Murder by the Slice (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 1)

by Mary Maxwell

  I felt my cheeks redden. “Guess I’m busted,” I muttered.

  Julia giggled. “Again.”

  “Oh, please don’t try to make me feel any guiltier than I already do,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m a little nervous. I’ve just been through a huge whirlwind of change. I’m still getting my feet on the ground here.” I flicked on the lights in the dining room as Julia checked the morning’s prep list.

  “I think I’ll do the Ooey Gooey Brownie Pie first,” she suggested. “Maybe the fragrance of chocolate decadence will put a smile on your face.”

  I turned and flashed an artificially-wide grin. “There,” I teased. “You happy now?”

  She pulled the bulk container of walnuts from the shelf above the cutting board. “I’m always happy, Katie. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “Unnaturally so,” I said. “What kind of meds are you on?”

  A feathery laugh floated from her mouth. “Just love and patience,” Julia said. “I haven’t been this way forever, you know. When Jared and me got married, I was grumpy all the time. I was nervous that I was settling for less. I thought maybe I should’ve done what you did—take the plunge, follow my dreams and move to the big city.”

  I poured beans into the coffee grinder. “Well, it wasn’t all that glamorous,” I said. “The first couple of years were amazing. I went to school during the day and filled my nights with handsome men and nightclubs and candlelit dinners. But once I graduated and realized that my art wasn’t going to pay the rent, I had to make a few adjustments.”

  As she measured walnuts for the brownie pie, Julia asked me to explain.

  “Well, you must know what I mean,” I said. “You guys have three little ones. And a mortgage. And all the rest of the financial responsibilities that come with being an adult.”

  “Been there, done that,” she said. “There are things about being an adult that I don’t like, but I would never want to be sixteen again!”

  While I ground the beans and poured the results into the coffeemaker, Julia grabbed eggs, butter and unsweetened baking chocolate from the walk-in. She piled the items on the counter and started dicing a mound of walnuts.

  “Are those for the Ooey Gooey Brownie Pie that Mrs. Endicott ordered?”

  Julia gave me a thumbs-up. “For her and the one that we need up front.”

  “Perfect. It’s nice to know that someone around here has their act together this early in the day.”

  She arranged the nuts on the cutting board and reached for a large knife. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You’ve always got your act together.”

  “It sure doesn’t feel that way.” I leaned toward the coffeemaker, inhaling the aroma while the water trickled through the machine. “I’m really starting to think that coming back here to run Sky High was a huge mistake.”

  She stopped dicing walnuts for the Ooey Gooey Brownie Pie she was making. “I think you’re doing just fine, Kate. I mean, who wouldn’t be anxious? Your boss was murdered. Your boyfriend left you for another woman. You moved back to your hometown after living in the big city for so many years. That’s enough to make anybody’s head spin.”

  I considered Julia’s appraisal of the past few weeks. And I knew she was right; one of those incidents would be a pretty big ball of emotional twine to unravel. But three at once? I’d been going a million miles an hour since the moment I found Rodney on his office floor that I hadn’t stopped to consider that raiding the refrigerator in the middle of the night wasn’t so awful. Some people probably would’ve gone off the deep end; at least I was still upright, productive and focused on continuing the Sky High Pies tradition to the best of my ability.

  Julia went back to dicing walnuts. She worked quietly while I poured a cup of coffee. Then she stopped, put down the knife and walked over to where I was propped against the counter.

  “Did you just say ‘another one’ when I joked about somebody breaking in when we got here?”

  I closed my eyes and held the cup just below my chin. The tendrils of steam felt soothing on my face, reminding me of Blanche Speltzer’s advice the previous morning: Always remember to take care of your skin, dear. I pictured the old woman’s twinkling eyes and sideways grin as she’d dispensed the recommendation.

  “What’s funny about that?” asked Julia.

  I sipped my coffee and put the cup on the counter. “About what?”

  “Somebody breaking in,” she repeated. “When you came in a second ago, I said that it looked like somebody had come into the kitchen overnight. I was kidding, but your first reaction was ‘another one’?”

  I rubbed my eyes and reached for the coffee. “My apartment was ransacked yesterday,” I said, stifling a yawn.

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  I shrugged. “Afraid not.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “I did. Trent Walsh and two uniformed offices came over. They’ll probably be back today at some point.”

  “Wow,” Julia said. “Talk about a small world. Your high school paramour is now your knight in shining armor.”

