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

by A. R. Winters

  Sage roamed around from one side to the other within her hard-shell carrying crate, making it jiggle unsteadily in my hands. She meowed, and it was full of pitiful complaint.

  "Taking her to the vet," I said to Zoey.

  "Are you walking?"

  "No, I was afraid my shoulder would break off after carrying this crate for more than a mile. Plus, it wouldn't be fair to Sage to get bounced around the whole time. I called an Uber." I was staying aware of traffic on the street as we talked so that I could see if my ride pulled up, but everything was moving slow. A huge SUV with heavily tinted windows was passing by at a snail's crawl, but when it got twenty feet past where we stood, it revved its engine and zoomed into a parallel spot across the street next to the sidewalk. It had dove into the spot with such a sudden burst of speed that its brakes screeched when the huge, heavy vehicle was slammed to a halt.

  "Wow, somebody needs to go back to Driving 101," Zoey said, craning her neck to see over her shoulder.

  "Do you get the feeling that they're looking at us?" I thought I could make out a little bit of movement behind the midnight dark windows, but I was pretty sure that was my imagination playing tricks on me.

  "Totally." Zoey leaned this way and that, as if trying to find an angle that would allow her a glimpse inside. She looked back at me. "How's your investigation going?"

  "Nowhere, but maybe it's going better than I thought.” The SUV was giving me the heebie-jeebies. It was behaving so oddly in comparison to all the other traffic around us.

  "You could have rattled the killer. Maybe they don't like you snooping." Zoey looked at the SUV again and then back at me. "Let's go rattle them some more." Her smile was luminous. It might have been the first time that I'd seen her without even a hint of sadness.

  I didn't know how smart it was to go knock on the window of someone who had already arranged for one person to be put six feet in the ground, but if it made Zoey happy, that was a good enough reason for me.

  I put Sage's crate down next to the café door. If we were heading into danger, she was better off staying behind.

  Timing it just right so as not to get hit by the oncoming traffic, we jogged straight across the road to the sidewalk. Then, we made a beeline for the SUV. There was no point in sneaking. If the person inside was watching us, they already knew that we were heading toward them. Still yet, it was hard not to crouch or walk stealthier as we got closer.

  Zoey giggled as we neared the passenger side door. She was having fun. I felt like I was having a heart attack.

  “Noooo," I whisper hissed as Zoey's hand reached for the SUV’s passenger side door handle. "They could have a gun!"

  "And you think that leaving the door closed will protect us anymore?"

  She had a good point. I shrugged my shoulders and motioned for her to go for it.

  Her fingers slipped under the door's handle to open it, and the door's locks clicked home. She pulled on the door handle but the door didn't open.

  Going for broke, I stepped up next to Zoey and wrapped on the passenger door’s window with my knuckles before twirling my finger to indicate that I wanted whoever was inside to roll the window down.

  The SUV's engine revved.

  "You got your phone? You could take a picture of the car and the plates. Maybe you could find something out by doing one of your fancy searches on your computer."

  "Oh yeah!" Zoey whipped out her phone, took a picture of the SUV from the side and then headed around to the back to get a picture of its plates. But she didn't get there in time.

  The SUV lurched forward into a cacophony of honking horns. Tires screeched, and one of the cars made a hard right turn onto the sidewalk straight toward Zoey and me in an effort to avoid a collision with the SUV. I threw myself in one direction and Zoey threw herself in the other. When the car came to a halt and its door opened, a little woman who looked as though she had to be somebody's grandma got out of her car and shook her fist in the air at the hastily retreating SUV.

  It wasn't even 8 AM yet.

  Chapter 22

  Sitting in the vet’s office thirty minutes later, I still felt a little shaken about having had a Mazda XXX almost crush me into a huevos rancheros-topped pancake.

  Sage’s hawk-like claws reached through the grate-style door of her carrier and hooked the sleeve of my coat. I let her pull my arm against the door and she rubbed her cheek against the crisscrossed steel just as if she were rubbing it directly on my arm.

