A Berry Clever Corpse

by WINTERS, A. R.

  With a serving tray decked from edge to edge with cup-topped saucers full of hot cocoa, we headed out to spend time with the ladies of Agatha’s knitting group. She had with her the tall sixty-something sisters, Nancy and Shelly. Their long fingers worked nimbly on their respective projects. Nancy was working on a red and white gingham blanket and Shelly was working on an infant’s pink sweater.

  In addition to Nancy and Shelly was a new woman who I’d never met before. In contrast to Nancy and Shelly’s long-legged height, this new woman was diminutive and delicate. She looked as though she belonged as the tiny figurine spinning in a music box.

  “This is Prudence,” Agatha said by way of introduction to the newest member. “And of course you already know Nancy and Shelly.”

  I waved to the sisters, and then to Prudence, I said, “Hi.”

  She gave a smile and a nod in reply. Her fingers never stopped working, and her knitting needles never stopped their rhythmic clicking. I guessed her to be in her mid-thirties.

  The collective click-click of their needles as they knit was soothing, and I realized that if given the chance, I could sit and listen to them as I drifted off to sleep. But I was here with ulterior motives: Zoey and I wanted information.

  Together, Zoey and I put a cup of hot cocoa on whatever side table was nearest each woman. The whole time, Agatha watched us, looking like the cat that ate the canary. Her mouth was full of unspoken words.

  When done passing out the hot cocoa, Zoey and I snuggled onto a loveseat together. I imagined sitting there on a cold, snowy night in front of the crackling fireplace with one of my suiters. I tried to picture which one it might be, and my mental image flickered between the handsome, athletic Brad and the steady, gentle giant Joel. But Dan’s grinning face infiltrated and took over the image like a virus, rewriting what I saw in my head until the only thing that was left was him.

  What I wouldn’t give for a mental scouring pad. I wondered if I’d be able to drink the image of Dan away, or if maybe I could have him erased with the help of a hypnotherapist. At this point I was ready to try anything. Whatever it took to keep Dan out of my head and most definitely out of my life.

  “What would you ladies like to know?” Agatha asked, pulling me out of my thoughts and back into the moment.

  “Can’t we just want to spend time in your company?” I asked. I hated being so transparent.

  Agatha laughed. “Admit it. You want to know about Mike Pratt.”

  “Ohhhh, Mike… That’s some juicy gossip,” Prudence said, her eyes going large and round. “I heard that he was killed by the brother of a woman he’d jilted from Russia.” She nodded her head with slow, exaggerated confidence, her eyes as large as ever. “Mail order bride.”

  “Prude,” Nancy chided, “that was from a Lifetime movie that aired two nights ago.”

  Prudence’s head jerked back and her gaze darted this way and that as if searching for something inside her head. Finally, the light dawned. “Ohhhhh,” she said. “You’re right.” She smiled large and went back to knitting.

  I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say. How does one follow that up?

  “I had Mike in a kindergarten class that I substituted for,” Sally said. “Their regular teacher was on maternity leave. It was a hard pregnancy at the end, and I had the class for four months.”

  “What was Mike like as a little boy?” I asked.

  “Very sweet. Maybe a little too sensitive. But he was very generous. He’d cut out flowers from the construction paper and give them away, share his toys, console other children when they were crying. He was never a problem. If other children squabbled, he’d try to make things better.”

  I knew that that had been a long time ago, but it didn’t sound anything like the man who Susie had described. The Mike that she had described was opportunistic and mean. He was a person eager to take advantage of others. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same person?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, yes,” Sally said. Her shining, metallic, fluorescent pink knitting needles never missed a beat. They kept clicking, and Sally’s yarn kept moving through them. It amazed me that a single piece of string could be tied in so many little loose knots to create things so beautiful, intricate and unique. “It was him. Since his death I’ve heard a lot of things said about Mike, and I can hardly believe my ears. I don’t know if he hit his head and changed or if some experience changed him along the way, but he grew up to be everything that he wasn’t as a child.”

