Murderous Mocha Waffle (The Diner of the Dead Series Book 14)

by Carolyn Q. Hunter

  Diane looked from the small broken head up at the nervous janitor. “Just like that?” she snapped. “Your mop handle hits my statue and within seconds, months’ worth of my work is down the drain?”

  “I-I-I s-said it was an accident.”

  Standing up and glaring at the small, bald man, her eyes seemed to burn red with fury. “An accident? That’s all you have to say to the memory of my mother?” She cradled the head

  “I-I didn’t know your mother,” he mumbled, physically shrinking back from the angry woman.

  “Of course, you didn’t,” she roared, holding the head up in his face. “My mother was one of the best people ever, if not the best person. She always gave back to the community, she sacrificed day after day to make sure others could have what she didn’t. She loved me.”

  “I’m s-sorry, I-I’m sorry,” he repeated, squeezing his eyes shut. “How m-many times do I have to say it.”

  Diane wailed, the tears flowing freely. “I can’t even keep a simple memory of her alive without it breaking.” She set the small head on the table.

  “M-Maybe I can fix it,” he blurted, picking it up. “Maybe I-I can glue it back together.”

  “Forget it.” Grabbing his mop from him, she tossed it to the floor. “I hope you’re happy.”

  With that, she ran from the room, the sobs escaping her throat.

  After her exit, everyone had stood staring in silence at the poor janitor.

  Bending down, he slowly picked up the second piece of the heavy stone statue in his arms and quickly shuffled back through the door he’d come through in the first place.

  * * *

  Through the entire ordeal, Sonja wanted to jump in, wanted to stop it all from happening. She wanted to grab her mom and hug her, comfort her. She wanted to let Tylor know that it was okay, that she understood it was an accident.

  Unfortunately, she’d been so dumbfounded by the whole thing—especially how upset her mother had gotten—that she just couldn’t do a thing but stand there.

  However, now that the bulk of the chaos was over, she was determined to find her mother and try to comfort her.

  Walking toward the stairs at the edge of the stage, she heard a frustrated sigh come from behind her. Turning, she saw Patricia glaring at her with her arms folded. “This is all your fault,” she accused.

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you hadn’t gotten up and made your little speech, which isn’t on the schedule, by the way, this whole fiasco wouldn’t be happening.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Sonja argued. “I need to find my Mom.”

  “Fine,” Patricia barked. “I’ll get the choir to sing and hopefully everyone will forget what happened. But I don’t want to see you back in here. You’re fired.”

  Sonja waved a hand at the woman as she walked away, indicating she didn’t care what she said.

  As Sonja exited the gym on the opposite side from the stage, she heard the girls’ choir begin to perform their musical number.

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  Sonja spent at least twenty minutes searching for her mother through the hallways and rooms of the community center, and even outside in the parking lot and adjoining park, with no luck. Her best guess at this point was that she had headed home, completely in shambles about the whole thing.

  Knowing her mother, she was probably still upset about the broken statue, but also equally upset about her own actions. She’d probably want to apologize to Tylor for the whole thing before the day was through.

  Finally, Sonja decided to check in the gym itself one more time before calling the house to see if she’d returned home.

  As expected, Patricia was running around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to manage fifty things all at once.

  “She’s really something, isn’t she?”

  Sonja turned to see the door behind her open and Laurie standing there.

  “I guess so,” Sonja nodded. “You haven’t seen my mother, have you?”

  She shook her head, her golden locks brushing her shoulders instead of up in a bun like it had been earlier. “No, but I heard what happened. I was in the back room with the girls at that moment.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty hard on my mom. My grandmother was special to her and she misses her a lot on Mother’s Day.”

  “It was just sad that it had to happen that way and all. I mean, Tylor really screwed up again.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” she defended him.

  “Well he already wasn’t exactly the most well-liked man.”

  “I’m not sure a lot of people understand him. Heck, I don’t claim to. He just liked to keep to himself, is all.”

  “Well, maybe for good reason,” Laurie commented, complaining about him like she did about everyone else.

  Sonja raised an eyebrow. “What was that supposed to mean?” As far as she knew, Tylor would never hurt a fly.

  “Nothing,” she cut off the conversation prematurely. “Anyway, I don’t mean to keep you. I’m sure you need to find your mother, and I need to make sure all the girls have a ride home before I leave.”

  “Aren’t most of their mother’s here today?”

  “Yep, they are,” she agreed, “but it’s still my responsibility to make sure that none of them get stuck here or something.”

  “Makes sense,” Sonja nodded.

  Another crash echoed throughout the hall as one of the women, moving a cup of fresh lemonade—another favorite mother’s recipe—fell to the floor and spilled.

  “Oh, good gracious,” Patricia shouted, looking at the poor woman with scolding eyes. “Cici, what a mess.”

  “Well, I’m outta here before this turns into yet another fiasco,” Laurie noted.

  “I don’t blame you,” Sonja nodded. “See you.”

  “Bye,” she said, leaving the room.

