Juniper Grove Cozy Mystery Box Set 2

by Karin Kaufman

  “And here I thought that girl was dying in front of us,” Julia said. “We couldn’t get her to the hospital fast enough. She moaned and groaned, and I was sure she was unconscious part of the time.”

  “Shane, did you hear Maria scream or call out in any way when she was stabbed?” I asked.

  “Like I kept telling the chief, none of us heard a thing. It’s not like she screamed and we ignored her. She was in 108, said she had to use the restroom in her room, and two minutes later, the lights went out. Next thing I knew, the chief was telling me she was attacked.”

  Staring down at my phone’s screen, I rose from my seat. Unbelievable. It was all coming together. Falling into place like pieces of a puzzle. “Why does your crew call Maria ‘Miss Vitamin’?”

  “Because she gobbles vitamins all day long,” he said with a chuckle. “Not cheap ones, specialty ones. Powdered vitamins in gel caps. She tells me they work better than tablets. No, let me restate that. She doesn’t tell me, she lectures me.”

  “Do you know if she takes powdered vitamin B?” I said.

  “B is her favorite,” Shane said. “She’s says B12 is the king of vitamins.”

  “What is it, Rachel?” Julia asked.

  Before I could answer, Gilroy strode into the lobby, heading for the computer on the front desk. “Turner, check the email. The lab texted that they sent the report.”

  “Want more cocoa?” Underhill asked him, giving the Thermos a jiggle.

  “No,” Gilroy said. He shot me a puzzled look, though Underhill must have told him Julia and I were in the lobby. Maybe what puzzled him was the expression on my face. The one I was sure said, I think I figured it out. He gave me a single nod.

  I walked to where he stood and held up my phone. “They call Maria Miss Vitamin because she takes so many. Her favorite vitamin is B.”

  “Here’s the report, Chief,” Turner said, clicking on an email.

  Gilroy took my phone, read the screen, and then glanced at the computer screen. “Let me sit,” he said to Turner.

  A minute later, Gilroy told Underhill to drive to the hospital and place Maria Hall under arrest for the murder of Arthur Jago. Underhill, though clearly astonished by the order, drained the last of his cocoa, set the Thermos down, and dashed out the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Shane said. “She was stabbed in the back. Shouldn’t you be arresting her attacker?”

  I kept my mouth shut. Gilroy had figured it out before I had, and I wasn’t going to step on his toes.

  “She stabbed herself, Mr. Rooney,” Gilroy said. “Very carefully.”

  Shane raised a quizzical eyebrow. “That’s a nifty trick. I’d like to know how she did that.”

  “She put a knife in the hinge of a door and carefully backed into it,” Gilroy said. “Making sure to avoid anything vital.”

  Shane looked from Gilroy to me. “You mean she did a Herbert Purdy?”

  “She probably took a knife to the laundry room, just off the kitchen,” Gilroy said. “The main circuit breaker is there. She positioned herself just right, backed into the knife, and then pulled the circuit breaker. That’s my guess, anyway. I’m sure we’ll find out. It might have been the perfect alibi—or temporary diversion—if not for Purdy.”

  Shane was rubbing his jaw like mad, trying to process what Gilroy was saying. “She said she had to go to her room. We didn’t hear a thing after that.”

  “It’s the same way she stabbed Arthur Jago,” Gilroy said. “Only in his case, she was showing him how Herbert Purdy died. She positioned him and then shoved him, making sure she didn’t avoid anything vital. He pulled away from the door and she helped him to the chair. He was in shock and didn’t fight her—not that anyone would have heard him. At the time, only Mrs. Foster was on the first floor.”

  Julia’s hand flew to her mouth.

  “Maria killed Arthur?” Shane said. “That poor guy. He never hurt a soul.”

  “The spots on Mr. Jago’s sweater turned out to be trace amounts of vitamin B, which glows under ultraviolet light,” Gilroy added.

  “Those spots,” Shane said.

  “Isn’t that something?” Julia said. “Who would know that?”

  Gilroy smiled and gave me back my phone. “Someone who looks things up on the Internet.”

