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

by A. R. Winters

  "You have cameras hidden around town?" I asked, feeling incredulous despite what I was seeing.

  "No! Of course not." She hooked a thumb over her shoulder to point at the monitors. "This is video feed that I capture from the stoplights and the various business maintained surveillance cameras around town."

  "Oh." I was a little stunned, but then a flash of excitement shot through me. "Do you have anything that could clear me of Rachel's murder?"

  "Nooo, I'm sorry. I looked." She sounded genuinely regretful, and I realized I had a friend. I had come to the right place after all.

  “I want you to come with me to Agatha’s book club meeting tonight,” I announced.

  Zoey shrugged. "Okay."

  That went much easier than I ever imagined.

  A ding sounded from within the depths of the room, grabbing Zoey's instant attention. She whirled around and hurried to the monitors.

  I knew that I hadn't been invited in, but I took the absence of telling me to stay out plus the door she'd left open as an unspoken allowance of my presence within her home. I followed her in.

  She was standing in front of her crescent moon of monitors, bent at the waist, staring intensely at the image on the bottom, left-most screen. The monitor showed a man walking down the street, and a mesh of computerized lines covered his face in a variety of geometric shapes.

  Zoey did something, and the image zoomed in on the man's face, providing a close-up. She froze the image. "It's not him." There was utter defeat in her voice, and she sat down heavily in her desk chair. Her shoulders sagged.

  I looked around me, found an empty milk crate that was doubling as a vinyl records holder, and slid it closer to use as a low stool. I sat down, looked at Zoey, and waited.

  Slouched in her chair, Zoey blew out a breath. The sadness in her face aged her by ten years, making her look over thirty instead of her usual barely-twenty. "Max Hamilton. He was—is... I don't know—my fiancé. I moved to this town for him. He'd been here several times and had fallen in love with it, so when we got engaged, he wanted us to use this as home base. He's a sports talent scout."

  "You haven't seen him in a while?" My heart was dropping into my stomach for what she'd been through.

  "Nope, at least not through his voluntary doing. I'm using a face recognition program to monitor Camden Falls, and I monitor as many towns as I can where there have been reports of promising talent." She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I know he's alive, that no one is holding him hostage. I've got glimpses of him a few times, and I've been able to monitor some of his credit card activity. I have reason to believe that he's even using the same cell phone with the same cell phone number, but when I call him the phone either rings... or it goes to voicemail after just a ring or two."

  There was a lot of hurt in her voice when she said this last part, and I understood why. If the phone was ringing but cut off suddenly to go to voicemail, it meant that Max had the phone in hand and was pressing the ignore button instead of the answer button.

  "I'm so sorry, Zoey."

  She shook her head. "I can't believe I fell for someone like him. I can't believe I didn't see this coming. I sold everything that wouldn't fit in my car and drove down here on my own because he was on the road. I was supposed to get an apartment set up for us, and I even signed a rental agreement on a place that I couldn't afford on my own. Then I started planning our wedding. He would sweep into town and we'd have an amazing weekend or sometimes even a week together, but any time I had questions about the wedding planning, he'd always say, ‘Whatever you want.’ Then it came time for me to start locking down dates with deposits, and he told me to go ahead and pay and he'd wire me some money. Then, when I'd ask him about it, he'd say he forgot to send it but he'd do it right away. He didn't even help pay the deposit on the apartment. I got stressed out, then he got stressed out. He'd end our calls early. Then," she shrugged, "he stopped answering my calls and he stopped calling at his usual times."

  She stared off into the shadows of her apartment before going on. "It's not really about the money. I know I'm making it sound like it is. I trusted him. I went out on a limb because he told me to. He told me to trust him, and I did. I really, really did. I never second-guessed his intentions. I always thought that he wanted the best for me and would be there for me. But it's been six months since I've heard his voice, and trusting him meant that I had to max out three different credit cards. I never thought that he'd do this to me. Not for a second."

