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

by A. R. Winters

  "Yes?" The woman asked as she looked me over from head to toe and back up again. She was wearing shorts and a loose knit shirt without any shoes. Her hair looked as though it had been bleached blonde three times too many. That is to say, it looked like white straw.

  "Hi, my name is Kylie Berry, and..." I hadn't thought this through. What was I supposed to say—hello, I'm the woman who killed your sister? I choked a little and then cleared my throat, ready to try again. "I'm the new owner of Sarah's Eatery."

  Veronica's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. She shifted her weight so that her hip stuck out, and she propped her hand on it with her elbow jutting out. "What you got there?" she asked, her eyes flicking to the tinfoil covered casserole dish in my arms.

  "It's a lasagna." My voice squeaked, but I stood my ground. "My assistant, Brenda, made it. I didn't make it."

  Veronica's pursed lips lifted into a smile. "Well come on in here." She waved me in, and I followed her to the kitchen. I put the lasagna on the counter, and she whipped the top off. Leaning over to breathe it in, she hummed her satisfaction with half-lidded eyes.

  "Nice," she said.

  She got out two plates and cut two pieces, one for me and one for her. She handed out the forks, and it was not lost on me that she waited for me to take a bite before she did.

  Next to me were sliding glass doors that opened to a lovely backyard. There, the kids were playing. There was a divider fence between her yard and what I assumed was her sister's yard. I was a little surprised to discover that they didn't share one large backyard.

  "Mmmmm, this is good," Veronica said. "You know the best thing about it?"

  I shook my head no.

  "I didn't have to make it!" She slapped the counter as she laughed at her own joke. It made me feel pretty good. It made me feel like maybe she wasn't going to chase me from her home with a meat cleaver.

  "Veronica, I just wanted to say how sorry I am about your loss." I studied her face. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot from crying or lack of sleep. Her house looked as though she'd been cleaning recently. And the kids looked pretty happy. Of course, they were kids and kids were resilient, so...

  Still, her sister and their aunt had just died. I wasn't noticing any grieving going on.

  "You know what," Veronica said conspiratorially in answer to my offer of condolence, "things happen." She took a bite of lasagna, and I got the impression that she didn't have any more to say on the matter. She seemed at peace.

  "But the brownies came from me." I knew I was poking a bear, but I needed to know what was going on. There was something about the situation that I wasn't understanding.

  "Oh, those brownies!" Veronica exclaimed, her eyes wide. "They looked so good! When I went next door to ask Rachel what she had done with my favorite hoodie jacket and saw those brownies sitting there"—she gasped, throwing her hands in the air as she rolled her eyes back in her head, kind of like she'd died and gone to heaven—"I almost snuck one for myself. Rachel was laying back in her lawn chair sleeping—well, I thought she was sleeping—and I was soooo tempted." She sobered. "But I didn't."

  She'd said that the brownies had looked good. She’d wanted one. Badly. I knew that taste was a subjective experience and there was someone somewhere who liked anything a person could imagine. Maybe both the sisters enjoyed burnt brownies.

  I glanced down at the lasagna we were sharing. It was really delicious, but it was not burnt. Maybe their taste for burnt foods only applied to pastries... or maybe just chocolate.

  "I'm so glad to hear that you liked how they looked. I haven't been cooking for very long, I mean, not professionally."

  Veronica laughed. "To listen to that aunt of yours talk, you can't cook at all!"

  I felt my face heat.

  "Oh, I'm just teasing you, darlin'." She gave me a conciliatory pat on the arm. "Them brownies looked real fine. You did a real good job." Her face scrunched. "You know what I mean."

  "Veronica." My voice went up two octaves when I said her name, and I made a point of dropping it back down. "Were things okay between you and your sister?"

  "Why?" Veronica put her fork down with a clatter and leaned forward aggressively. "What have you heard?"

  "N-nothing. You all seem so, um, well-adjusted. I have to admit that I'm a little confused."

