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

by Nancy J. Parra

  I lifted the left corner of my mouth in a half smile of denial. “You make me sound like Florence Nightingale.”

  “You are, in a way.” He reached up and tucked a stray lock behind my ear, making all my nerves twitch. “You care about people getting to have memories of good food even though they have special needs.”

  I let out a nervous laugh. “Here I thought I was running a bakery.”

  “What’s in the box?” he asked.

  “I said, don’t ask so I don’t have to tell,” I replied, my cheeks warming. “But this box might have gone missing from the Homer Everett display in the courthouse historian records.”

  He glanced up, freezing me with his electric-blue gaze. Suddenly he was all lawyer. “This is stolen material?”

  “I heard it was borrowed.”

  “Without permission, if this belongs to the records department in the courthouse.”

  “I brought it back to you. They were going to break in agai—” I snapped my mouth closed.

  “Again.” He finished the word and gave me a long hard look. “What’s in the box?”

  I kept my mouth shut. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Don’t tell. Seriously, don’t tell.

  “Fine.” He blew out a long perturbed breath. “I’ll see that it gets returned. But this better be the last time you bring me something stolen—”

  “Borrowed,” I interrupted.

  “Maybe we don’t come from the same world.” He raised an eyebrow.

  “That’s what I said.” I shifted from one foot to the other. “If it helps any at all, it was done out of good intentions.”

  “Stealing is stealing.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you were going to say.” I brushed my hands off on my pants. “Thanks for your help.”

  “You’re welcome.” He stood, and I took off toward his door. “What, no invitation to dinner?”

  “I didn’t want this to feel like a bribe.” I waved my hand in the general direction of him and the box. “You’re a good guy, Brad. I’ll try to keep you out of my family’s mischief from now on.” I had my hand on the doorknob, this close from escape.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.”

  “What?” I asked, looking over my shoulder. “Do I need to give you a retainer or something for your time? Because I can. Have Amy bill me. You have my address.”

  “Billing isn’t an issue, and you know it,” he said. “I don’t want you to leave me out of whatever your family is up to, do you understand? If you need a lawyer, you come to me, day or night. I mean it, Toni. Even if we never date, I’m here, and I want to help you.”

  “Why?” I was a bit taken aback. I was used to men like my ex, who were there for my help, not the other way around.

  “Because you need someone to be,” he said, “and I happen to be good at taking care of people.”

  “Oh, okay.” I opened the door and shot out of there like a bat out of hell. I’d think about what he said later. After a few hours’ sleep and a long hot shower. Right now, I was trying to keep Grandma out of jail.

  That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  • • •

  Doing a little investigating on my own couldn’t hurt, right? I mean, if I was going to stay one step ahead of Grandma, then I needed to find out a few things about Homer Everett and how he had been connected to the poor murdered Lois Striker.

  The smells of fall and Thanksgiving—you know, that particular scent of cold rain that should always come with football and turkey—wafted into my home office. It was early evening and Aubrey was playing with a chew toy at my feet. Kip had relinquished his new best friend while he took a bath.

  I had my computer up and was going through some old news pieces on Homer Everett. Since Oiltop celebrated him every year, there were plenty of stories about the man’s greatness and achievements. I can understand why Grandma Ruth wanted to dig deeper and discover what flaws he may have had.

  Instead of concentrating on Homer, I decided to do some research on the people around him. The first was Champ Rogers. Who was he? Why did his parents name him Champ? Who would have wanted the man dead in 1959? And why? Finally, was there a connection between Champ and Lois Striker? Grandma seemed to think so. But that didn’t make it a fact.

  I typed Champ’s name into my search engine. I discovered a few small news articles. Born William “Champ” Rogers, he had been raised on a ranch in northern Oklahoma until the dust bowl had him and his family moving east to live with relatives in Pennsylvania.

