largely because I was the chef… a terrible, awful, horrible chef. People had hypothetically died because of my cooking. Hypothetically as in never proven.

  Like I said, the café was a long way from turning a profit. I’d been keeping it afloat and operational with the help of the income from the rest of the building’s renters. Paying off the price Lou had quoted would require every spare penny from the building’s income for the next six month. If one of the storefronts that rented from me decided to pull out or wasn’t able to pay me, I wouldn’t be able to pay Lou. Of course, if I didn’t replace the boiler, I could get sued for breach of contract or the businesses could decide to go elsewhere.

  Lou made a grumbling noise that I couldn’t discern the meaning of, then he shrugged, picked up the front of his cap, scratched his scalp through his thinning hair, and pulled his cap back down. “I liked Sarah. She was a good woman.” I considered mentioning she wasn’t dead, only getting married, but I kept my mouth shut. Lou continued talking. “We can probably work something out.” He pulled out a business card. “Call my office. We’ll get you taken care of.”

  I took his card with a shaking hand. “Any idea of the time frame before things are up and running again?”

  His eyes scanned the monstrous contraption before us. “Should be able to get ‘er done within a couple of weeks.”

  I tried to remember what the weather reports had said. A cold snap was heading our way. “Can we at least leave this one running until we get the new one installed?”

  He looked from me to the boiler then back again. “If you’re okay with the chance of it exploding, ripping through half your building and possibly killing some people in the process.”

  “So… that’s a maybe.”

  He turned around and walked away, mumbling, “I miss Sarah.”

  Definitely not a fan of me or my sense of humor.

  * * *

  I walked in the front door of my café, Sarah’s Eatery, five minutes later. Zoey, Joel, Jack, and Agatha were all sitting at the counter in front of the café’s grill while Brad stood behind the counter and served coffee that he had undoubtedly made h
imself.

  “You finally got the good stuff in,” he said. “Had to grind it myself, but that’s a good thing.”

  Brad didn’t work for me, at least not in the sense that I paid him. He was a civil servant. You know, the kind who carried a badge, a gun, and had the power to haul my tushie into jail if I did something wrong. He was an officer with the Kentucky State Police, and had the sexy, muscle-hugging uniform to prove it.

  Zoey took a sip, and her perfectly manicured brows went up in surprise. “Wow, this is good.” Her honeyed skin had a natural glow, and her almond-shaped eyes sported a warrior princess look today with eyeliner that was ready to pick up a sword and shield. Her hair was jet black, thick and wild, and her timeless Asian beauty could shift her from looking like a twelve year old one minute to a worldly thirty year old the next. In truth, she was twenty-two with a lot of life miles under her belt. She and I had trekked a few of those miles together. She had my back when the rest of the town was calling me a murderer, and then I did the same for her. Throw in a few near death experiences and you had a pretty complete history of our dynamic duo routine.

  Joel stood up while still tightening the lid on his thermos, all six foot five inches of him. He had the body of Paul Bunyan and the heart of a herald, and he put his natural talents to work as the chief editor, owner and reporter of the Camden Falls Herald, one of the town’s two local newspapers. “Mind if I head out the back way? Shorter walk in all this cold.”

  “Sure. No problem,” I said, waving him off while wishing for the opportunity to say more. Joel had recently shown up to take me out on a date, but a gun-wielding psychopath had been a bit of a mood killer. Joel sadly hadn’t made any efforts to reschedule our outing, and I was worried that people’s repeated desire to kill me had put him off the idea of taking me on a nice date. But with the repeated attempts on my life, I could really use a fun evening out.

  “Speaking of the cold, dear,” Agatha said while holding her cup of hot coffee in both hands as if for the warmth that it could give her, “it’s feeling nippy in here.” The spry eighty-two-year-old’s elegant shoulders were draped in a stunning shawl that she had no doubt knitted with her own two hands. Her silver-haired pixie cut, dangly earrings, and cascading bracelets were all for style and did nothing for warmth. Neither did her flowing, gossamer style of dress.

  That she was cold in the place I was trying to make a home away from home hurt my heart like little else had.

  “I’m sorry, Agatha. There’s a problem with the building’s boiler, but let me get a fire going in the fireplace.”

  Yep, the café had a fireplace. I’d thought it odd the first time I’d seen it, and I’d never gotten the chance to ask my cousin Sarah about it, but I was thankful for it now. The fireplace plus some overstuffed chairs made up what I liked to call the cozy corner, and it was where the knitting club, book club and other groups tended to congregate when they came in. And I was sure that they stayed longer because of the little corner’s warm, welcoming feel.

  “That’s all right, sweetheart. I saw Sage napping back there. I’ll fix up the fire and she can be my lap warmer.” Agatha smiled and it healed the hurt in my heart. If Agatha was happy, then I was happy.

  “I’ll bring you a snack in a little bit,” I told her as she strolled away with that characteristic dancer’s grace.

  “Did Lou take care of you? Told you he’d take care of you,” Brad said. “What was the verdict?”

  “I need a new boiler.”

  “Ouch,” Brad said with a wince. He twisted on the top of his thermos. “I heard that a cold snap is moving in. You gonna have heat in that upstairs apartment of yours?”