  Veronica's face twisted up some more, but then it relaxed. "Truth be told, my sister was a pill—bitter, hard to swallow, and bad for your health. Any time she wanted her way, she'd threaten to tell my children that Santa Claus i'nt real. Now who does that? Who threatens to hurt little babies just 'cause they want to be a baby who always gets their way?" She took another bite of the lasagna. She chewed angrily and then swallowed angrily. "That woman used up every one of my last nerves. She was my sister and I was supposed to love her. I know that. And God is gonna judge me when I get up to heaven and He knows I didn't love her, but she done used up all the love I had for her years ago.”

  Oooh... I was starting to get a tad bit of clarity. If Rachel had used up her sister so thoroughly, there was no telling what she'd done to other people.

  I decided to make a leap of logic. "Veronica, about those brownies, were they burnt?"

  Veronica scrunched her face and snorted with derision. "Them brownies weren't burnt. They were perfect."

  Bingo... The brownies that Rachel was eating at the time she died weren’t my brownies. I didn’t kill her!

  As my thoughts tumbled over each other, a slight pause in the conversation happened. I took a breath to speak, but Veronica jumped back in.

  “And it weren’t just me that felt that way about her, I want you to know. She was so manipulative, so greedy. She didn’t think twice about doing somebody wrong.”

  I was so thrown. The woman she was describing didn’t sound anything like the woman I had interviewed to be the new chef at Sarah’s Eatery. But I guessed that’s what manipulative people were like. They could fool you into thinking the way they wanted you to think so that they could get you to do whatever it was that they wanted you to do.

  “Back six months ago,” Veronica continued, “Rachel had some woman over at her place screaming at her at four in the morning. I thought about calling the cops, but the more I heard of what that poor woman had to say, the more I thought that it was best to let Rachel get what was coming to her. Something about ‘stay away from my fiancé’ and Rachel yelling, ‘You’re too fat to keep a man like that.’ Back and forth, back and forth, until I finally had to put some music on in the kids’ rooms to drown out all the yelling.”

  “Do you know who it was that was yelling at Rachel?”

  “I looked out the upstairs window but all I could see was a woman with strawberry blonde hair and dark roots. And she was a little heavy but she was still cute. Rachel had no business talking to her that way. Finally, Rachel yelled that the woman was so ugly that she’d never find any other man and because of that Rachel would take pity on her and stay away from her fiancé.”

  Tingles ran all up and down my spine.

  I had a new lead for my investigation!

  Chapter 15

  When I got back to the café, Melanie had already left and Sam was just waiting for me to get back. Brenda had taken off hours ago.

  Sam had his things together and was ready to go when I walked in.

  "Thanks, Sam," I said holding the door open for him. I was pretty sure he had an evening study group he had to get to.

  "See you tomorrow, boss!" he said as he rushed out the door with a backpack slung over his shoulder.

  I had to smile at that. I really did like the sound of that.

  I took care of the rest of the customers the best I could for the rest of the night. Meaning, I made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and served them store-bought cookies and cake. I sold everything at cost, and I prepared everything at the grill where everyone in the café could see me. My name wasn't cleared of wrongdoing yet. I was still a suspect in a murder investigation, even if I now knew that I c
ouldn't have been the one to kill Rachel. Just because I knew it didn't mean that anybody else knew it, and I didn't want to give anyone the chance to say that I'd made a similar mistake again.

  The café emptied out about eight-thirty. I locked the door and headed upstairs with little Sage. She stretched herself upward and rested her chin on my shoulder as I unlocked the apartment door to let us both in. As soon as we'd made it inside, she sprang to life and leaped down from her perch. I heard her crunching at her food dish a moment later.

  I went to bed tired but I fell asleep with a smile on my face. Little by little, I was getting my life back, and tomorrow, I was going to find out who that woman with the strawberry-blonde hair was.

  Jack," I said, warming up his coffee with a splash of newly brewed coffee. "Did you know Rachel Summers by any chance?"