  “He won the lottery when he was twenty-one,” Prudence said.

  “Prude, are you sure that isn’t from another movie?” Nancy asked.

  “No, no,” Prudence said, shaking her head. “It was Mike, and it happened. He was about twenty-one and he was one of two people with the winning number of a Powerball jackpot. “He won millions.”

  My gut twisted. Mike had had wealth and ease fall into his lap, yet he’d gone out of his way to try to keep Susie and others, from what Joel told me, down. It was vile and petty, and it sounded nothing like the child that Sally had described.

  “I don’t think he lived lavishly,” Sally said.

  “No, he has a nice house, but it’s not a mansion, and he drives an old truck. Been driving the same truck for years. For as long as I can remember, actually.”

  “I bet that’s the same truck that he bought when he won the lottery,” Agatha said. “And remember him getting one and driving it around. He was so proud. Told everyone how lucky he was.”

  Uh oh. “So he talked a lot about his winnings?”

  “Mmhmm,” Agatha said. “He’d tell anybody he met on the street. He was so happy. So proud. I was out to dinner one night at a restaurant with a gentleman caller, and Mike came in for dinner. He paid the bill for everybody there. He didn’t do it for applause, either. He was quiet about it. We didn’t find out until we got the check and it had ‘gratis’ written on it.”

  That sounded a lot like that little boy Sally had described having in kindergarten class. So, he managed to stay generous and nice until he’d won the lottery. It wasn’t until after he’d won the lottery that his personality appears to have changed. And he wasn’t secretive about his newfound wealth.

  Very slowly, the puzzle pieces started to fit together in my mind. I arranged them this way and that, trying out the different variations. But no big picture sparks of insight came.

  “He must have been smart about it,” Prudence said.

  “Huh?” She’d lost me with her unspoken jump in logic.

  “A lot of windfall winners like that, they lose their money in a matter of years and end up as broke—or more broke—than they ever were. But Mike invested. He bought all those storefronts.”

  “How many did he own?” Zoey asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” Prudence said. “Nancy, do you know?” I wondered why Nancy might know, then Prudence answered that question for me. “Nancy’s daughter dated Mike once upon a time.”

  “Oh…” My interest was piqued, but Nancy did a two-handed, knit-filled wave to dismiss the connection.

  “That was years ago,” Nancy said. “And Margot and Mike never got serious. They dated one summer, and then she left to go to a college out of state. It was all friendly and sweet. I’m not even sure they were exclusive with each other. I think that it might have been more like a group of friends hanging out together. He was sweet on her for a time, but then they both moved on with their lives at the end of summer.”

  “I can’t say for sure,” Agatha said, “but I think that he bought up a whole line of small storefronts on both sides of a street.”

  “Was it Brunt Street?” I asked. That was where Susie had her hair shop.

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “He spread out his investment risk,” Zoey said.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “He put his eggs in a lot of different baskets,” Zoey said. “If one of the storefronts failed and the business owner closed up shop, he would only be hurt a littl
e because he had several other renters at the same time. That was smart, especially for someone so young.”

  “But it also gave him more people he could wield influence over,” I pointed out. “With multiple renters, there would be more opportunities to take advantage of someone.”

  “Kylie, that’s dark,” Sally said, but she nodded her head with approval.

  “I know that his renters tended not to be happy with him,” Agatha said.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Mae Jensen owns the florist shop on that street, or rather she rented her space from Mike. A few years back, I was dating Mort, the funeral director at Benegan’s Funeral Home.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, throwing up my hands, palms forward. “The funeral director’s name was Mort?” It meant death in French.

  “Yes,” Agatha answered with a chuckle. “He thought it was funny. Anyway, Mae delivered most of the flowers to the funeral home. He told me that she complained about Mike every time she made a delivery.”

  “But that was a few years ago, right?” I asked.

