A Berry Clever Corpse

by WINTERS, A. R.

  It was Zoey’s turn again. “Did you know that Mike was murdered?” As always, she managed to strike straight to the heart of the matter.

  Emily leaned against the nearest counter, looking as though she needed the support. “I’d heard a rumor. I’d hoped it wasn’t true.”

  “Any ideas who might have done it?”

  Emily took a beat before answering. I could see her struggling with herself as to how much she wanted to say.

  “If you know something that might shed light on what really happened to him, it might save somebody else from a similar fate. Kill once. What’s to stop a person from killing again?”

  That seemed to do it. Emily nodded. “We kept in touch after we broke up. Mostly from his doing. He’d call, drop by or text. He… I’m not sure he was well at the end.”

  “How so?” Maybe Mike was terminally ill and maybe faking his death had been his way of staying relevant in the land of the living for a little bit longer. And if someone got wrongly sent to prison for killing him, maybe that would make him all the happier. That thought made me wonder if Mike might be getting a permanent suntan in hell.

  “He’d started complaining about things moving around on their own in his office or inside his house.”

  “What? You mean like a ghost?” Zoey asked.

  “No, it wasn’t happening in front of him. Things would go missing and then he’d find them a couple of days later in a different spot. His paranoia was through the roof. He’d started calling me more often, and would vent for hours.”

  “Were you afraid of him?” I asked on a hunch.

  “Not at first, but here lately, it was like he’d lost touch with reality.”

  “Do you think he could have killed himself?” I asked.

  “Oh! No, no… Not at all. No. It wasn’t his way.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Mike liked himself too much to ever kill himself.”

  “But if he wasn’t right in the head,” Zoey prompted.

  “Doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t do that. He was too afraid of someone else trying to do that. He was obsessed with the idea of someone poisoning him or breaking in and killing him for all his money. It’s why he left all his money to charity, so no one would be able to gain from his death.”

  “He left it to charity? Are you sure?” If that were true, it would wipe an enormous possible motive for his murder off our list.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Was that common knowledge?” Zoey asked, and her question made me want to kick myself. Of course. Mike’s plans for his money didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was what those around him thought that they knew. Even so, no one we’d talked to had had any idea at all that they would benefit from Mike’s death. No one had suspected that anything would be coming to them.

  “It was something that he’d mentioned to me several times, but I’d known him for the last five and a half years. I don’t know if he ever told anybody else or not.”

  Okay, so someone killing him for his money was still on the table, although slightly downgraded as a possible motive. For a person to kill Mike in order to inherit from him, that person would need to have reason to believe that they were in Mike’s will and that they would be getting some money from him. Given that Mike had been vocal with Emily about leaving his money to charity for the sake of not giving anyone the chance to benefit from his death, it was likely that he never said anything to anyone that would lead them to think that they would be inheriting from him.

  “Can you think of anyone who might have been willing to hurt Mike?” Zoey asked.

  “Well, gee, I don’t think you’d have to look much further than his renters. I know that things weren’t always good between him and them. He’d sometimes let things slip when talking to me. He’d make jokes about how dumb someone was not to have their lawyer look over their contract or something else like that.”

  Mike’s renters were already high on our list of suspects. We needed to know if there was anyone else. “Can you think of any others who might have wanted to hurt Mike?”

  “Mmmm, his neighbor, Tina, was pretty weird. I don’t know if she’d actually get physical with someone, but she wasn’t right. I met her a few times, and she gave me the creeps.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “It’d be like she’d leave but I felt like she was still there watching us. I don’t know. She was just weird. Like someone who might do anything, even though she never did anything. She always just seemed two blinks away from boiling your pet rabbit in your kitchen.”

  “But you never saw her do anything?”

  “No, I didn’t. That was just the feeling I got from her. But you really should be asking Mike’s girlfriend about this stuff, not me.”

  Ohhhh… hello. “He had a girlfriend?” I asked.

  Emily shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sure he did. He always did. Mind you, he never kept a girlfriend for long—which I think he preferred it that way. He didn’t want anyone getting any ideas that he owed them anything. So, his relationships tended to be short, but… there was always someone.”

  “But you don’t know who?”

  “No. He’d mention names sometimes, but I never asked. And it was always a different woman’s name.”

  A car pulled up and parked outside her store. We were almost out of time.

  “Emily, can you tell us where you were the day Mike died?”

  Emily went back to the checkout counter and retrieved her cell phone. She scrolled through it as she walked back over to us. Finally, she handed it over. There was a picture of her at a podium on a stage. “I was giving a speech at an out-of-state conference for women entrepreneurs. The conference ran for three days—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—and I was there the whole time. The day that Mike died, I was on a flight home.”

  She scrolled through the phone some more and showed us a digital airplane ticket. It was marked for ten-thirty AM in Michigan. There was no way she would have been able to make it back in time to kill Mike that morning.