  I knew she was going for humor to lighten the mood, but the remark made me wince. “Can we agree not to dwell on ancient history?” I asked. “Trent came here in a fully professional capacity yesterday. And he was a perfect gentleman. There’s nothing awkward or uncomfortable about seeing him. It didn’t make my heart flutter or my eyes roll back in my head or anything like that. It was simply a man and a woman who once shared a deep and supposedly unbreakable bond. It wasn’t like a scene from a romantic comedy with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant finding true love after being separated for years and years.”

  When I stopped to take another sip of coffee, Julia heaved a loud sigh. “You trying to convince me?” she said slowly. “Or yourself?”

  “About what?”

  She smirked and fluttered one hand in the air. “Never you mind, sugar. Just tell me more about the break-in. Did they take anything valuable?”

  I walked to the other side of the kitchen and pulled a loaf of wheat bread from the shelf.

  “That’s the really weird thing,” I said, popping two slices into one of the toasters. “It doesn’t look like they took anything at all.”

  Julia went back to dicing walnuts. “Really? That seems strange.”

  “Completely strange,” I agreed. “Angus actually saw someone from the cable company going up the back stairs. He stopped the guy and asked what he was doing, but the guy had a believable explanation.”

  “Did you get cable?” Julia’s face brightened with a wide smile. “Can I come over and watch Real Housewives of—”

  “No,” I said, spoiling her excitement. “I didn’t get cable. And there wasn’t a real work order. The guy had actually ambushed the real cable representative yesterday morning.”

  “What do you mean—ambushed?”

  “Just what I said. The cable installer had stopped for gas at the MiniMart around nine. When he was finished filling the tank, another guy suddenly came around the side of his van, jammed a gun into his side and ordered him to strip.”

  Julia’s eyes went wide. “Naked?”

  I gave her a look. “Calm down, okay? This isn’t a steamy HBO movie. This actually happened.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll keep it zipped. What happened next?”

  “The guy with the gun demanded that the cable installer take off his uniform and give him the keys to the van,” I continued. “Then he handcuffed him, covered his mouth with duct tape and shoved him in the back of the truck.”

  “And then he came here and went through your things?” Julia asked.

  “More or less,” I said with a shrug. “Most of what I know came from Trent. He heard the police dispatcher talking about the break-in here, so he came over to lend a hand. The cable company had already reported that something had happened with their employee, so Trent connected the dots.”

  “Isn’t he just so handsome when he thinks?” Juli
a asked in a fluffy voice. “I remember the time he gave a lecture to the first graders at my son’s school. I volunteered to be a—”

  “Jules?” I said firmly.

  She blinked. “Oh, shoot! I’m sorry. I just think it’s a shame about you and Trent.”

  “Can we focus here?” I asked, plucking a clean apron from the top drawer beneath the toasters. “The most important thing is that the police are investigating the burglary, and Trent’s pretty confident they’ll be able to apprehend the perp.” I slipped the apron over my neck, looped the strings around front and tied them in back. “They’ve got surveillance camera footage from the MiniMart, so they’ll use facial recognition software to run him through the national database.”

  “And you said the crook didn’t take anything, right?”

  “Nothing that I noticed last night,” I answered. “But I’ll probably take a more thorough look later today.”

  My fingers lightly brushed the silver chain around my neck. After copying the files from the flash drive to my laptop, I’d decided to keep it as close as possible until I could give it to Trent.

  “Was your place really bad?”

  “Bad enough,” I said. “I mean, I’m far from the world’s greatest housekeeper. And I just moved in. But all of the drawers had been emptied onto the floor, my clothes were everywhere and the boxes that I hadn’t unpacked yet were strewn all around the guest bedroom.”

  Julia frowned. “Well, that’s just terrible. If you need help putting things back in order, just let me know, okay?”

  “Thanks, Jules. I got most of everything put away during the night when I couldn’t sleep.”

  She came over and gave me a quick hug. “You poor thing,” she said in a syrupy tone. “You’ve been through a lot in the past month.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I said, scanning the large whiteboard that we used to keep track of daily tasks, shopping lists and special orders. “I’m just going to check a few things up front before Harper gets here.”

  As I walked through the swinging door into the empty dining room, I suddenly thought about Ben Carson from the FBI. I should let him know about the burglary and the package from Rodney. Maybe it would be helpful to whatever he was working on for the Bureau.

  Since it was a few minutes before five, I decided a text would be best. Even though he’d told me to call any time, I didn’t feel comfortable dialing his number so early in the morning. After scrolling through my phone to locate his number, I tapped the message icon.