  “Mmhmm,” Agatha said. Her knitting needles slipped and slid past each other, never missing a stitch.

  “And she still owns the same flower shop in the same spot?”

  “I believe so,” Agatha said.

  “If she was having troubles with Mike all the way back then, why would she stay?”

  Agatha shrugged. “Why would any of them stay? Susie has her shop on that road. Then there’s Clara, we’ve already mentioned Mae, there’s Betty, Robert, and Jasper. I don’t know if they all rented from Mike, but they all have little shops on that road.”

  That was a lot of investigative legwork. At least Zoey and I would have people to talk to about Mike. Any one of those people could have been Mike’s killer.

  “I go to church with Mike’s neighbor, Tina,” Prudence said. “She hated him. Said he kept peeing on her hydrangeas.”

  “He what?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “She said he wouldn’t even hide that he was doing it, either. She said he’d come out of his house in his robe to get his newspaper, then he’d walk over to the side of the yard that met up with hers, and he’d pee on her hydrangeas. She said he managed to kill two of the bushes that way.” Prudence made a face. “Tina said she hired someone to replant new ones there rather than dig there herself.”

  Ewwww. Double ewwww.

  But we had a new suspect: Tina, his neighbor. She had motive. Since Mike’s office was in his converted garage, living next door to him gave her opportunity. And since Mike was killed by his own shredder strangling him with his own scarf, everybody had the means to kill him. Based on that alone, I could have killed him.

  “Do you believe her claims about Mike?” Zoey asked.

  “I don’t know,” Prudence said, making a face. “She’s a bit of an odd duck. I usually try to avoid her, to be honest. You should have heard her describing Mike peeing on her flower bushes.” Prudence gasped and then clucked her tongue. “Such a vivid description. She even pantomimed it, right there as people were filing into church. I tell you what, I wanted to crawl off and hide under one of the pews.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or be aghast.

  “Did Mike have a girlfriend?” Zoey asked.

  The four women looked at each other, as if doing a deep dive into their collective consciousness in search of the answer.

  “Mmmm, not that I know of,” Prudence finally answered.

  “I only know of his ex,” Nancy said. “I don’t know how she knew, but Margot had heard he was with a woman named Emily and that they were engaged.” Nancy shrugged. “But then there was no engagement announcement and no wedding, so I guess things didn’t work out.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  Nancy pursed her lips as she thought. “Nine, ten… maybe eleven or twelve years ago?” She framed it as a question even though it was answering a question that I’d asked.

  “Does anyone know if Mike was still worth any money?” I asked.

  “I’d figured he was,” Prudence said.

  “I never noticed any extravagances to prove it, but I always had the impression that he was doing well for himself,” Nancy said.

  “I heard he paid for a local girl’s college tuition after her parents died in a car crash,” Sally said. “That was a couple of years ago. Paid for all four years.”

  Generosity. From Mike. He was such a mixed bag.

  “So, he still had money,” Zoey said.

  “Does anyone know who is due to inherit?”

  All the ladies shook their heads. Nobody knew.

  I asked the ladies if I could get them anything more from the kitchen, but they all declined. I put another small log on the fire, and then Zoey and I went back to the grill at the front of the café.

  “Think you could find out what properties he owned?” I asked Zoey.

  “What, you mean hack the County Clerk’s Office records?”

  I shrugged. “Or go down there and ask.”

  Zoey scrunched her face as if she found the idea distasteful. “I’ll hack the records. Who do you think we should talk to first?”

  “I think that the ex-girlfriend, Emily, is a great place to start. She liked him at one time at least. Would have had his confidences at some level. Maybe she can shed some light on what his life was like when he died.”

  “Emily it is.”

  Chapter 9

  Help me think of what I can make as a dinner dish,” I said to Zoey.

  “What’s wrong with the potato soup you made? It was good and you made a lot. Don’t you have some left?”