  Chapter 15

  Zoey ran me by the grocery store before we headed back to the café so that I could pick up ingredients for a dinner dish. I wanted to try my hand at making steak hoagies. It would give me a chance to practice making steaks. If I undercooked one of the steaks, I’d know when I cut into it, and I could simply cook it longer. And if I overcooked it, the sandwich would have so many other things going on that hopefully no one would notice how tough the meat was. It was a win-win for all. At least that was how I was choosing to think about it.

  “Catch you later,” Zoey said, carrying in the last of the grocery bags through the café’s back door into the kitchen.

  “Thanks!”

  I stuck my head out of the kitchen and gave Melanie a wave to let her know that I was back. The temperature inside felt good. It was clear that Melanie had cycled the heater on and off, making the café cozy without being hot. As always, Melanie had done a great job keeping things going while I was out.

  I got to work unpacking grocery bags, and Melanie showed up a couple of minutes later.

  “How’s everything gone?” I asked.

  “Great! Everybody’s loving the lasagna.”

  “Still have enough lasagna left to last another hour and a quarter?”

  “I think so.”

  “Great. After that we’ll offer a choice for dinner of lasagna or a steak hoagie.”

  “Steak hoagie? Yum!”

  I sure hoped it would be. I still had to figure out how to make it!

  Melanie headed back out to the café floor, and I switched my focus to figuring out how to make a good steak hoagie. I had scanned through a bunch of recipes before going to the grocery store, and now I looked through at least twenty more.

  I picked the one with ingredients closest to what I had available and within my skill range and got to work. I was halfway through grilling the third steak when I heard Melanie nervously clear her throat in the kitchen entr
yway.

  “Kylie, you’ve got some visitors,” she said.

  Not my husband. Anybody but Dan.

  Still holding the two-pronged six-inch fork that I’d been using to flip the steaks, I headed to the kitchen doorway and peeked out.

  “Oh!” Standing on the inside of the café door were Winnie, Manny, Patty, and Derek. They were the group of homeless people who had been living in the park next to Mike’s house. I’d invited them to come to the café when the weather was due to drop too cold. I guessed that tonight was the night.

  The group was huddled close together just inside the café door. They weren’t stepping any further inside, and they looked as if they weren’t sure they should.

  I tossed the sharp pronged fork onto the nearest counter and headed out to greet them. “Come in, come in!” I encouraged with a welcoming smile. “I’m so glad that you could make it.”

  Out of the corner of my vision, I saw a couple of my other customers eyeing the new group warily. The customers didn’t look pleased.

  I glanced back at the Cozy Corner and saw that it was empty. There was enough spare space back there for them to store their belongings in a corner. They hadn’t brought much. In addition to the space, the fire would be nice for helping them warm up.

  “You guys follow me, and I’ll get you settled.”

  “You sure this is okay?” Derek asked as the group stepped in line behind me. “We don’t want to intrude.”

  “I told you all to come, and you came. I’m thankful you guys came in out of the cold.” I meant it, but my customers didn’t seem to share the sentiment. The wary looks they gave the group turned to disapproving glares as the four passed by. A moment later, I had two different orders changed to carryouts and a third person simply got up and walked out without canceling their order or requesting it to go.

  Seeing the loss of business hurt my checkbook. The café—and I—needed the money. The café needed to start operating in the black and it needed to start doing it soon. But despite that, it was all I could do not to tell those customers not to let the door hit them in their derrières on their way out. Good riddance! I really didn’t know what they were getting so upset about. Okay, so I was pretty sure that Derek was high out of his gourd. Manny was slurring his words and swaying a little bit. Patty’s large, round eyes were staring at her surroundings like she was sure gremlins were about to jump out at her, and she kept a tight hold of Winnie’s hand. As for Winnie, she was doing pretty good—albeit she and more than one of the others could do with a shower and some freshly washed clothes. Baby steps. I wasn’t prepared to open my apartment for the use of people I didn’t know. The café was a public space, and at least for tonight, the group was welcome to stay all night long.

  I left Melanie to take their drink orders and ignored my inner voice that fretted over the combined loss of business plus the expense of hosting non-paying customers. Regardless, I did my best to make delicious steak hoagies. I put as much care and effort into the process as if I was serving the meals to a local food critic, and I got smiles all around when I served them to Mike’s previous neighbors.

  After that, I sent Melanie on her way, showed the group how to work the jet-engine heater, and made them a platter of snacks so that they’d have something to munch on through the night, and I found some cold medicine for Patty. She was doing much better than when I last saw her, but even so, I wanted her to have it.

  If I’d had blankets to give them, I would have, but I didn’t really have a blanket for myself. Some nights I used my coat as a blanket. I worked with whatever I had, which wasn’t much. So unfortunately, that meant that other than food, warmth, and the cozy corner’s comfy furniture, the group was on their own in terms of creature comforts.

  Two hours went by with no new customers.

  “I’m calling it a night,” I told my guests. “Do you need anything before I head upstairs?”

  Manny had a chair pulled up right in front of the fireplace. His sleep looked so deep that I worried he was dead, but a snore reassured me otherwise. Derek was on his feet with his long, skeletal arms hugging himself as he gently swayed from side to side. And Patty and Winnie sat in the love seat, Patty’s head resting on Winnie’s shoulder, asleep.