  “Sorry, girl. I’ll get you out soon.” I eyeballed the dog sitting a few feet away from us. It looked as though it was a cross between a bulldog and a moose. It was huge, and it hadn’t taken its gaze off of Sage’s carrier since the moment we sat down.

  “Kylie Berry,” the receptionist at the check-in counter called out.

  “Here.” I raised my hand to help her find me.

  “Room three. The doctor will be with you soon.”

  I stood, picked up the carrier, waved goodbye to moose-dog and followed a hallway until I found room three. The door was open. I went in, closed the door, and opened the crate. Sage thanked me for her freedom by climbing up my body to my shoulder and then doing her best to climb on top of my head. I guessed that these vet trips were not going to be a favorite activity of hers.

  On the other side of the room was another door, and I heard shuffling and murmured voices before the door opened. A slender man in his mid-thirties or early forties walked in. He was very fit, and somewhat handsome with salt and pepper hair. He smile was warm, and I felt instantly at ease. I couldn’t say the same for Sage, though. She had her two front paws on top of my head and one of her back paws trying to fit itself in my ear to use it as a stepping stool.

  “Who do we have here?” the doctor asked.

  “I’m Kylie, and this is Sage.” I reached up to picking Sage up from my head, but she dug her claws into my scalp. The doctor stepped in to help. Sage hissed, I screeched, and my hair turned into Sage’s last hopes for staying in place. In the end, she lost the battle… and so did my hair.

  “Well hello, Sage,” the doctor said with the kitten now standing on a stainless steel table. “I’m Dr. Doogan.” Then to me, he asked, “Did anything specific bring you in today?”

  “No, I found her one day when I went for a walk. Someone nearby said she was a stray and that nobody wanted her, so I took her home with me.”

  The doctor tsked. “I’m glad you two found each other.”

  “She sneezed a couple of days ago.”

  “Oh! Well let’s take a listen.” He pulled out his stethoscope and put it to her chest, but that was exactly the moment that Sage chose to start purring very loudly. It didn’t seem to bother the doctor, though. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before,” he said once he was done listening.

  “I’m new in town. I’m the new owner of Sarah’s Eatery.”

  “Oh! Congratulations.”

  I was pretty sure that that meant that he hadn’t heard anything about me. That was a major plus, because it also meant that my ex-aunt-in-law hadn’t turned him against me. “I’ve actually been investigating the recent murder of Rachel Summers. Did you know her, I mean, did she have a pet?”

  The doc shone a light in both of Sage’s eyes. “Hm, I did have the misfortune of having met Rachel Summers. She got a kitten from the local shelter and brought him in for a wellness checkup, but she spent the whole visit trying to get me to go out to dinner with her. As you can imagine, that wouldn’t have gone over very well with my husband. I heard that she returned the kitten to the shelter the very next day.”

  I had just learned a whole lot, and I blinked a couple of times to absorb it all. “If you’re married to a man, why did Rachel try to get you to go out to dinner with her?”

  “I don’t know, but she got mad when she didn’t get her way. Stormed out without the kitten, then came back a few minutes later… Terrible woman. Nasty piece of work.” The doc pushed the tip of a thermometer into a spot that Sage had some
negative feelings about as well. “I could tell you all kinds of stories on her. She poisoned a dog—” I gasped, “—which with some help had a tummy ache but otherwise was fine. She campaigned to have the animal shelter shut down on the grounds that it was ‘unsightly.’ She came in to ask me what it would take to raise foxes because she wanted to have them made into a fox fur coat. And she is believed to have stolen money from a fundraiser to cover the expense of spays and neuters for the town residents.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt like I needed to sit down. I’d heard a lot of people say unflattering things about Rachel, but no one had been able to sum up quite so succinctly what a terrible person she really had been.

  And I had hired her!

