A Berry Deadly Welcome_A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery

by A. R. Winters

  Sarah whipped out her cell phone, lined all the pages up in a row and then took a picture of the whole thing. "You keep the originals and send me a copy when you get the chance. I want to finish showing you around before I hit the road."

  My heart did an unsteady tap dance and I did my best not to hyperventilate. I gathered the papers in my hand and rolled them up, determined to keep them with me so that all of this didn't evaporate into thin air as easily as it had materialized.

  Next, Sarah introduced me to Roberto, but he grunted and turned his back to me while continuing on with his work. He reminded me of an artist—complete with an artist's temperament.

  Walking through the kitchen, she named off each of the major pieces of equipment before leading me into first the walk-in refrigerator and then the walk-in freezer. Both looked fairly well stocked, but I had no concept of how long food would last in a restaurant. I knew that what I was seeing was all that I'd have to work with. I didn't have any money for buying more supplies, unless I "borrowed" from the cash transactions to cover some expenses.

  A flash of fear shot through me. Roberto got a paycheck, surely. So did the few waiters and waitresses who I'd seen drifting around the dining area when I came in. I'd have nothing to pay them with!

  Heading out of the kitchen, Sarah showed me around the rest of the place. She demonstrated how the register worked and introduced me to the staff. Meanwhile, I kept my eyes open for a spot where I could curl up and sleep tonight. I wasn't going to have to break into the car after all. And the temperature-controlled café would provide me a lot more comfort against the now-chill autumn nights.

  Everything Sarah showed me flew by me, and I caught and retained what tidbits I could attach to my still-stunned brain. She must have seen my effort to take everything in because she laid her delicate fingered hand on my arm, winked and reassured me, "We can Skype anytime you need to talk."

  I nodded with a smile and then added buying a laptop to my list of things to do ASAP.

  I didn't notice the keys she put in my hand until she curled my fingers around them. "It's all yours now," she said as a tear slid down her cheek, and I felt as though I finally had a free pass to let some tears fall myself.

  I don't know who hugged who first, but we wrapped each other up in our arms. When we pulled away, she held my hand that had the keys. There were two of them.

  "This one is to the front and back doors of the café," she said, "and this one is to the apartment upstairs. I didn't have any need for my mattress, so I left it for you."

  I squeaked. I hadn't even realized that my mouth was open, but I squeaked all the same. Recovering as best I could, I said, "Thanks." It came out as a breathy whisper. It was the best I could do, except that I gathered her in for another hug.

  True to Sarah's word, she really was packed and ready to go. I stood in the open back door of the café and waved as she drove her U-Haul truck out of the café's back parking lot.

  Turning back around, my eyes scanned the building that I now owned. That I own... Glee, fear, and unbridled excitement battled inside of me, but I smiled from ear to ear like the lucky fool that I was.

  I was home.

  Chapter 4

  For the rest of the day, I took turns following around various wait staff and chef, Roberto. I was pretty sure that I was annoying the heck out of all of them, except for one kid who kept acting super guilty about something. He kept giving me worried glances over his shoulder and looking at me like I was a narc. I tried to tell him that I was just trying to learn from him, but after he'd stammered and sweated his way through his third table of customers, I let the poor boy be and went to shadow Roberto in the kitchen.

  But following Roberto around in the kitchen made me sweat. He didn't shoot me worried, guilty looks. He shot me dirty, angry looks. He finally left off making a delicious looking Waldorf salad and instead stood in front of me while he sharpened his knives on a long, tapered, round rod. He looked at me the whole time like he was either going to stab me or spear me.

  That's when I graciously left him to his work. I had to go all the way outside the café to find out what time the café closed. The café's front door said that it opened at 7:30 AM and closed at 10 PM, Monday through Saturday. On Sunday, it opened at 10 AM and closed at 4 PM.

  "Holy smokes," I said. My body was vibrating with fatigue. I'd already driven seven hours non-stop from Chicago to Camden Falls. I wasn't sure I could survive another five hours before finally being able to collapse in my as-of-yet mysteriously located apartment. I had no idea how Sarah managed a restaurant that was open for fourteen and a half hours a day.

  I stepped out of the way while one of the waitresses came through the door. Her name tag said Melanie. She had her purse slung over her shoulder, and a cute little half-apron still tied around her waist. Her shoulder-length hair was reddish-brown with curls that could have made Shirley Temple a tad bit jealous. They framed her heart-shaped face beautifully.

  "Goodnight," she said, giving me a pleasant smile while all I could think was, Of course she's smiling! She's off of work! I'll never be off of work again in my life! I didn't know much about running an eatery but I knew enough to know that the work didn't begin and end with your first and last customer. No, there were numbers to tally. I didn't know what numbers or for what purposes, but I knew that they were there and I was pretty sure that I was the one who had to count them.

  There were people to pay, inventory to take, and salt shakers to refill.

  "Goodnight," I said, parroting Melanie. As she turned to walk away, she untied her apron and then draped it over her arm.

  That's it! I'm the boss! The words rang like the Hallelujah chorus. I'm the boss!