  “We’re good,” Winnie said with a soft voice, the type used when you didn’t want to wake others. “Thank you for this.”

  I smiled and waved as a silent “you’re welcome” before collecting Sage and heading upstairs to my apartment. There, I took a long, hot bath that took me an hour to prep. I ate a steak hoagie that I’d made two hours and forty-five minutes earlier and realized that I should have eaten it sooner to get the full effect of it being served fresh. And then I curled up on my kitchen mattress between the oil-filled heater Zoey had loaned me and my turned on oven. Sage finished off my cocoon of warmth by curling up to sleep snug against the top of my head.

  It was a good night, but morning—for me—came too fast. The sky outside was still dark, but I needed to get my day started to take care of the café. Lying on the mattress, I looked around me. Then I patted the top of my head, found Sage, and snuggled her into my arms against my chest.

  “No smoke. No fire alarms.” Did the building have a fire alarm system? I needed to find out. “And no fire engine sirens.” It was a good sign. The café was still intact, at least structurally. My guests hadn’t burned it down, yet I knew that there was no telling what I’d find when I went downstairs.

  I knew that it was something I should have considered sooner, but I wondered whether or not they would be able to sell any of the heavy duty, industrial kitchen equipment. I had no idea what it would sell for, but I was sure that it was more money than any one of them—or me—had.

  “Come on, little girl,” I said to Sage. “Let’s get going.”

  I got dressed, splashed freezing cold water on my face—because it was the only temperature available—and headed downstairs. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I paused with my hand on the doorknob of the door that would lead into the café’s kitchen. With the turn of my wrist, my faith in humanity would either be upheld or destroyed.

  I was more than a little nervous to find out which.

  I opened the door, took a deep breath, and stopped. I took another deep breath. Then another.

  Something smelled amazing! Some sort of cookie, I was sure.

  “Hello?” I called out. I headed into the kitchen. Everything was still there. And if my practiced eye didn’t know better, the kitchen was even cleaner than how I’d left it the night before.

  Following my nose, I found the source of heavenly goodness that was making my olfactory senses happy to be alive and my stomach eager to eat. Just outside the kitchen, on the grill’s customer counter, was a large platter artfully stacked with three different kinds of cookies. And these weren’t store bought cookies like what I usually offered customers. No, these were homemade… or rather café made. There were chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and peanut butter.

  I picked up a chocolate chip cookie. It was still warm to the touch. I took a bite, and my eyes rolled back in my head. It was the best cookie I’d eaten in my life. Needing to make sure that the quality of the other types of cookies were just as good (or so I told myself), I had a peanut butter and an oatmeal one as well. If anything, they were even better than the chocolate chip cookie.

  Next to the platter was a note. The handwriting was terrible, but I was able to make out what the note said: “More batter in fridge. Made lots. Freeze some.”

  Taking the note with me, I went to the walk-in cooler. Sure enough, as promised, I found three large bowls filled almost to the brim with the cookie dough batter. It was enough for me to make cookies throughout the day and still have cookie dough to freeze this evening. I’d be able to have the café smelling of cookies all day long and then some.

  And that’s just what I did.

  Chapter 16

  Stir it a little more,” Brenda said.

  “Like thi
s?” I asked.

  “Right, like that. Good. Give the bottom of the pan a good scraping to get up the good bits.”

  I did as Brenda instructed. She was helping me make a bacon and potato hash to serve with the frittata Lorraine she’d already helped me make. And we’d prepped several casserole dishes worth of spinach and ricotta stuffed shells with tomato sauce. I’d be able to pop them in the oven this evening for the dinner customers, and any leftover trays could be wrapped and put in the freezer for another day.

  “What’s that smell?” called out a familiar voice. It was Brad.

  “Do you smell something?” I asked Brenda, instantly worried. Of course there was the obvious. The dish we were making had bacon, potatoes, onions and bell peppers. But with a question like, “What’s that smell?” I worried that something out in the café had gone terribly wrong. Winnie, Manny, Derek and Patty had stayed all night in the café, and it was true that they had been a bit behind in their hygiene, but I hadn’t noticed anything off smelling when I’d checked the café’s dining area that morning. But Brad had a cop’s nose. Maybe he’d been specially trained to suss out scents that were going unnoticed by me. Maybe there was a dead rat that had gotten lodged somewhere in the walls. Maybe some of the electrical wires had gotten frayed and the air was filling with a burnt electrical smell.

  Leaving Brenda to oversee the hash, I hurried out to the café. “What’s wrong? What do you smell?” There was no keeping the worry from my voice.

  “Only a little piece of heaven,” Brad said. “These little babies right here.” He pressed his palms against the edge of the grill’s serving counter and leaned in close to the large, dome-covered platter that was stacked with cookies. Closing his eyes, he breathed in deep.

  “Oh!” I laughed. “You had me worried.”

  “The only thing to worry about is what you’ll feed your other customers when I walk out of here with the whole dish.” He managed to pull his attention away from the cookies and look at me. “Did you make these?” There was a disbelieving note in his voice.