  She sniffed and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye before continuing. "And the worst of it is that I've got no closure. We never broke up. The last time we talked he told me he loved me, that he couldn't wait to marry me, and that he'd be home that weekend. He made me laugh and feel like everything was okay, and then... It's like I stopped existing for him."

  I'd never given my husband food poisoning despite what my ex-Aunt Dorothy said, but I would sure try to give it to Max Hamilton if I ever met him. I couldn’t imagine the pain that he had caused Zoey, and it was clear that it had lingered like a phantom limb. If he'd simply broken up with her, she would have been able to process her grief. Instead, she was left trying to make sense of two completely different sets of information. There were the memories of her fiancé making her feel special, valuable and important, and then there was all of the inferred information brought on by his absence that implied just the opposite. But that second set of information existed without any confirmation to make it strong enough to stand up against the original memories that he'd forged with her.

  "So he's why you were reading those books soon after I first met you?" I asked.

  "How to Know if He's a Jerk and How to Move on After Being Ghosted? Yeah, he's why. I've been trying to sort it all out, and I've been trying to find him." She motioned to the monitors. "I just need some closure."

  I blew out a heavy sigh, wishing there was something I could do for her.

  "So what's your story?" Zoey asked, turning her gaze on me.

  "Huh?"

  "I caught it on surveillance. You got to town in a fancy car that was running out of gas, and then abandoned the car and left the keys in the trunk. Then, you walked over a mile to get to the café, all while wearing high heels and dragging a suitcase behind you."

  I nodded. That had been a hard day... and an amazing day. "My husband and I got a divorce. We'd been married for eleven years, since I was eighteen." I shook my head. "I'd been young and in love, so when he gave me the prenup to sign, I just signed it. So, eleven years later when I found out that he'd had as many girlfriends while we'd been married as I had toes and fingers, he got everything and I got nothing." It was my turn to shrug.

  "Men really are jerks," she said.

  I shrugged again. "I gotta believe that there's some good ones out there. I still have hope."

  "Then you're a better person than me."

  "I don't think so. I've just had more of a chance to heal, but I know you'll get there."

  Zoey nodded as she turned her attention back toward the monitors, searching them for a ghost. "Yep, just as soon as I make someone else need some mighty healing as well.”

  Chapter 17

  As promised, Zoey came over that evening for book club. The café was empty except for a group of ladies ranging in age between what I guessed was late thirties to Agatha, Agatha being a timeless creature who seemed to defy all logic. She walked with the easy gait of a teenager, had the deft hands of a wizened doctor, and the sharp eye and wit of a stand-up comedienne.

  Zoey and I were by far the youngest in attendance.

  When Zoey showed, she appeared to be of a lighter spirit than all the times I'd seen her before, and I thought that maybe our conversation had done her heart some good. Her smile finally reached her eyes.

  "Can I offer anyone anything else?" I asked as I set down a platter of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I'd cut into finger food-sized squares alongside a plate of cookies. Everyone already had coffee or milk. I had
n't worked my nerve up to serve sweet tea yet. I had no idea how to make it, and I was terrified that if I served instant tea that I might get laughed out of town. Even the local fast food restaurants boasted having freshly brewed sweet tea.

  "This looks lovely," Agatha praised. I knew she was being generous.

  The ladies had already re-arranged the reading nook to include some of the regular table chairs amid the cozy armchairs, and additional chairs were used between some of the members as side tables. Seeing the makeshift nature of the arrangement made me embarrassed that I didn't have a proper coffee table to offer as a centerpiece on which to put drinks and individual plates of food, and I mentally added it to the list of things I wanted to change about the café.

  "Allow me to make introductions," Agatha said. She crossed her legs and then lay her long, elegant hands over her knees. "Kylie and Zoey, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Kylie and Zoey. Kylie is under investigation for the murder of Rachel Summers."