  Knowing that made me feel nauseous, and what did it say about my ability to read a person’s character? Of course, I’d married my no good, selfish, self-centered, cheating husband, so I guess my inability to read a person’s character shouldn’t have surprised me quite so much.

  I watched as Dr. Doogan gave Sage one shot and then another. Sage didn’t even complain. She was so brave.

  “Am… am I doing things right? With her? I’ve never had a pet before.”

  Dr. Doogan’s head shot up. His eyes were wide. “Not even as a kid?” He sounded dismayed, and I felt like a cretin.

  I shook my head, and he tsked. Giving Sage his full attention, he said, “Water, food, sunshine, fresh air, love and play. Give your kitten these things, and you’ll both be just fine. The receptionist can give you a list of recommended pet food brands.”

  Chapter 23

  Lying in bed that night with Sage curled up sleeping on my stomach, the vet’s reaction to me never having had a pet before still stung. When I was a kid, I hadn’t had any choice in the matter. It had been my parents’ choice not to have pets because my mom struggled with allergies. But then I’d gotten married and moved away. Why hadn’t I gotten a pet then?

  There was the Christmas that I’d thought Dan had gotten me a puppy, but it turned out to be surprise tickets to a hot new play. Front row seats. I later found out that his then-girlfriend had been starring in it. That had explained his forty-five minute trip to the “bathroom” as soon as the play had ended. He’d gone backstage to spend time with her.

  So much about Dan and who he was had come out during the divorce, but I was beginning to realize that I still had a lot to learn about myself. For the first eighteen years of my life, I had been my parents’ child. Then, the next eleven years of my life had been spent as Dan’s wife. I had never lived a life of my own making before, but I was glad it was happening now. It was overdue.

  I looked down at Sage as she shifted and then purred. I gave her nose a little rub and she purred louder, but she lifted her head up suddenly, full of alertness, when an unfamiliar sound reached our ears. It was there one moment and gone the next. It sounded like an attempt to move something that was stuck.

  Sage and I remained completely silent. Then, we heard it again. Shock and fear shot through my veins. The sound was coming from the hallway outside my open bedroom door!

  Displacing Sage, I got to my feet and tiptoed across the cold hardwood floor wearing nothing but a long t-shirt. Stopping at the door, I leaned my head into the hallway and looked this way and that. I gasped and jerked my head back into the bedroom when I spotted a shadow moving beyond the window at the end of the hall. It was the window that overlooked the building’s back parking lot.

  I held my breath to try to keep from hyperventilating and stuck my head back out into the hallway. Sage chose that exact moment to go bounding into the hallway, hissing and spitting as she hopped on straight legs. Her fur was sticking straight out from her body, making her look like a cross between a porcupine and a fuzzball.

  “Sage!” It was a whisper, but it was the loudest whisper I’d ever heard. It filled the space around us and bounced off the walls. I made a mad dash into the hallway to scoop Sage into my arms, and then stood frozen as a death-like shadow loomed in the window at the end of the hall. I was too afraid to scream.

  The shadow moved, the window jiggled, and Sage launched herself from my arms and threw herself full bodied against the window before dropping to the floor to try all over again.

  When Sage hit the window, the shadow jerked back, and I found my voice. I screamed. I screamed so loud that I was sure that plaster was cracking and glasses were breaking somewhere.

  The shadow disappeared and the clang of hard footfalls on the metal fire escape outside was all that remained.

  Dashing back inside the bedroom, I scrambled in the dark to find my cell phone. I dialed 9-1-1.

  “State the nature of your emergency,” an operator said.

  “Someonestryingtobreakin! I live above Sarah’s Eatery.”

  “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that? Please talk slower.”

  “Brad. Brad Calderos. Is he there? Can I speak to him?” I held my hand against my chest as hard as I could to keep my heart from breaking its way out of my chest.