  Champ had gotten into trouble bootlegging and spent ten years in Leavenworth prison. Once he got out he was drafted and by 1944 was on his way to Europe. It was while he was in the army that he became friends with Homer Everett. One article asserted that he’d run interference for Homer, taking on his duties at KP or latrine. Champ made himself Homer’s best friend and confidante.

  Then came the infamous day when Homer had climbed out of his foxhole and run headfirst into enemy lines. He’d looked like a madman and scared the Germans so bad they’d run the other way. This cleared a path for American soldiers to stream into a small French town and save its people. And an American hero was born.

  Champ and Homer went on a USO tour afterward, never seeing battle again.

  “Brilliant,” I muttered.

  Aubrey paused from chewing one of his many chew toys.

  “It all sounds so convenient, doesn’t it, Aubrey? Do you think this is the secret that got Lois killed?”

  The pup tilted his head as if to think over what I said. I chuckled and picked up a toy and tossed it. Aubrey chased after it and sat down to chew on the caught prize.

  I turned back to my computer. Who was the force behind the war story? Homer? Champ? Was it just a story, or did it really happen? I had to learn more. I scrolled through the search engine looking for anything that might help me.

  “Hey, sis.” Tim stuck his head into the office. “What’re you doing? Aren’t you usually in bed by now?”

  “What?” I glanced at the time on the computer screen. It was nearly nine P.M. “Oh, huh, I got caught up in research. What about you? Aren’t you late for work?”

  Tim leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. “It’s Friday, my night off, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” I went back to my screen. Tim, acting like an older brother, walked in and started reading the monitor.

  “‘Homer Everett, famous football player and war hero, married Susan Fisher of Kansas City in 1949,’” Tim read out loud. “Why are you researching this? I thought you weren’t helping Grandma Ruth and Phyllis with their little adventure.”

  “I’m not.” I sat back and crossed my arms.

  Tim hitched his hip onto the edge of my desk and gave me the look that said I couldn’t deny the obvious.

  “All right, fine, someone has to keep an eye on them,” I said, and it sounded silly even to my own ears. “Don’t you have a date or something?”

  “I’m meeting Tom Thomas to work on the American Legion’s float,” he said. “Shouldn’t you be working on your float?”

  I glanced around to make sure I wasn’t in earshot of Tasha or Kip. The look had me realizing that Aubrey was gone. Kip must have come in while I was deep into research. “If I never see another tissue-paper flower, it would be too soon.”

  Tim chuckled. “So no tissue daisies for the Prairie Port Festival?”

  “No!” I made a face.

  “After looking at your float, I have to agree.”

  “Thanks,” I grumbled.

  “Tell me what you’re researching.” He crossed his arms.

  “I’m trying to figure out what it is that Grandma Ruth thinks she knows about Homer—besides her supposition that Homer murdered Champ and hid the murder weapon in the county courthouse. I thought I might find a clue to how Champ died
or a motive behind whoever killed him.”

  “Do you really think it was Grandma’s investigation that got Lois killed?” He tilted his head in thought. “It doesn’t seem plausible that Champ’s death had anything to do with Lois. It happened a long time ago. I mean, Hutch is what . . . nearly sixty?”

  “I was getting to that part. Grandma’s thinking the war hero story is not quite what they made it out to be. Champ could have been blackmailing Homer over the truth.”

  “Interesting—blackmail is good motive for murder.”

  “Right? Anyway, Grandma and Aunt Phyllis are combing through Homer’s journals looking to see if he spilled the beans about lies, blackmail, and murder. What we’ve noticed is that he didn’t write his journals—some woman did. We all know that he dictated regularly to Lois. Maybe he told her the truth and she’s spent the rest of her life hiding it.”

  “So why come clean now?”

  “Grandma told her she knew where the murder weapon was. Maybe Lois was hoping to stay ahead of the scandal. Hutch could have found out and killed Lois. After all, his father had gotten away with murder. There’s no reason why Hutch couldn’t.”