  “I thought . . . I never,” Shane sputtered.

  He was having a hard time reconciling what he was hearing with the Maria he knew. I couldn’t blame him. I’d known her just two days and she didn’t seem the murdering kind to me. How wrong our first, and second, impressions could be. “When Holly and I found Maria in the basement, she was shaking,” I told him. “But I realize now she wasn’t afraid. She’d just killed a man. Even someone with a cold heart might shake after that.”

  “The crime was planned, but the timing wasn’t,” Gilroy said. “She knew what to do, but she had to bide her time and wait for the right moment to do it.”

  “You mean when everyone separated,” Shane said. “That explains why she didn’t go with Conyer to the basement. I remember she demanded a flashlight, and I think . . .” He lifted his head and stared at the ceiling. “I think the library door was closed or almost closed when I walked by. That must have been when she did it. Fast and ruthless.”

  “I think she had a discreet talk with Arthur earlier in the day,” I said. “‘Meet me in the library, and I’ll show you how I solved the Purdy puzzle.’ Something like that.”

  Gilroy nodded. “Or she told him to give the photo album another look and see if he could solve it himself.”

  “That would have appealed to Arthur,” Shane said. “Those photos were the first new evidence for public eyes in fifty years. I bet he was flipping through the album when Maria entered.”

  “And to confuse things, Maria put it back on the shelf and laid a recipe book on Arthur’s lap,” I said. “But she left traces of vitamin B on the album.”

  Julia shivered slightly and rose from her seat. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve had enough of murders at the Grandview Hotel. Rachel, would you mind driving me home?”

  “You got it.”

  “You’re free to go, Mr. Rooney,” Gilroy said. “The Swansons and your crew, too. But don’t go back to the hotel. Spend the night at the Lilac Lane B&B. I’ll drive you. We still have to locate and process the new crime scene Miss Hall created.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Julia and I stood at the back of the bakery, taking in the warm, delicious air, waiting for the morning crush to thin out. Holly looked tired but happy. Her bakery needed the business, and for some reason, business was going wild. I’d never seen so many people at the counter, even on Christmas Eve, her biggest day.

  “I don’t know how Holly and Peter can keep up with this,” I said to Julia. “They’re short their triple-deck oven, and they will be until next week.”

  “At times like this, they need to close their eyes, cross their fingers, and just buy it,” Julia said. “Waiting until next week won’t help them.”

  “They have to wait until a credit card payment shows up. You know how that is.”

  “Well, I guess being too busy for your number of ovens is not a bad problem to have,” Julia said.

  The bakery door opened again, letting in a blast of cold air. I wrapped my scarf tightly about my neck and looked toward the door. “Shane and Dustin,” I said, tapping Julia on the arm.

  “How lovely of them to visit. I bet they know how disappointed Holly was in the broadcasts. She was cheated out of her big chance.”

  “Shane honestly tried to help her. I have to give him that.” When Shane looked my way I raised my chin, calling him over.

  “Well, Rachel and Miss Julia, fancy meeting you two ladies here,” he said after threading his way to the back.

  “It’s our home away from home,” I said. “Mine, anyway.”

  “I don’t blame you one bit. Not after tasting your friend’s pastries. I’d set up my office in here.”

  Dustin, whose
hair was still riding high, said, “Good morning, everyone” in a gravelly voice and edged his way to the counter. I figured he was still smarting over news of Maria. Or maybe he was exhausted. With dark rings under his eyes and puffy skin, he looked it. He and the rest of the crew had spent the night at the Lilac Lane B&B, which couldn’t have been refreshing. Not after being hauled to the police station and questioned. Shane seemed fresh enough, but I’d learned that the man possessed an endless well of energy.

  “I can’t believe how crowded this place is this morning,” I said.

  Shane grinned and stared ahead. “Smell that yeast and sugar. What could be better than that on a frosty January morning?”

  “Are you heading back to Fort Collins?”

  “With a box full of donuts and bear claws.”

  “Where’s Conyer?”