  “Officer Claderos is on another call and is currently unavailable. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

  Sage strolled back into the bedroom. She sat down, lifted her leg and started grooming herself. The bad guy was gone, and she was back to being totally chill… And I was being an overreacting ninny.

  “Never mind… never mind. Everything’s fine,” I assured the operator. Tomorrow I would put a motion detection light outside the window or do something else similar. I imagined how pretty Christmas lights would be strewn all around it. That would be cheap and easy to set up, and it would provide good illumination. No more shadow people for me. Besides that, whoever it was had been scared off by a kitten. If they got scared away by a kitten, I was pretty sure that I was going to be okay.

  I DIDN’T KNOW how much time had passed when I heard the disembodied sound of a man’s voice invade my dreams. I went from being completely asleep to fully awake with no transition in-between.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice called out again, and it was not muted by any walls, glass, or even curtains.

  Someone was in the apartment!

  I jumped to my feet. It was dark, but I could tell that my protector cat wasn’t anywhere around me.

  Glancing frantically around my bedroom, I looked for something that I could use as a weapon.

  Mattress? No.

  The dress I use as a blanket? No.

  My phone? Yes! I could throw it at his head. Why I thought of throwing it at his head instead of using it to call for help, I don’t know. All I knew was that there was a man in my apartment, uninvited, and the sound of his footfalls meant that he was walking down the hall toward my bedroom.

  Standing up, I tiptoed to stand behind my bedroom door, and I waited.

  “Hello?” The voice was so close. The hairs on my arms lifted.

  An arm extended past the door, then a shoulder, then his head.

  I struck! Holding my cell phone like a spike, I drove it down on top of the intruder’s head.

  Instead of crying out or jerking away, the man’s arm whipped around. His big hand wrapped around my wrist, taking control of my arm, and then his other hand pressed into my shoulder to push me face-first against the door.

  “Kylie?”

  Twisting my neck, I looked behind me. Relief flooded all my senses. “Brad!” As always, he looked good in his officer’s uniform.

  Brad released me, and I rubbed my now sore wrist.

  “What are you doing here? And how did you get in here?”

  Brad walked over to the light switch and turned it on. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered that I was only wearing a long t-shirt that fell down my legs as far as the shortest of miniskirts.

  Brad didn’t seem to take notice of this, and I wasn’t sure which to be more upset about—the fact that he was in my home in the middle of the night uninvited or that he was completely unaffected by the sight of me.

  “How did you get in?” I asked
again. This time I let my fear shift into anger.

  “Sarah gave me a key.”

  “Do I look like Sarah?”

  He had the nerve to look me up and down. The corner of his mouth quirked up and one of his cheeks dimpled. “Nope.”

  Ohhhh, I wanted to hit him. “Give me the key.” I held out my palm.

  “Nope.” He strolled out of the bedroom and continued to look around the apartment. “Why’d you call the station? Sally in Dispatch told me she’d gotten a call.”

  I followed him out into the hallway. “Someone tried to break in.”

  He twisted at the waist to turn and look at me, one brow lifted. For the first time, I saw actual concern in his eyes. “Where’d they try to break in from?”

  I pointed toward the window at the end of the hall.

  Walking with purpose instead of strolling, Brad approached the window and tried to open it. “Painted shut. You need to fix that. Your fire escape is out this window. You need to be able to leave through it.”

  Duh. I didn’t say it, but I wanted to.

  Brad turned around and looked at me. “This needs to get fixed.” He was dead serious.

  “Okay, okay… I’ll get it fixed.”

  He nodded, then shown his flashlight out the window and traced the fire escape with its beam.

  “You going to check for fingerprints?”

  “They were most likely wearing gloves. Things don’t work like CSI or one of those other shows, Kylie.”

  My anger spiked again. This was the second time he’d chastised me in my own home—a home that he’d broken into.

  “I didn’t kill Rachel.” I spat the words.

  Brad clicked the flashlight off and turned around. “Did say you did.”

  My mouth gaped. “What about the big search you did?”