  Sonja was beginning to remember why she wasn’t exactly close friends with Laurie. The choir director had a habit of being somewhat negative about people (and about life in general) and seemed to enjoy gossiping about folks behind their backs. In fact, Laurie’s eavesdropping and snooping almost qualified her as a true busybody.

  Sonja just didn’t care for that kind of talk. She didn’t feel it was necessary to go through life with an attitude of hate. After all, she herself had experienced horrors and death first hand, and she preferred to cherish each of life’s moments as they came and try to find something positive about everyone.

  “Where is that gosh dang janitor,” Patricia shouted. “He’s never around when you need him.”

  Sonja sighed. There were even things that were admirable and good about Patricia, even if they were a little harder to point out.

  Sonja figured that she’d better find Tylor before someone else did. He was likely already distraught after the events from earlier, and it wouldn’t help to have any more frustrated women hunting him down and beating on him.

  Walking out of the room, Sonja headed toward the janitor’s closet which was located in the hallways behind the stage. She knew where it was because she’d hidden out in it once while avoiding a killer.

  It wasn’t a pleasant memory but it came in handy at the moment. She figured he was either in the janitor’s closet or hiding out somewhere else.

  Walking through the hallways and around the building, she found the closet. The light inside was on and the door cracked barely open. Just as she expected, he was probably in there hiding out until the whole Mother’s Day fair had ended and he could just clean up in peace and quiet.

  “Tylor,” Sonja called, walking up to the closet and gently knocking. “Tylor, it’s Sonja Reed. There’s been a small spill in the gym again, lemonade this time. I thought you’d want to take care of it.”

  There was no response, and Sonja realized that he might still be embarrassed and the fact that she was Diane’s daughter made him reluctant to speak to her.

  “Tylor, I just wanted you to know even though my mom was upset by the
statue, she knows it was an accident. She just overreacted a little when it happened.” Sonja sighed. “She misses her mother at times, but I’m sure she will forgive you.”

  Again, there was no answer. Sonja felt horrible about the whole ordeal.

  “Tylor,” she said one more time, gently pulling the door open.

  The words from her next sentence caught in the middle of her throat, feeling sickeningly dry as she witnessed the scene hidden away in the closet. Laying on the floor in a crumbled ball was Tylor. Next to him was the little stone head from the statue of her grandmother. There was a splotch of blood on it.

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  “He’s dead,” Sheriff Frank Thompson announced from where he knelt next to the closet door. “Bashed over the head.”

  The two deputies and Sonja stood nearby. “Oh no,” she whispered, her thoughts instantly wandering to her memories of that morning—of Belinda’s assertion about the stone death masks. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, but now she knew it was true.

  “And this is exactly how you found him, Sonj’?”

  She nodded. “Just like that.”

  “What kind of murder weapon is this?” he asked himself, partially amused as he carefully examined the stone head.

  “I-It’s the statue of my grandmother,” she informed him nervously. “My mom made it for Mother’s Day, sort of a remembrance.”

  “It’s your grandmother?” he gasped, a little appalled now that he had laughed. “How did it get back here?”

  “Tylor accidently knocked it over, broke the head off.” She shrugged. “I think he was bringing it back to the closet to try and fix it.”

  “That explains the bottle of epoxy glue,” he nodded toward a nearby tube laying on the floor. He looked up at his deputy, Danny, giving a silent cue to begin working on marking evidence. “Well, it looks like I’ve got a lot of work to do here,” he told his girlfriend. “I’ll get your official statement later today, along with all the other women here, but for now I need to cordon off the crime scene and you can’t be in it.” He sighed, clearly upset that he was going to have to interview most of the day’s party goers.

  “You really have to interview all of them?”

  Frank nodded. “Possibly. It all depends on who may have had the opportunity to be back here, or who saw someone walk back here.” He shook his head. “It’s going to be a mess.”

  Sonja shifted her feet nervously. As much as she enjoyed investigating these types of things on her own, she did not envy her boyfriend’s responsibility to do all the tedious grunt work involved in homicide cases.

  “Better call in the coroner, Greg,” Frank informed his other deputy.

  “On it,” he declared moving off to make the call.

  Sonja had tried to be discreet as possible in making the call to Frank, telling them to pull the two police cruisers they drove into the back lot instead of the front. The last thing she figured Frank needed was a tizzy of women all falling apart and gossiping about the latest murder in Haunted Falls—on Mother’s Day no less.

  Up to this point, her plan had worked, and the police had arrived relatively undiscovered. However, slowly, women were trickling out of the gym to see what all the commotion was about. Once the coroner arrived with the ambulance, there would be no hiding anything.

  “Danny, can you make sure those women stay back,” Frank ordered his deputy who was preparing numbered evidence tags.

  Nodding, Danny ran off down the hall where the women were coming out.

  “What’s happening?” One woman asked.

  “Did someone get hurt?” Another interjected.

  “Was there a robbery?” A third woman squealed.

  “Ladies, there is nothing to be worried about,” the deputy announced. “Please just step back into the gym and enjoy the fair for the time being.” He was holding up both hands, indicating that everyone should move back.