  “Sleeping in the car. We couldn’t budge him, even with the promise of cinnamon-honey rolls.” Still grinning, he looked my way. More than energetic, the man was boundlessly cheerful. He reminded me of Holly, when her life wasn’t crashing in around her.

  I recalled the morning after Arthur died, when I watched Shane talk with Gilroy, Dustin and Maria chat, and Conyer play solitaire. I thought, Find the motive and I’ll find the killer. But it wasn’t the motive that had led us to Maria. And in any case, I’d misjudged the motive, thinking it had to do with the hotel or the money it might bring.

  Motive was paramount in my mystery novels, but with Arthur’s murder, the clear, hard clues had pointed an unmistakable finger in the total absence of motive. It wasn’t until Gilroy talked to Maria and later called me at home that I knew why she had murdered Arthur.

  “I’m sorry about Maria,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you that at the station.”

  Shane stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. “Yeah, well, it’s Arthur I feel sorry for. He trusted her.”

  “Anyone would have. She’s a small woman, innocent looking, never been to the hotel before.”

  It turned out that Maria hadn’t realized that Arthur owned the Grandview until she read up on the Purdy mystery in preparation for the radio show. She had read Shane’s folder—she had studied it, in fact—and she had begun to suspect that Purdy died at his own hands. Even if he hadn’t, what a great way to kill someone, she’d thought. Perfect for revenge. And considering Arthur’s interest in Purdy, what wonderful irony.

  Seventeen years earlier, when Maria was a teenager, her father had been fired from his job as CEO of a company run by Arthur Jago. He was an alcoholic who was ruining the business, but that didn’t figure into Maria’s teenage thinking. Her father never found another job, he never recovered from the disgrace of being fired, and he took his own life a year later.

  From her hospital bed, and with vengeful glee, Maria told Gilroy that Arthur had wondered why she was wearing gloves when she set the knife between the door and frame. He thought she was cold, and he offered to turn up the heat. She also admitted to vandalizing Holly’s car after hearing her drive up on the second night. It was just one more way to confuse the investigation—and easier than injuring herself with a kitchen knife.

  “In a way, Arthur solved the Purdy mystery,” Julia said. “After fifty years. He’d be happy about that.”

  “You make me laugh, Miss Julia,” Shane said.

  “Do I?” Julia said, looking pleased with herself.

  “We’ll have to meet again,” he said.

  “Well, I would like that very much.”

  “But for now . . .” He took his hands out of his pockets. “It was a pleasure to meet you both. Rachel, you keep up with the keen observations, and Miss Julia, you keep being an optimist. The world needs more of them. I have to get in there and get our pastries. We’ve got a meeting at the station in an hour.” He nodded a farewell and maneuvered his way through the crowd until he stood next to Dustin.

  “What a nice young man,” Julia said. “So much nicer than I ever imagined he would be.” She nudged me with her elbow. “And look who just walked in.”

  A nudge from Julia could mean only one thing: Gilroy. When he saw me, he smiled, swung around the back of the crowd, and weaved his way to where we stood.

  “Chief Gilroy, how lovely to see you this morning,” Julia gushed.

  “Mrs. Foster, good morning.”

  “You have a wait ahead of you,” I told him, slipping my arm into his.

  “I see.”

  “Are you going to talk to me about meddling?”

  He kissed my cheek. “I worry about you. You run headlong into things.”

  “I know I do.”

  “Just tell me next time, okay? I mean before you go to a place like the Grandview.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  He looked at me skeptically, as though he didn’t quite believe me. But I meant it. No more taking off without telling him. He was right—I could be rash. But my new resolve was based on more than the rather late-blooming self-awareness that I could act foolishly. It had been twelve years since a man had worried enough about me to say, Tell me when you go somewhere. I mean it. And even then that man, my ex-fiancé, hadn’t really cared. He’d just wanted to keep tabs on me, something I became painfully aware of the day he walked out on me.

  Gilroy didn’t think I was frail or incompetent, and he wanted me to be free to pursue the things that mattered to me. He just worried when I dabbled in murder. Really worried. Like I worried when people shot at him or forced him and his cruiser down a steep canyon.