  Jack lifted his bald head to look at me over the top of his newspaper. His dark eyes were two shades darker than his skin. "Can't say I did." He disappeared behind the paper again, but then reappeared a moment later. "Her sister's husband did come to me for a loan a few weeks back, though."

  I picked up a towel and started mindlessly wiping down the counter in front of him. "Oh, yeah? I didn't realize you work at the bank."

  "Well, one does often work at the establishment that one owns." Jack folded the paper in his lap and took a sip of his coffee.

  Owned the bank? That certainly explained his stylish and immaculate suits.

  I studied the spot that I was rubbing with the towel. It was clean enough, but I kept rubbing it. What I was about to ask was so inappropriate that it made me uncomfortable, but I asked anyway. "Did you give him the loan?"

  Jack laced his long fingers, put his elbows on the counter and leaned his chin on his hands before giving a small shake of his head. "No."

  I was surprised he told me, but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to learn all that I could. Learning what I could from him could mean the difference between restoring some value to my name and going to prison.

  I stopped rubbing the counter top and met Jack's gaze. "Would you be able to tell me why he needed the loan?"

  Jack shook his head again. "No." Pause. "But I can tell you that getting the loan was a matter of high need."

  "But you didn't give him the loan..."

  "That's correct."

  If Jack didn't give Victoria's husband a loan, that must mean that the bank didn't deem him to be a sound financial risk. They were concerned he wouldn't be able to pay the loan back. And if they were concerned that he might not be able to pay the loan back, that could mean that he was already financially over-extended. On top of that, Jack had said that the loan was of “high need.” Getting that loan had been important to Victoria and her husband.

  I got more tingles up my spine as another piece of the puzzle slipped into place. Victoria and her husband were having money problems. If Victoria was set to inherit from Rachel, then Rachel's death could have benefited them financially at a time when they really needed it. But would the greedy and malicious Rachel have been willing to leave her sister anything? Her death might not have helped Victoria at all.

  "Thanks, Jack!” He’d given me a lot to think about.

  I stepped away out of Jack's line of sight and made a note on a napkin. Veronica --> financial gain. There, I'd listed the suspect and the motive.

  I shoved the napkin into my pocket but then pulled it out again almost as fast. I wrote, Get small notebook, and then folded and shoved the napkin back in my pocket again.

  Agatha and her knitting friends were in the cozy alcove again. It was set up as a comfy, quiet spot with oversized cushioned chairs and even had a small wood stove fireplace tucked diagonally in the corner. The spot was designed like a reading nook.

  I took the ladies a plate of cookies and a family-style bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, made by Brenda that morning. I also took them a small stack of bowls and the necessary utensils.

  "On the house, ladies," I said, perching on the edge of a large chair, forcing Sage to share it with me. I had to quit giving food away, but this time was okay. It was for a good cause. I was hunting a killer.

  "Oh thank you, dear," Agatha said. She was working on an afghan made up of soft creams and grays. "This is Nancy and Shelly. They're sisters." Agatha had given a nod to the woman closest to me when she'd said Nancy and to the other one when she'd said Shelly.

  "Hi," I said with a wave of my hand. The sisters looked to be in their late 60s or early 70s, and even though they were both sitting down, I could tell that they were exceptionally tall with long legs, and I could see their family resemblance in their long faces and long noses. They both had light brown hair that was cut short, but it was nowhere close to being as short as Agatha's brilliantly white pixie cut. Nancy was knitting light blue socks, and Shelly was knitting a charcoal gray toboggan.

  I had never in my life been a gossip, and working up the nerve to ask these ladies to tell me about people not present went against every fiber of my being, but I did it anyway. "I was hoping to learn more about Rachel. Do you know if she was friends with—or knew—a strawberry-blonde or someone a little overweight?"

  I addressed the question collectively to the group. I didn't want to leave anybody out.

  "I heard that Rachel couldn't keep a man," Nancy said with a critical brow lifted. "She'd keep 'em for a while, be sweeter than sweet to them, but then things would always sour and the feller would go off to wherever he came from."