  I started us walking toward the kitchen. “I do, but Agatha’s already had the potato soup. She had it for lunch. I want her to be able to offer something different. Last time the knitters were here, they stayed almost four hours.”

  “What are you good at?” Zoey asked, climbing onto a tall stool inside the kitchen.

  I gave her a sharp look. “Nothing. Have you met me?”

  “That’s not true. You made the potato soup. You’ve been making that chocolate cake. You even made hot cocoa.”

  “I would have ruined that hot cocoa if it hadn’t been for you being here, setting me right whenever I was about to do something wrong.”

  “Well…” Zoey said.

  She knew I had her. The debate was effectively won. I was a terrible cook. Yay me.

  “Do you have any spaghetti?” she asked.

  I made a face at her. “I’d like to avoid becoming known as the spaghetti queen.”

  “So I guess lasagna is out, too.”

  “Yep.”

  Zoey started surfing her phone, presumably looking up recipe options. “What kind of meat do you have?”

  “I’ve got some chicken thighs and bacon.”

  Zoey did some more scrolling. “Do you have bourbon?” She paused and looked at me critically. “Tell me you have bourbon. We are in Kentucky. You gotta have bourbon.”

  “Um…” My mind raced. Then I snapped my fingers. “Yes! It’s in the pantry.” I felt so proud of myself, kind of like I’d actually just accomplished something, despite the fact that the bourbon was a carryover from when my cousin Sarah had owned the café.

  “Then this is it.” Zoey hopped down from the stool and showed me her phone’s screen. “Bourbon-bacon barbecue sauce. You can make barbecue chicken.”

  I looked it over. “I think I can do this.” Then, needing to feel more conviction with what I was saying, I said, “I can do this!” Of course, that didn’t actually do anything to dispel my reservations—doubts based on years of botched cooking attempts. Zoey must have read it in my expression because she gave me a playful hip bump.

  “I’ll help,” she said.

  Zoey to the rescue, again.

  We were in the kitchen cooking for two and a half hours. My waiter, Sam, had made it in to work and had been taking care of the customers while Zoey and I cooked. He peeped into
the kitchen.

  “People are starting to ask what you have cooking,” he said. “It smells really good.”

  Zoey and I smiled at each other.

  “If this turns out,” I said, “it’s a definite non-Oops board meal.”

  We left the oven to work its magic on the chicken, and Zoey and I headed back out to the grill, which opened up to the rest of the café. Zoey climbed up onto one of the grill’s bar stools while I made a new pot of coffee.

  “I can’t believe you do this every day,” she said. “My feet hurt.”

  I couldn’t stop my smile and chuckled. “I’m sure that’s got nothing to do with those five-inch platform heels of yours.”

  “Hey, these are comfortable,” she said, looking down at her feet. “Barely have any foot incline. All the height is in the sole.”

  I looked over as the café’s front door chimed at a new arrival. It was a gentleman dressed in a three-quarter length coat over a light gray suit. He had an oval-shaped beard and mustache combo that I could best describe as dapper. His hair was salt and pepper, and stylishly combed back in a way that both flattered his features and softened his appearance. While not yet to the age of silver-fox, he looked very prepared to claim that title once he got there. Whoever the new customer was, he was very handsome in an old southern gentleman kind of way.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he said. He took off his coat and draped it over his arm before approaching the grill’s bar to take a seat.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked.

  “I’d love that. Is there a menu? I’ve been on the road for a lot of hours today, and I could really do with a good meal.”

  I glanced nervously at Zoey. He’d said he wanted a “good” meal. He had to be from out of town. I was sure that everybody in town had by now heard that good was a pretty iffy proposition when eating at Sarah’s Eatery.

  I really needed to get around to changing the café’s name…

  I put on my best smile. “We don’t have a menu other than a daily menu. Today we’ve got a loaded potato soup that’s topped with crisp bacon and cheese. It’s served with a toasted garlic crostini. And, in a little while, we’ll have bourbon-bacon barbecue chicken for as the dinner offering.”