  “Are we in danger?” One of the ladies asked nervously.

  “No, ma’am. This is just simple police business.”

  “What in heaven’s name is going on?” The angry demand of a familiar voice echoed in the hallway.

  The crowd of ladies parted like the red sea as Patricia came storming through.

  “Ma’am,” Danny nodded toward the scowling woman, “please step back into the gym with the rest of the women.”

  “I will do no such thing,” she barked at him. “Why have you and the sheriff so rudely interrupted our festivities.”

  Sonja rolled her eyes. With Patricia in charge, it was hard to feel festive at all.

  “This is a simple police matter. If you and everyone else would return to the party—”

  “This is no mere party, young man. This is the official Mother’s Day Fair put on by the Women’s Knitting Society of the Rockies, Haunted Falls branch.”

  Danny was growing slightly red from irritation as he stepped forward with his arms out wide to block anyone from getting through. “And this is a police investigation, ma’am. Please step back.”

  “I refuse,” she stood her ground, setting her weight down like a tree rooted to the dirt. “I want to know what is going on, and I want to know now.”

  Just then, Greg came walking back into the hallway. “The coroner is on his way, Sheriff.”

  Instantly, the crowd of women burst into a series of shrieks and gasps.

  “Coroner, what for?”

  “Is someone dead?”

  “Are we in danger?”

  Danny looked like he was about to explode from frustration. “Ladies, ladies, please. Step back into the gym. This is a police investigation.”

  Patricia stamped her foot, raising her voice above the frightened murmur of the crowd. “Young man, we have every right to know what is happening, especially if one of our own is ill or dead. Now, tell us what has happened.”

  “Ms. Hoover,” Frank shouted with a deep commanding voice that echoed off the walls, ultimately forcing all the women into silence. Standing up from the crime scene and placing his hands on his belt, the sheriff narrowed his eyes at the group's ringleader. “As my deputy has already informed all of you, this is a police investigation. Now, if I hear one more peep out of any of you,” he looked directly in Patricia’s eyes, “I’ll have you charged with impeding a police investigation.”

  Patricia’s features tightened with anger, her lips growing so thin and white that they practically disappeared into her face. “What about her?” she snapped, pointing at Sonja. “Why is she back there with you?”

  “Sonja Reed is a key witness in this case. Once I’m done getting her full story, I’ll be sending her back into the gym with the rest of you.” He took one step forward. “Now, I want all of you to go back this instant, and don’t leave the gym until otherwise instructed,” he nodded.

  Patricia opened her mouth to argue again but managed to stop herself, realizing she could get into some serious trouble if she did. With one final defiant huff, she turned and barreled through the crowd of ladies and back into the gym.

  “Better cordon off this whole hallway right away,” Frank informed his deputies, “before anyone else tries to barge into our crime scene.”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  Sonja still hadn’t found her mother and was eager to get home to see if she was there. After asking Frank’s permission, Sonja went ahead and started packing up her things to leave. She no longer felt the need to hang around and hand out waffles, especially since she’d been fired, and had no desire to be around the Knitting Society anymore that day. If any of the ladies got hungry, there were plenty of cupcakes, donuts, and other foods for them to snack on.

  Frank told her to be discreet as she left and to expect a call from him later that day.

  As she’d carried her last box quietly out of the gym, she noticed Patricia giving her the stink eye, glaring at her with a fire like the devil. Sonja hated to admit it, but she really disliked that woman. If she never had to see or interact
with her again, Sonja would be all the happier for it.

  A little while later, pulling into the circle driveway outside her mother’s Victorian style house, Sonja stepped out and walked up the concrete steps and let herself into the front door.

  “Mom? Are you in here?”

  “We’re in here, honey,” her father, Samuel Reed, yelled from the back room where he kept his study.

  Turning down the narrow hallway and stepping into the little room that was lined with bookshelves—and mostly filled with her mother’s old romance novels—Sonja spotted her parents sitting in the corner together, her father comfortingly holding Diane’s hand.

  The woman’s eyes were all red and puffy, but it appeared she’d stopped crying for the most part.

  “Oh, Sonja,” she exclaimed upon seeing her daughter. “I’m so sorry.”

  The waterworks turned back on, tears running down her raw face.

  “Now, now. No more crying,” Sonja’s father patted Diane’s hand.

  “I can’t believe I made such a fool of myself in front of all the ladies, and on Mother’s Day no less.”

  “Mom,” Sonja said, kneeling near her mother, “we all have difficult times.”

  “I was just so upset about the statue. It was unfair of me to be so harsh with Tylor Mason.”

  “Well, he did destroy months’ worth of work on that bust,” Sam reminded her. “I’d say you had every right to be a little angry.”

  She shrugged. “But I wasn’t a little angry. I was furious. I ripped into him in front of the entire gym of women. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “What’s to be embarrassed about?” Sonja asked. “It was a symbol of the love for your mother. You were hurt when it got broken. I’m sure everyone will understand.”

  Diane adamantly shook her head. “Not everyone.”

  “Don’t worry about it, dear,” Sam instructed her, trying to keep her positive.