Murder Gone A-Rye (A Baker's Treat Mystery)

by Nancy J. Parra

  She hung up and the line buzzed in my ear. I rolled my eyes and turned to see that the puppy had escaped from the box. He rolled on the clean but wet floor, smearing mud everywhere. “No!” I raised my voice a tad too loud and he piddled on my floor . . . again. “Darn it,” I muttered and went to grab him when he escaped from me and took off down the hallway.

  It took me five minutes to corner the puppy in the formal living room. He growled at me but I picked him up and scolded him with my finger. He reacted by biting me.

  There was a knock at the front door. I’d forgotten that I’d left the screen door open when I’d come in. “Toni?” Brad opened the door.

  “Here.” I must have been a sight. The puppy was like a greased pig, slick from mud. I could see it streaked on my blue shirt and black pants. I tried to wipe it off my face, but that only seemed to make it worse. I’m certain my hair stuck out all over. “I’m in the living room.”

  I stepped out and nearly ran into Brad as he stepped in from the foyer. “Whoa,” he said and grabbed me by the forearms to steady me. “What happened to you?”

  “Meet Aubrey.” I lifted the puppy into the air. “Kip rescued him.”

  “Oh. Hello.” He stepped back from both me and the dog.

  “I promised to give him a bath. Want to help?”

  “You, soapy water in the bathroom . . . nice image. I’d love to but I’m headed to the police station.”

  I tilted my head. “Then why’d you stop here? Oh, no, don’t tell me. . . .”

  “Yeah, sorry.” He frowned, drawing his thick blond eyebrows together. “I’m afraid Chief Blaylock caught Grandma Ruth and Phyllis at the courthouse.”

  “But they were just here.”

  “Not anymore.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Mama said there’ll be days like this. There’ll be days like this, my mama said.” The song played on the radio as I paced the front porch. The sun set early in November, and the black of night hung thick over the street lamps. The wind whipped up a nice icy cold and carried the scent of snow. The big oak trees in front of the house had lost all their leaves last month, and their thick outstretched arms stood firm and sleeping.

  Brad had called from the police station to let me know that he’d extracted Aunt Phyllis from the police for the price of a small fine. Grandma Ruth, on the other hand, was playing hardball. I could not wait to get my hands on her. What was she thinking going back to the courthouse in Aunt Phyllis’s van? Even worse, they’d crossed the taped-off section and opened the side door and walked in as if they owned the place.

  “Technically, we do own the place,” Grandma had said over the phone. “It’s the county courthouse, and I pay my taxes.”

  “That doesn’t give you the right to walk in whenever you want.” I rested my tired head against the wall of the bathroom. Grandma called while I was bathing the puppy. It turns out it was a very large, very fluffy white puppy. From the size of its paws, we might be in big trouble in a few months.

  The puppy decided that it needed to shake from nose to tail, flinging soap and water all over the tiny pink rosebud wallpaper I’d put in the second-floor bathroom. It was pretty and I’d been reassured it was the same period as the house. My goal was to slowly decorate the house to my taste, starting with the floor with my bedroom and adjacent bath. It’d been three months before I’d settled on a small but tasteful amount of period wallpaper on this floor in pale creams with pastel flowers and stripes.

  I grabbed a thick green towel and covered the puppy. It growled and grabbed the towel until I scooped it up and wrapped the squirming wet creature.

  “What is that noise?” Grandma asked on the phone. The woman was hard of hearing until it was something you hoped she didn’t hear.

  “Kip brought home a puppy.”

  “Really? What kind?”

  “White. Now, don’t try to change the subject on me. Rosa heard you were in jail before I found out,” I scolded. “You know how that makes me look.”

  “Like a busy career woman?”

  “Grandma, don’t you think I’ve had enough excitement in the last forty-eight hours, between you being arrested once and Kip going missing?” I fluffed up the puppy and let it go. It circled the floor and proceeded to lift its leg and piddle against my pedestal sink. “Aubrey, no!” My shouting only made the puppy run, piddling as it went.