  “Yeah, sure. Of course I will.” Lies, lies, lies. When would I ever stop lying? The only other heat I had besides what the boiler provided was the oven. I supposed I could always drag my mattress from my bedroom into the kitchen. Lying it on one room’s floor was as good as lying it on another.

  Brad didn’t look convinced. “You’ve got my number,” he said, then kissed me on the cheek as he headed out the café’s front door. Brad had also made a date with me that he hadn’t kept. Pesky dead bodies showing up always seemed to interest him more than me.

  That left Zoey and Jack, but it was Jack who I wanted to talk to. He had the cool, regal bearing of a younger—and bald—Morgan Freeman. His dark skin had red and gold undertones, his eyes twinkled like embering coals, and he had a bit of a Mona Lisa smile. I always had the sense that he was amused, but I could never tell if he was amused with me… or at me. I really hoped that it was the former. Jack owned a bank, and, well, a loan was sounding really good right about now.

  “Ladies,” Jack said in salutations of his impending parting. Standing up, he slid on his full-length camel hair coat and then simultaneously put on and tipped his fedora hat. “Good coffee, Kylie.”

  “Thanks!” I went pigeon-toed and played with my hands like a nervous schoolgirl at his compliment. Jack was very adult, and even at twenty-nine I wasn’t sure I’d gotten there. Being around him made me feel like a kid struggling to get a clue about life, and Jack seemed to have everything already figured out.

  I watched him walk out with the words “I need a favor” on the tip of my tongue the whole time. But the moment wasn’t right. Asking a person for money was never easy—at least it wasn’t for me. I’d never been in this situation before, but my ex-husband had left me with nothing when we divorced by way of an absurd prenup that I never should have signed.

  With Jack out the door, that left me and Zoey.

  “I’ve got a client call scheduled in half an hour. Mind if I make a sandwich to go?” Zoey was a tech genius, and she worked doing independent tech support for the rest of us who were less knowledgeable. That is to say, everyone.

  “Sure! Go for it.” She made better sandwiches than me, anyway.

  Zoey headed to the back kitchen, and I went behind the counter to see if I could figure out what Brad did to make the coffee so good. While I was staring into a canister of whole beans, wondering if they needed to be blended into a fine powder or only cut into rough chunks, the bell on the café’s front door chimed.

  I looked up to find Susie walking in. Susie owned a hair salon and had recently given me to-die-for highlights and a cut. She was nine years older than me, the same age as my ex, and was also my ex’s ex. They’d been high school sweethearts. She’d dumped him right after he slept with the whole cheerleading squad and two of his teachers. Sadly, not much had changed between when she and Dan had been together and when he and I had been married. The man savored his variety.

  “It’s Friday!” Susie said with a cheery smile. But I wasn’t buying it. It was a false cheer, and I instantly knew something was wrong. Her face was doing all the things that it was supposed to do to show happiness, but all I saw was distraught sadness.

  Smiling with mechanical perfection, she wiggled her large, metallic to-go cup in the air. Friday was my new free-fills day for anyone who managed to make it in Monday through Thursday. So far, Susie was my only customer to do it besides my longtime regulars.

  “Hey, what’s up? You okay?” I couldn’t keep the worry from my voice and didn’t even try. I took her to-go cup from her and filled it with the last of the coffee that Brad had made. It was just enough to fill her cup to two-thirds, but I knew she’d top it off with lots of cream and sugar. I’d started buying organic cream just for her. Since my cooking was terrible, I used every other opportunity I could to make my customers happy.

  I handed the coffee cup back over to her and then set out the cream and sugar so that she could top it off herself. Watching her finish it off was like watching a ritual, and I could see how it soothed her.

  Susie shook her head. Her smile was gone, and she was no longer trying to hide her misery. “My landlord is raising the rent on my salon space. He’s almost doubling it.”

  “Doubling it? Can he do that?”

  “He sure can. Waltzed into the shop yesterday right in the m
iddle of me doing someone’s hair. It was humiliating.”

  “Sit,” I ordered and then grabbed her a cheese Danish. I nuked it for fifteen seconds and then slid it in front of her. She picked at it with her perfectly manicured fingers and ate little nibbles of it. “Now tell me what happened.”

  “I was in my shop with old lady Cruthers.” I didn’t know who that was, but didn’t say. “Mr. Pratt came waltzing in, shouting at the top of his lungs like he was standing on some stage and needing to be heard by an audience. He told me what my new rent would be and that it would be effective on the first.”

  “That’s three days from now. How can he do that?”

  “Well, I told him he couldn’t, and that’s when he laughed at me. Said he could do anything he wanted, and that it was all in the contract I’d signed. The only reason I rented that space was because the rent was so low. I’ve only been there six months, I’ve been on time with everything, and now I’ll be paying way more than any other space I’d looked at when deciding where to set up shop.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to do. This is going to put me out of business. The overhead will be too high.”

  “Can’t you go somewhere else? Set up shop somewhere else?”

  “He said that if I do that, he’ll sue for breach of contract and I’ll have to pay for his and my lawyer fees on top of the rent for the remaining months. And it’s a two-year contract.”