  I stepped back inside the café and looked all around me at the wonderful, beautiful, amazing people that Sarah had trained. I didn't have to do everything. No, I got to tell other people what to do.

  My smile grew and grew until my cheeks hurt.

  "Sam," I said, snagging a young waiter as he headed back to the kitchen with an empty tray. He was tall and lanky with thick black hair that seemed to want to grow taller rather than longer. He was somewhere between nerdy cute and athletic cute. ”Can you tell me who... um..." I didn't know the words. "Who wraps things up for the night?"

  "Amy and Paul are scheduled to close tonight."

  Another beautiful word. Scheduled! "Where can I find the schedule?"

  Sam pulled his cell phone from his back pocket, thumbed through whatever screens he needed to navigate and then handed the device over to me. "Sarah always sends everyone an email with the schedule for the week."

  I gulped. Email. There was an excellent chance that I was going to have to go old-school on everyone with some paper and pens.

  The look on my face must have been priceless because Sam took pity on me. "We've got this down here if you want to head up to your apartment. Sarah usually used the slow hours to take care of management stuff and then would head upstairs after the dinner rush, but everyone would understand if you needed to take off early." I was torn between throwing my arms around him in a hug or planting a big, inappropriate kiss right on his lips. Either way, he took my silence as an opportunity to keep on talking, and that was just fine by me. "Brenda will be in early in the morning to take care of setup."

  "Sam, you've been great. Remind me to give you a raise when I can afford to give you one." For some reason that made him blush and smile as he dropped his eyes bashfully. "I've got just one other question for you. How do I get up to the apartment?"

  The answer had been a door at the back of the kitchen, and now I stood at the top of an L-shaped flight of stairs in front of a heavy wooden door that had been painted canary yellow. The stairwell was full of shadows, but the door was so bright that I felt safe captured within its haloed reflection.

  I fumbled with the first key and then the second, trying to figure out which one fit the latch. I finally got it right, turned the handle of the door and then stepped in.
<
br />   I gasped. The apartment was enormous. No, no... that wasn't right. It was gigantic! I don't know why but I had imagined a tiny one-bedroom apartment with a kitchenette barely big enough to turn around in. Instead, I was looking at a space that was every bit as large as the café beneath me.

  And it was empty.

  I leaned in, certain that I had to be in the wrong place. One person couldn't have all of this space to themselves, and I was expecting a family of eight to materialize out of the walls demanding to know why I was in their home. But no one materialized and I instead closed the door behind me with a solid click, followed by the sound of me throwing the latch.

  The floors were hardwood, the ceiling needed a ladder and a half to be reached, and all of the outer walls were the same red bricks as the outside of the building.

  Dragging my little suitcase behind me, I gave myself a tour. The living room with windows overlooking Main Street was big enough to learn how to rollerblade in. There was a chef's kitchen decked out with a six-burner gas stove, two wall-insert ovens, and enough granite counter space to leave a quarry looking depleted. The middle island was big enough to double as a bed.

  Feeling incredibly intimidated, I left the kitchen behind me to explore the rest of apartment. There was a bedroom, a guest bedroom, a bathroom that was the picture of simple elegance, and a smaller room that looked as though it had been used as an office.

  True to Sarah's word, she had left me a mattress as well as a shower curtain. Beyond that, I found a couple of pans in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen, the pantry looked as though it were half-stocked with a variety of options ranging from canned soup to dried lentils, and the refrigerator had some eggs, milk, and some other items plus a pretty good selection in the freezer. On top of all of that, I'd found some abandoned coat hangers in one of the closets.

  I was good. No, I was more than good. I was fine. Being good comes and goes, but being fine, that meant you had a roof over your head and the certainty of food in your belly.

  I was fine, and I had truly never been happier than in that moment. For the first time in my life, I had freedom-plus, as in I could do what I wanted to do without a husband or even parents to tell me what to do, plus I had a means of supporting myself in that freedom.

  Jumping up to sit on the kitchen counter to eat a popsicle from the freezer, I heard a crinkling and remembered the contract that I'd shoved down the front of my dress. Squirming a little in order to reach it, I pulled it out and started ready. I got two-thirds the way down the second page when I choked on my popsicle. "Two point five million!"

  I felt a little faint as I scanned the rest of the pages, but on the second to the last page, I froze. It was a list of the acquisitions.

  "I own the whole building," I whispered in disbelief, as in from one side street to the other. I owned the whole building, and included in the breakdown was a listing of the current rent being paid by each business in my building. It wasn't enough to pay off two and a half million dollars in a month, but it was enough to go buy myself a laptop and then some... as soon as they paid their rent.

  Suddenly, my definition of the word "fine" changed a little, and I let some of that "good" creep into its meaning. Yes, I was going to be good and fine.

  Chapter 5

  I got up the next morning, took a shower without any shampoo or soap, and then walked around the apartment for half an hour naked to air dry since I didn't have any towels. It wasn't so bad. The shower was fast and walking around without any clothes on in a building that I owned felt empowering. I mean, what says ownership more than being able to walk around naked?

  Next, I picked out clothes to wear. I figured I wouldn't be doing much of the manual labor since I had so many people working for me, but I wanted to fit in. I wanted my customers and staff to feel comfortable approaching me. So, I pulled on a pair of jeans that fit like leggings and a loose lavender tunic top.