  “Aubrey?” Grandma asked.

  “Kip named the puppy.” I grabbed up the pup and took it in one hand and my cell phone in the other as I headed down the wood steps to the foyer. “When will you be home?”

  “When I convince the chief to look in the wall for Champ Rogers’s murder weapon.”

  “Grandma! Do you know what a long shot it is that there is anything in the wall, let alone a long-lost murder weapon?”

  “As long a shot as the idea that I killed Lois.” Grandma said that last part very loud. “I have to go.”

  “Wait!” I froze at the bottom of the steps, but it was too late. Grandma had hung up. “Darn.” The puppy licked my hand. I blew out a slow breath and lifted the little guy up until we were face-to-face. I studied his broad forehead and square nose. “If your coloring matched the breed, I’d think you were a Saint Bernard.”

  “Heaven help us.” Tasha walked in from the kitchen and crossed herself. “There’s no way I can rent an apartment if I’ve got a Saint Bernard.”

  “Aubrey!” Kip raced around his mom and took the fluffy puppy from me. The dog’s tail wagged fiercely as Kip gathered it up in his arms and buried his face in the white fur. “Come on, Aubrey. We bought you puppy food. Uncle Tim says that you have to eat special food until you’re one year old so that you’ll have strong bones and teeth.” Kip disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “You’re stuck with Aubrey now. Let’s hope no one comes forward to claim him.” I leaned against the staircase and studied my friend. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes sparkled. Her blonde hair escaped from her headband, but in such a way that she looked like a Hollywood starlet stepping out of a convertible after an exciting ride with—what was the name of that movie star? Ryan something . . . Ryan Goose? Ryan Goss? Anyway, it starts with a G.

  Okay, so I wasn’t up on my Hollywood stars. I had a business to run, and that meant that my movie viewing was limited to the three and four A.M. old movies that played on cable channels. I liked to have movies playing in the background while I baked. Ever since the murder outside my bakery door in the wee hours of the morning, I’d decided I’d rather have a movie plot than simply music. A movie plot kept my mind engaged and my thoughts from wandering off in scary directions.

  I straightened from the staircase. “Are you okay?”

  Tasha sat down hard on one of the chairs that rested against the wall in the square foyer. “I’m not sure.” She looked nearly as afraid as she had been when I’d first gotten home.

  “Kip seems all right,” I pointed out. “Was the hole scary deep?”

  She closed her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall. “It was about four to five feet deep. I have no idea how Kip got that dog out of there.” She opened her eyes and her expression grew sober. “He could have fallen in and it might have been hours or even days before we found him.”

  “He’s fine.”

  “I know. I kept saying that as I watched him show Calvin the hole.”

  “Calvin?” I raised my right eyebrow and waited for her to blush in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .

  “Don’t you think he did a good job with Kip?”

  I noticed she didn’t tell me who Calvin was and left it up to me to assume it was Officer Bright. “He seems like a nice guy.”

  “I swear, Toni, I thought I was going to fall apart until he got here. There was something calm and confident about him.” She paused, her gaze softening.

  “I noticed.” I shoved my hands
in my pants pockets.

  She shook off the mood that had struck her. “He said he was going to see that Kip got a hero award for not only rescuing the puppy but saving the neighbor kids from certain harm.”

  I tilted my head, a little confused. “So, what was it? An old well?” It seemed odd that no one would have noticed an old well in a park that had been there since before I was born.

  “Calvin thought perhaps it was a sink hole. It’s been so dry this fall, and then we had that rain last week.”

  “I remember. The downtown would have flooded if not for the new lake and dam project.”

  “We’re lucky it all worked out,” Tim said as he walked in. “Bright called in an emergency crew to cover the hole before anyone else fell inside.”

  “Thanks for your help, Tim,” Tasha said with a sigh, the tension leaving her shoulders.