  That certainly seemed to support what I'd learned from Veronica about Rachel's proclivity toward borrowing men from wherever or whomever she pleased, or at least it didn't contradict it.

  Shelly spoke up next. "I don't know anything about a strawberry-blonde, though. Are you asking about a woman?"

  "Yes," I said.

  It was Nancy's turn again. "I don't think Rachel had any female friends." Her sister nodded in silent agreement.

  I turned my attention to Agatha. "Do you know anything about her?"

  "No, I don't, sweetie, other than to say that if you did kill her you apparently did the world a favor. People always speak well of the dead, but I haven't heard one person say a genuinely kind word about her. But enough about that. We are having our book club tonight, and I want you to come."

  I opened my mouth and closed it a couple of times before figuring out what to say. It was such a hard left turn. On one hand, I could be wasting valuable investigative time if I attended the book club meeting. But on the other hand, attending that type of community event could help me win new customers for the café and give me the opportunity to learn more about Rachel and who might have wanted to do her permanent harm.

  I smiled, suddenly eager even though I'd felt unsure a heartbeat before. "I'd love to come." Then my smile dropped away and gravity took over the corners of my lips. "But what if I haven't read the book? What is the book?"

  Agatha's eyes twinkled mischievously. "To Kill a Mockingbird."

  Ohhhh, Agatha was one I'd have to watch. She was having way too much fun with this, and I wondered if they'd picked their book before or after Rachel died.

  "Where are you having it?"

  "Right here."

  Ohhhh—again!

  I wasn't able to hold my laughter back. "I guess it's settled! I'll come!"

  Chapter 16

  I knew it was silly, but I didn't want to go to the book club alone. I asked Jack just as he was leaving where I might find Zoey, and he pointed me across the street and a few buildings down. Apparently she had an apartment above a business, the same as I did.

  Leaving the café in Melanie's hands, I went across the street and looked for a way to reach Zoey’s apartment upstairs. I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to go snooping through the insides of the various businesses below. Finally, I spotted a door with a small window that showcased a set of stairs just beyond.

  I tried the door. Unlocked.

  The stairs were narrow, dark, and uninviting, but I followed them up anyway
. Once I reached the top, instead of finding a single apartment door, like I had at the top of my stairs, I instead found a hallway with seven doors, four on one side and three on the other. These apartments were sure to be much smaller than mine.

  I was pretty sure that Zoey worked from home, so I walked the hallway, listening for sounds of life beyond each door. I only heard sound coming from one door, and it was that of an anguished soprano singing in what I could only guess was Italian. I tapped on the door, timidly at first, but then knocked harder a second time when I didn't get an answer.

  The music stopped, and the door opened. I'd found Zoey.

  I wasn't sure how she managed to look defiant by just standing there, but she did. It wasn't in her stance, and she hadn't said a word, yet she looked as though she could easily destroy the world and not give it a second thought afterward. Her almond-shaped eyes were given startling emphasis with heavy black cat-eye eyeliner that highlighted her natural exotic beauty. Her lips were glossed with blood-red lipstick. She looked like a superhero minus the full-body leotard, and she was every bit as imposing. Instead, she wore cutoff jean short-shorts with black tights topped with what looked like a man’s baby-blue, button-up shirt that was tied at the waist.

  I suddenly had doubts about my choice for a book club partner, but not because of how she was dressed. She looked fabulous and fierce. No, I was having doubts because of her unimpressed expression at seeing me on her doorstep.

  Zoey looked me over from head to toe. "Where are my cookies?"

  "What?"

  "I saw you carrying a bag of stuff down the street yesterday. You went to the Herald. When you came out you didn't have the bag anymore.” Her eyes narrowed. “I think you took Joel cookies. Where are my cookies?”

  How did she know about the cookies?

  I stared at her a second and then I leaned a little to the side to look into Zoey's dark apartment. Over her shoulder I could see a half-circle of eight or nine monitors stacked two layers tall. They were all on, and a couple of them skipped between various views of what I believed were the streets of Camden Falls.