  I had no idea what time Brenda, the opener Sam had mentioned, got into work, but it was already 7:15 AM and the restaurant opened in another fifteen minutes. I wanted to get the chance to meet Brenda before the doors officially opened, and I thought me being up and present when the place opened would look good. Participating owner and all that.

  Owner. The word still made me smile like a lunatic from ear to ear.

  When I reached the bottom of the stairs and got to the door that would lead into the restaurant, I resisted the urge to knock first and tentatively stick my head in. I did feel as though I was walking into somebody else's space, but I needed to work past that. Perception was ninety-nine percent of what it took to succeed, and the people who worked for me needed me to act like their leader and not just be the person who signed their paychecks.

  I really had to figure out how to do paychecks. I really had to figure out where to get the money for paychecks!

  I needed to set up a bank account for cash deposits. I could stash the cash the apartment for now, but I didn't want to invite the possibility of someone breaking in in the middle of the night and, well... I refused to finish the thought.

  This is Kentucky, I reminded myself. I'm not in Chicago. Fewer people. Fewer crimes. Made sense to me.

  I compromised between opening the kitchen door and barging in and knocking first by opening it halfway and giving a tap on the door. I heard a low, pleasant humming of some song that was familiar but which I couldn't put a finger on.

  "Hello?" I called out.

  "Hello!" A slightly pudgy woman about five feet two inches with jet black hair appeared from around the corner. Spotting me, she made a bee-line right for me with her arms up in the air until she was able to wrap them around me. She tottered us from side to side, humming her pleasure. Pulling away, then, she held me captive but at arm's length. "Sarah told me so much about you," she said, beaming.

  I wasn't sure that was a good thing or a bad thing, but I was going to go with good.

  "That rotten husband of yours."

  Definitely good... She was scowling and pursing her lips so hard that I thought she might spit. My ex-husband seemed to have left as bad a taste in her mouth as he had in mine.

  "Thank you. That's very nice of you to say."

  "I've got brothers. I wish you had brothers. That man needed to be visited by a whole gang of brothers."

  I couldn't keep the smile away from my face. "Thank you," I said again, and I'd never meant the words more.

  Brenda's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed even more as her head started bobbing up and down to some thought she had in her head. "Honey, I got a text from Roberto. He quit."

  My voice dropped two octaves. "He what?"

  "He up and quit." She patted my shoulder in condolence. Then, releasing me, she walked away to return to her work of chopping vegetables and dropping them into a large pot of water to make what I assumed would be vegetable soup. "And I gotta leave early today. My grandson needs me to take him to the doctor this morning."

  Grandson. Brenda looked to me to be in her early 40s. I was almost thirty with no kids, so her having a grandchild already kind of threw me for a loop.

  "Okay," I said, trying to force my brain out of deer-in-headlights mode and into get-things-done mode. Problem was, I didn't know what I was supposed to get going.

  "Now, you set this pot to simmering by ten o'clock and it will be ready to serve by eleven."

  Fear gripped me. She was expecting me to cook. I knew what she was asking was for me to just turn the stove on and that she'd done all the prep work, but I still struggled to wrap my brain around it. "Okay," I said, nodding.

  "Throw some salt and herbs in there, too, to flavor it up a bit." Brenda was taking off her apron. Brenda was getting ready to leave.

  I nodded that I would do just as she'd told me. My brain screamed for me to ask what herbs I should use but my pride had super glued my mouth shut.

  "Thanks, Brenda!" I called after her as she disappeared from the kitchen, finally finding my voice. I heard the café's front door chime as she
made her escape.

  I looked at a clock on the wall. 7:25 AM. I had a café to open. On my own.

  "Oh snap."

  Chapter 6

  Lunch time had started and I was whipping up anything that I thought I had an inkling of how to make. Only two wait staff had shown up, and one of them left forty-five minutes in without saying a word, leaving Sam to run around at a near constant jog in an attempt to take care of everybody. Thankfully his legs were long and he covered a lot of ground with every stride. He wasn’t even breathing heavily.

  He was definitely getting a raise—just as soon as I figured out how to pay people.

  I was in the kitchen frantically stirring mayonnaise into chopped eggs to make egg salad. It was a little runny-looking to me, but eggs firmed things up, right? So, if I let it rest a few minutes, it would be more than fine. The yolks had turned out covered in green, but I figured that had something to do with hens that were out in the country instead of in the city.

  Moving as fast as I could, I tore open a hoagie bun with my fingers and ladled an inch and a half’s worth of egg salad onto it. I plopped that down on a plate and poured out a generous portion of potato chips from a bag I'd gotten out of Sarah's--I mean my--pantry. I then filled a bowl with Brenda's soup. I'd put the heat so high that it had ended up boiling for more than half an hour, so the vegetables were a little pale and mushy, but I was sure the flavor was fine.

  Wearing a big, overly eager smile, I rushed the food out to where the customer was sitting at the grill bar. Wiping my hands on my food-stained apron, I waited with high anticipation for him to take a bite.