  “No problem,” Tim said and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Any other emergencies before I go up and try to get a little more shut-eye?”

  I noted that the sunlight was fading in the living room windows. It was the time of year where it grew dark at five P.M. From the look of the light it was nearing twilight. “While you were gone, Grandma Ruth and Aunt Phyllis were picked up by the police.”

  “Not again!” Tim muttered something dark under his breath.

  Tasha sat up straight. “When, where, how? Aren’t they here?”

  “That’s what I said.” I shrugged. “It seems Grandma heard Kip come in and decided it was time she and Phyllis go down and continue their search of the courthouse building.”

  “What would make them do that? Didn’t you tell them to lay low?”

  I rolled my eyes and tucked my frizzy hair behind my ears. “When have we ever known Grandma Ruth to listen?”

  “You should have asked her how she thinks she’s going to investigate Lois’s murder from inside the jail,” Tim said.

  “You are brilliant!” I rushed over and hugged my brother—then pulled out my phone and dialed Brad’s number.

  “Ridgeway.”

  “Hi, Brad, it’s Toni.”

  “It’s okay, Toni, I’m calling in some favors to get your grandma out of jail.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.” There, I said it. I went out on the front porch and sat in the porch swing.

  “What? Why?”

  “As long as she’s in jail she can’t investigate any further.” I pushed off on the swing and watched the sun go down.

  “Hmm. Do you think she’ll be all right in lockup?”

  “Knowing Grandma, she’ll be fine. It’s the guards I worry about.” I laughed short and tight, then sobered. “Wait, seriously, you’d better check in with Chief Blaylock first. I don’t want to leave her there only to have her get into worse trouble than if she were home where I can keep an eye on her.”

  “Toni, she sneaked out of your house and willfully broke into the courthouse. How much more trouble can she get in?”

  “Seriously, Brad, do you know my grandma? She’s a Mensa member. If there’s a way to get around a problem, she’ll find it.”

  “Point taken.”

  I pushed off the swing and hung on to the silence our phone conversation had fallen into. Clearly we were both thinking through the fine points of being between a rock and a hard place where Grandma was concerned.

  If I didn’t get her out she’d have to sleep on the cot in a jail cell. And worse, I’d have to hear from Joan, Rosa, and Eleanor about how irresponsible I was for not keeping a better eye on the old lady.

  It was a risk I would take if it kept Grandma safe. We must have reached our decision at the same time.

  “I’ll talk to the chief,” Brad said.

  “Thanks,” I said, my heart pumping as I crossed my fingers and toes that Grandma wouldn’t find more trouble in a jail cell than she did running around in Aunt Phyllis’s VW van.

  CHAPTER 12

  The week before Thanksgiving was almost as busy for the bakery as Christmas. People were planning their huge family celebration meals. If they weren’t gluten-free but had GF family, they often came in to pick up their pies, breads, stuffing, etc. It was too much to cook a feast for their regular guests, let alone the special eaters.

  I didn’t mind. It meant I worked long hours, but the extra money I made from the holidays could help sustain me through the leaner times early in the next year. Now that I had the actual bakery separate from my kitchen I was able to bake all night without interrupting the others in my household.

  Pushing racks of pies into the freezer, I closed the door to the little room tight and marked the time on the sheet taped to the front door. Each group had to freeze for a specific number of hours before I could box them and package them for shipment the next day. It was hard when everyone wanted their pies Thanksgiving day or, at the very earliest, the day before.

  The first year I’d run my online bakery I’d been able to spend the entire night before Thanksgiving Thursday baking and packaging. Come Thursday morning I’d hand-delivered my boxed creations. From those fifty desserts my business had grown to five hundred and then this year, a record eleven hundred desserts. Most of them were pies, but there were a few cakes, and even some cupcake requests.

  Luckily most of my new clients were local enough that they had scheduled to come in and pick up their desserts. And still many more paid the extra ten dollars to have theirs delivered. Meghan would spend the first three days of the week distributing pies over the three closest counties. It was my hope that people would tip her well; if they didn’t, then I would give her a bonus. It took a lot of effort to ensure the desserts arrived on time and in fresh-from-the-oven condition.