  “Would it be that easy?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Think about it, though—the way Hutch and Aimee act, it would be the height of embarrassment if the war hero story were untrue.”

  “Embarrassment, yes, but is that enough to kill over?”

  I shrugged. “People will kill over a carton of cigarettes. Can you imagine what would happen if it was discovered Homer was a fake war hero and a murderer? Why, Aimee wouldn’t be able to show her face around town—people would not treat her nicely after the way she’s treated them over the years. Her kid, Harold, would be ostracized—what mother would let that happen to her child?”

  “How are you going to go about proving that theory?” Tim straightened.

  “I have no idea. It’s not like you can put ‘murderous war hero’ in a search engine and have Homer’s name pop up.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Friday morning, there was a knock at the back door of the bakery. I peeked out the peephole, my right hand ready to grab the bat. Aunt Phyllis stood outside. I unlocked the two locks on the door.

  “Auntie, it’s four in the morning. What are you doing here, again?”

  “The same thing you’re doing here,” she said and stepped inside. The tip of her nose was blue and she had frost on her eyelashes. She wore her fringed leather jacket and a pair of blue pajama pants with white fluffy sheep scrawled on them in a random pattern. Her feet were covered in long, white, fluffy fur slippers with bunny ears on them.

  “I’m making pies,” I said, and went to close the door while she rushed over to the coffeepot.

  “Open the door.” Grandma Ruth’s grizzled voice barreled through the cold night air. Her big, square hand slapped on the door, pushing me and it aside. The woman was strong, considering she was in her nineties. I tried not to squeal as she brushed me aside like yesterday’s news.

  “I told you she’d have coffee. Two pots, from the looks of it.” Grandma rolled her walker forward as if it were a battering ram. Today she wore a black stocking cap and a black hoodie with the word HOODLUM painted across the chest in yellow. Under that was a pair of men’s corduroy slacks in a dark green. Grandma wore Elmo slippers. Her hands and fingers were tipped with blue as well.

  A quick glance at my indoor/outdoor thermometer told me it was a chilly thirty-two degrees outside. “How did you two get down here from the house?”

  “Shank’s mare,” Grandma called over her shoulder, and took the thick mug of coffee Phyllis offered her.

  “What?”

  “We walked,” Aunt Phyllis said as she blew on her mug and took a sip of the thick brew.

  “It’s too cold to be walking out there. With the wind chill it must be—”

  “Freezing,” Grandma interrupted. “We know. Just like Kansas weather to sucker you in with eighty-degree weather one day and slam you with frost advisories the next morning.”

  “It is the end of November,” Phyllis pointed out. “If you wanted better weather you’d have gotten out of the Midwest.”

  “You walked?” I was shocked by the idea. “That had to have taken you—”

  “Almost an hour with the walker.” Grandma grabbed a chair and lowered herself into it. “When we planned this excursion yesterday it was still seventy degrees out. I would have gotten Bill to bring us if I’d have known it was going to be this cold.”

  I checked out the peephole for any lagging relatives before I locked the deadbolts. “Why did you plan this excursion?” I asked. “I know you like my gluten-free donuts, but there has to be a better reason.”

  “We want to know what you found out when you dropped the box off at Brad’s office.” Phyllis said, and sipped some more. “A few pastries wouldn’t hurt now that we’re here and half frozen.”

  I tried really hard not to roll my eyes. Leave it to my relatives to turn a grown woman into a teenager again. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”

  They waited as I placed two white plates in front of them, added spoons and forks, then set a platter of pastries down on the table. Everything from donuts to sweet rolls to gluten-free Danish filled the platter. Half of them were day-old, but I knew Grandma wasn’t picky. She loved it all.

  “Do you have any butter?”

  “Hold on.” I went over to the small refrigerator and pulled out a stick of butter. As far as I knew, only my family put butter on sweet rolls and sticky buns. I’d never seen anyone else do it.