  “Where did all these people come from?” I asked. “It’s like half the town is here.”

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. “Did you listen to the radio this morning?”

  Gilroy told me he had driven Shane, Dustin, and Conyer back to the Grandview at six o’clock in the morning so they could load up their SUV and head home. Shane had asked one favor—a five-minute on-air talk with his station in town. The morning show would make time for him in, he said.

  “You let him?”

  “I didn’t think it could hurt,” he said with a shrug. “We knew Maria hadn’t stabbed herself in room 108. Rooney talked about what had happened last night, that Arthur Jago’s killer had been caught, and said he’d say more about it when he got back to town. Then he spent the last two minutes telling everyone that the pastries at Holly’s Sweets were the best he’d ever had, anywhere, and he planned to make a stop at the bakery before going home.”

  “Oh, he is a nice young man!” Julia said.

  So that’s why Shane had smiled enigmatically when I’d mentioned how crowded the bakery was. He knew why it was crowded. “Good for him.”

  “He said he’ll mention the bakery this coming Monday too, during a special program on the solution to the Purdy ghost mystery. Apparently, it’s already been planned.”

  “He’ll have his largest audience ever,” I said. “Holly and Peter won’t be able to keep up.” Literally, I thought. Not with their big triple-decker out of commission. Holly had said she was buying a new oven next week, but Shane’s special was on Monday, four days away. She was going to need help.

  “They need to hire temp help,” Gilroy said.

  “What they need is a new oven. Their big one bit the dust, and they can’t afford a new one until after Shane’s Monday show.”

  “So that’s why the rush.”

  “What rush?”

  “Look,” he said, gesturing with his head at the counter.

  After taking a large pastry box from Holly, Shane passed if off to Conyer and then handed her a few bills and a long brown envelope. Mouthing the word “What?” she turned the envelope over in her hands. Shane gave her the same cryptic grin he’d given me and walked with Dustin out of the bakery. Smiling all the way.

  Holly put the cash in the register and stepped back from the counter just as Peter came around the corner with two trays of croissants. “One second,” she said to a customer, holding up an index finger. “Just one second.”

  Peter scowled, his
attention divided between the trays he was sliding into the display counter and the envelope Holly was tearing open.

  She drew out a slip of paper. Her eyes narrowed. Then her jaw dropped.

  She said something to her husband and, still staring at the paper, she came up behind him and grabbed his shoulder. He took the paper, and a moment later, his jaw dropped too.

  “What is it?” I asked Gilroy.

  “That should be a check from Raymond Jago. When I drove Rooney’s crew up to the hotel, he asked me when the bank opened, and I guess it was a little late for him because he said he needed to contact a courier service immediately. I asked why, and he said Jago wanted to pay his brother’s debt to Mrs. Kavanagh. And then he said something about a down payment for future events at the Grandview, whatever that means.”

  “Shane must have told Raymond Jago that Holly had missed out,” Julia said. “I told you he was a nice man.”

  “I never said he wasn’t, Julia. Turns out Raymond Jago’s not too bad himself.” I jostled my way to the front of the crowd and waved Holly to my place at the counter.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Holly said, showing me the check for concrete proof. Her eyes were glistening with tears. “It has to be wrong. We just brought pastries.”

  “You missed out on the advertising they promised you,” I said. I felt a huge grin form on my face. “Raymond Jago can afford it. It’s not wrong. It’s just right. And you need to buy an oven immediately. Today. Shane plans to rave about your bakery again on Monday, and you have to be prepared.”

  She leaned across the counter and whispered, “Again? Did he talk about us? Is that why we’re so busy?”

  “Yup.”

  “Ma’am,” a customer called impatiently.

  “Go,” I said, waving Holly off. “You’ve got new customers to impress.”

  I worked my way back to Julia and Gilroy—I was certain the crowd had grown in the past sixty seconds—and told them that Holly’s worries about a new oven were over.

  Julia, always one for specifics, asked if it was a large check.

  “Very,” I said. “Should we start moving forward? The crowd keeps getting ahead of us and I need my cream puffs.”