  I choked on air, but everyone else in the group merely snickered. I glanced hurriedly around me in search of malicious delight, but all I saw was good-humored fun. I relaxed, and the hard tension that drained away from my shoulders actually left my muscles sore.

  "Now, who read the book To Kill a Mockingbird?" Agatha demanded to know.

  There was a chorus of answers, all in the affirmative that the book had been read.

  Zoey and I glanced at each other. I had no idea what the book was about. I had hoped that I would not be alone in my ignorance, but Zoey quickly chimed in, "I was impressed with little Scout's maturity."

  Instantly, there were more murmurs of assent.

  I wanted to crawl off into a hole for being the only one who knew nothing about a book that had long been heralded for its literary genius. That I'd only been invited to the book club meeting earlier that day didn't seem to matter to my pride.

  Despite that, to my great fortune the word "kill" was right there in the book’s title, and Agatha had announced my connection with Rachel Summers' death. That is to say, the possibility that I'd murdered her. So, there was no need for me to tiptoe around the subject.

  I could sleuth to my heart's content.

  "I'm Paula," one of the ladies announced. She had a baby fat quality to her puffy cheeks that made her look heavy when in fact she was actually very slender with long, delicate wrists and ankles. "I thought that the lawyer, Atticus, was noble but depressing at the same time."

  The group flew into a discussion about that.

  "I'm Rita," another woman said, introducing herself. She wore Harry Potter-like glasses and had very large teeth. When she spoke, she put me in mind of a college-educated beaver. "I was so glad to see that Bob Ewell git stuck by that Boo Radley!"

  There was a chorus of very hearty agreement.

  "And when they killed that mockingbird!" I exclaimed, determined not to be left out.

  You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone went silent. Then I heard it—a snicker. Then another and another until the women were laughing so hard that their faces had gone red and some were holding their sides or grasping at the person next to them to keep from falling out of their chair.

  Zoey leaned over to me. "They didn't kill any mockingbirds in the story, at least not literal ones."

  I felt my face heat with embarrassment, but this time I refused to let myself be undone by it. I forged in after the laughter died down to a few titters. "I didn't read it. That's pretty obvious. Agatha was kind enough to invite me to the group earlier this afternoon, and I wanted to come."

  "We're glad to have you," a woman with curly auburn hair said as she wiped a laughter tear from her eye. Nobody at the meeting had strawberry-blonde hair. "We don't care what your aunt says about you."

  "That woman has sucked one too many lemons," Agatha added.

  "You all know Dorothy?" I asked. I hated how much that woman had been messing with my life. I'd never done anything to her. All the years that I'd been married to Dan, I'd been nothing but nice to her while she had fawned over every word that came out of his mouth. I swear, had he farted she would have called it perfume. I hadn't been deaf to the subtle ways she would insult me, either, but now that Dan and I were divorced, all subtlety had dropped away. She had turned outright vicious.

  This time in answer to my question rang out a regretful chorus of yeses. They did all know Dorothy.

  It was time for me to take the leap. "Does anyone here know of a strawberry blonde woman who is a bit on the heavy side? Rachel might have been friends with her fiancé. They might have spent some time together." I hadn't meant to make any inferences by saying that the two had spent time together, but there were a lot of exchanged looks that hinted that I was referring to sexual impropriety. I was thankful I didn't need to spell it out.

  "That Rachel would go after any man who looked at her twice," Paula said. "And if he was committed to somebody else, it was like she wanted him all the more. She didn't like it when someone had a toy she didn't have."

  Everyone nodded agreement except for Rita. She seemed lost in thought. "Strawberry blonde..." she said as if thinking out loud. Then, she snapped her fingers. "I was at the hairdresser this past week and a woman came in to have her hair colored. I wouldn't have called it strawberry blonde at the time, but that's just what it was." She pulled her phone out of her purse. "I'll text my girl, Margot, and ask her if she knows the woman's name."