  It was all good practice for Meghan. She was saving her extra cash to enroll in culinary school next year with the goal of opening her own bakery someday. But for now it was my pleasure to teach her my business from the ground up.

  For now, I was as caught up with work as I could be and so it was that I was the one who stepped out of the kitchen to answer the ring of the door bells when Candy Cole came in.

  “I understand Ruth was investigating Homer Everett when she murdered Lois Striker,” Candy said as she stirred sugar into her tea. “What was Ruth’s connection to Lois? Was it truly all about Homer Everett, or was it something even more sinister?”

  “Candy, I’m not speaking on the record,” I said as I wiped down the coffee bar in my bakery. “Why don’t you write a piece on Thanksgiving?”

  “Thanksgiving has been celebrated since the pilgrims; officially celebrated by the federal government since 1863. And modern Thanksgiving has been celebrated since 1941. That’s a lot of years to cover the same story, Toni. I need something fresh, something local, like Homer Everett Day and the murder of a cornerstone of the Oiltop community.”

  “Find another story, Candy. My family is off limits. Now, do you want apple or pumpkin pie for your holiday order?”

  “It wasn’t pumpkin,” she said absently. “If you don’t tell me what Ruth was researching I’ll have to go to Ruth myself . . . and I can’t promise I’ll be all that nice to her in my exposé. I can see the headline now . . . ‘Local grandma guilty as charged for the murder of Chamber of Commerce icon.’” She spread her hand through the air as if setting out each word in the headline.

  I tried not to flinch. When it came to Candy, our resident newspaper reporter, you had to watch every body movement. She had a tendency to jump on any perceived weakness. “I’ll have Meghan deliver your pies on Wednesday. Will that work for you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “How many people will you need to serve?” I asked. It was a good question and also a way of discovering what her plans were for the holiday. If she had a lot of relatives coming, then it was a safe bet she already had her article written. If she only had a few relatives, then she would still be out looking into who killed Lois St
riker.

  “I’m serving ten,” she said, and sipped her tea. “You know twelve is too many and eight is too few.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m serving twenty-four and that is only my closest relatives.” I stopped from writing down her order and looked her in the eye. “Would you be interested in trying the chocolate-chip pecan pie? I’m making it with dark chocolate chips.”

  “Oh, sounds wonderful, yes, throw one of those in my order. What’s a few extra pieces, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Besides, isn’t gluten-free better for you anyway?”

  “Only if you’re gluten-sensitive,” I answered honestly. “It can be too full of fats for a normal diet.”

  “That’s okay.” She shrugged. “It’s not like pie is diet food, right?”

  “Right.” I added a chocolate-chip pecan pie to her order and ripped off the top sheet, handing her the pink bottom sheet. “Keep this for your records. I don’t plan on any mistakes in the order, but I’m cooking a lot of pies and there’s no telling.”

  “Great,” she said. “How’s Meghan doing? I hear she might be quitting—is that true?”

  “No, it’s not true.” I tried not to bristle. Investigating and asking questions was what Candy did for a living. It was my fault if I felt it was rude or off-putting. Candy and I’d been in the same class in high school. She had been on the school newspaper and the yearbook staff. Meanwhile, I’d been in debate. It was a bit of popular girl versus nerd. It was hard to believe we would grow up to be friends, but college had brought us together.

  My divorce and last month’s murder investigation had split our friendship apart, though. I didn’t forget too quickly that she had tried to pin the murder of a wheat farmer on me. She was so happy to investigate that she forgot the cardinal rule: first do no harm—no, wait, that was the Hippocratic oath. So what was it? Do unto others what you would have others do unto you? Or is it . . . don’t suffer any fools?

  Either way, she tended to go with public opinion and not the facts. It only made her look worse when the truth came out.