  “I didn’t find out anything returning those journals—except that taking them in the first place was a very bad idea. Now, you two tell me what you’re plotting while I roll out pie dough. Please tell me you aren’t thinking of doing anything else illegal. Brad was not happy when I returned the box. I don’t want to lose him for a family lawyer.”

  I pulled a new marble rolling surface out of the freezer and put the old one inside. Marble was a great surface for pastry. Soft dough didn’t stick to marble, and when the surface was cold it kept the butter from melting.

  Before I could afford the marble, I had used parchment paper. Gluten-free dough tends to be a bit stickier than dough with gluten protein. Rolling it between pieces of parchment or wax paper is a good way to keep the work surface clean and not add extra “flour” to the dough.

  The best part about gluten-free dough is there is no such thing as over-working it. So whenever I made a mistake, I’d simply put it all back in the bowl, remix it and start again.

  I pulled a round blob of dough out of the refrigerator, placed it on the marble slab, and rolled it with my rolling pin. I turned it every few strokes to get a nice evenly round pie.

  “We knew Brad wouldn’t be happy. We figured you’d read the journals and we wanted your take on them,” Grandma Ruth said with her mouth full of cinnamon roll.

  “What do you mean?” I learned early on not to make assumptions with Grandma. She had a way of helping you feel stupid. It was always better to let her lead you through a conversation. Answer Grandma’s questions with a question and you learned a lot.

  “What did you think of the handwriting?” Phyllis asked. “Meghan said you thought it was female.”

  “You know, men our age had to have good handwriting, too, to get through school. It wasn’t like kids nowadays who learn to type before they can print.”

  “Grandma, Kip has to learn to write as well as the next kid.” I placed a pie pan on top of the dough and nodded when it fit with two inches around the sides for edging. Setting the pie pan aside, I folded the dough in half, slipped the dough off the marble and into the pie pan, then trimmed and fluted the edges.

  “They don’t teach cursive in schools anymore,” Phyllis said.

  “What?” I shook my head. “Of course they do. Everyone has to lear
n to write their name.”

  “Not on computers. All they need is a pin number.” Phyllis’s tone was one of disgrace. “The fine art of handwriting analysis is going to go away. Pretty soon we’ll all be into numerology.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure they still learn cursive,” I contradicted her.

  “Ask Tasha, she’ll tell you. If you want your kids to know cursive you’d better be prepared to teach it yourself.”

  “My kids will know cursive,” I said. “And they’ll be able to tell feminine handwriting from masculine, too. Like you taught us, Grandma.”

  “So you agree it was a woman who wrote those journals.” Grandma laughed at how she’d tricked me. I rolled my eyes and took out another round of dough.

  “Who do you think wrote the journals?” Phyllis asked. She bit into one of my apple spice donuts and closed her eyes at the taste. “These taste like real donuts.”

  “They are real,” I said. “They’re just gluten-free. And I have no idea who the author of the journals was. Whoever it was, was not only in love with Champ, but was pregnant at the beginning of 1959 about the same time Homer’s wife Susan was pregnant with Hutch. Which leads me to conclude that it was Susan who wrote Homer’s journals.”

  “Not necessarily,” Grandma said as she forked up a piece of cinnamon roll and slathered it with butter. “We think Homer had a mistress and a wife.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t let grandma know she was confirming my own suspicions so I played along.

  “Yes,” Grandma said with her mouth full of roll. “We went to the nursing home and talked to Mrs. Henderson, Homer’s housekeeper at the time.”

  “Seriously? How old is she?”

  “Ninety-two, but her mind is still sharp as a tack—like me.” Grandma licked her fingers and picked up crumbs off the table and popped them into her mouth. “She said that Susan and Homer were married for nearly ten years before she got pregnant with Hutch. A lot of things happened that year—Champ was murdered, Susan had her first and only child, and Lois quit her job and became a friend of the family.”