  Two seconds later, Rita's phone sounded of wind chimes.

  "Margot's going to text Janet and ask. That's the hairdresser that the woman was seeing."

  I sat in amazement at this beautifully connected network that was taking shape right before my eyes. My heart pounded erratically in my chest as I waited for an answer to make its way back through Rita's phone. Meanwhile, the group returned to talking about the book and the injustice done to Tom Robinson, that man who had been wrongly accused in the book To Kill a Mockingbird. From the ladies’ talk, I knew that there had been no justice for him. I could only hope that my outcome fared better.

  I nearly jumped when the wind chimes sounded again.

  Rita picked up her phone, read the message, and then held her phone up triumphantly. "Chloe Barns!"

  "Ohhhh," Paula said and there were similar sounds of recognition made by other women in the group. I glanced at Zoey, but she gave a little shake of her head. She didn't know a Chloe Barns either.

  "I don't think that Chloe is seeing anybody right now," Rita said.

  "She'd been dating Ned Mayes earlier in the year," Agatha said.

  A few of the women grimaced, clearly not impressed with whoever Ned Mayes was.

  The group's conversation shifted into other topics, starting at infidelity, going to honeymoons in Vegas and then to bacon. The transitions made sense at the time, but I couldn't have described how later.

  Somehow the conversation came back around to Rachel.

  "Let's face it, Veronica's better off without Rachel," said the woman with the round glasses and auburn hair. "Rachel was so spiteful and vindictive." Then to me, she said, "The only reason I don't think you killed her was because you didn't know her long enough. She was usually nice to people at first, would do anything for you and make you think she was your best friend.”

  "I heard that Veronica will inherit Rachel's side of their duplex," Paula said.

  "Does that mean that Veronica and her family won't have to move?" Rita asked, sounding excited.

  "No, they'll be able to rent out Rachel's side to cover their expenses," Paula answered.

  It was during this quick exchange that it truly hit me for the first time. I was living in a small town. A small fishbowl of a town where everybody knew everybody else's business. I suddenly felt very exposed. But what left me feeling exposed could also be used to my advantage.

  "Does anybody know anything about Ned Mayes?" I asked.

  "He's nobody's loss," Rita answered. "Thinks he's more than he is." No one had anything more to add to that, and soon the ladies wer
e talking about birthday cards and old family recipes for biscuits and cobblers.

  I leaned closed to Zoey. "Do you know who Ned Mayes is?" I whispered.

  "Nope, but I'm going to help you find out."

  Chapter 18

  The next day, I left the café in Sam's capable hands and Zoey and I went to see Chloe. The day was cold and I had to wrap my waist-fitted princess coat around me. It was one of the few red garments I'd ever found that didn't clash with my red hair.

  Everywhere else that I looked, people were wearing jackets or overcoats. Function definitely won over fashion, and I had to appreciate the warmth that some of the thickly padded coats provided.

  Next to me, Zoey was sporting a lightweight olive green army jacket that hung a third of the way down her thighs. Under it she wore a hot pink thermal underwear shirt that hugged her every curve over a pair of black jeans and lace-up army boots. The girl looked ready to kick some heinie, which was a good thing. I hadn't thought through my choice of footwear and had donned a pair of flat Grecian-style sandals. I'd thought that they would be easy to walk in, but I hadn't factored in frozen toes.

  Zoey led the way, and we walked three blocks up Main Street and then one street back. It had taken Zoey all of four minutes of snooping on Facebook to figure out that Chloe worked at Sew New, the local sewing and fabric store.

  Warm air and a vanilla spice candle greeted us as soon as we stepped into the store. The floor was split up into three sections. The biggest section consisted of more fabric than I could have ever imagined could fit in such a compact space. The next section consisted of all the tools a person would need to work with the fabric. Then finally there was the checkout counter, behind which stood a plump woman with, you guessed it, strawberry blonde hair. And, just as Veronica had said, the woman was quite pretty.