  Agent Carson, I typed. This is Kate Reed. I have something to tell you. Please—

  “Dagnabit!” Julia shrieked in the kitchen.

  I dropped the phone into my apron and hurried across the dining room.

  “Did you know we’re out of vanilla extract?” she blurted, crashing through the swinging door.

  A lump of anxiety formed instantly in my throat as a smile popped onto my face. “Did you just say ‘dagnabit’?” I asked.

  Her face was bright red and she was clutching a wooden spoon so tightly I was afraid it might snap in half. “How can we bake if we don’t have vanilla?” she sputtered. “This never happened when your mother and father were—” The tinge on her cheeks deepened. “Oh, heavens to Betsy!” she continued. “I’m so, so sorry, Katie! I didn’t mean to say that, hon.”

  “Don’t worry about. I wondered when you or Angus would make the first remark like that.”

  Julia sighed, clenching her teeth and wincing with pain. “But I’m sorry. I know how hard it must be to follow in their footsteps. And I don’t want you to think that I’m watching every move you make so that I can compare you to them.”

  “But you are,” I said. “And I actually think that’s okay.”

  The grimace on her face softened. “It is?”

  “Of course it is,” I answered. “I’m a newbie here. I haven’t really got a dagnabit clue what I’m doing.”

  She chuckled when I borrowed her squeaky-clean curse word. “Yeah, you do, hon. You practically grew up at Sky High Pies. You helped out on weekends as a little girl. You worked here a lot when you were in high school. And you filled in whenever you came back from Chicago to visit your parents.”

  I walked over, took her gently by the shoulders and guided her back to the kitchen.

  “That’s all true,” I said once she was in front of the mixer. “But it doesn’t mean I know how to actually manage the place.”

  Julia watched as I crossed the kitchen to a tall metal cabinet by the backdoor. “It’s in your DNA,” she said. “You’re the third generation of the family to run Sky High Pies. My mother told me that your grandmother used to have you help roll out the dough when you were a toddler. I mean, holy cow! At this point you could probably make a peach pie in your sleep.”

  I opened the cabinet, sifted through the supplies on the third shelf and retrieved the backup bottle of pure vanilla extract. Julia snickered when she saw it in my hand as I returned to the mixer.

  “Sugar cube!” she exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me the catch-all cupboard was a pantry now.”

  “It’s just overflow from the main storage space,” I said. “I moved all the random odds and ends from the cupboard to the empty filing cabinet drawer in the office. Call it my OCD or whatever, but I like to have extra supplies for emergencies just like this one.”

  She took the bottle, uncapped it and added vanilla to the mixer bowl. “See?” she said, resealing the container. “It’s in your DNA. You’re thinking about stuff that probably never crossed your grandmother’s mind.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The first hour of the morning was a blur of recipes, stolen sips of coffee, overflowing measuring cups and quiet concentration. While my sister organized the dining room, Julia and I made quick work of the checklist: two Peppermint Swirl Cheesecakes for Mayor Washington’s birthday brunch, three trays of Mini Pecan Pies and a huge pot of red currant jam filling for our popular Linzer Torte Tidbits, a bite-sized version of the classic Austrian dessert.

  I was right in the middle of measuring flour for a double batch of white chocolate scones when someone knocked loudly on the backdoor.

  “I’ll get it,” Olivia called, rushing through the swinging door from the dining room. “My hands are empty.”

  I returned my attention to the mixer and listened to her footsteps clatter across the floor. Then she started clapping her hands and cheering excitedly.

  “I knew you could do it, Muldoon!” she exclaimed, opening the door. “Thank you so much!”

  I glanced over my shoulder and watched as the freckled deliveryman from the day before eased another enormous bouquet of bright red balloons into the kitchen. He acted like our paths hadn’t crossed the day before outside Juice & Java, so I followed suit and offered a friendly smile.

  “I ran every single sucker through spell check,” he joked, steering the inflatable decorations so they cleared the pots and pans on the hanging rack above the center island. “My boss said I should apologize again for the mix-up.” He frowned and kicked the floor with the toe of one boot. “So, uh, I’m sorry, okay? I learned a huge lesson and can hopefully keep my job.”

  I watched as he maneuvered the balloons through the swinging door while Olivia held it open. When she gave me a playful wink and followed him, I decided to take a quick break and see where my sister intended to place the bobbing red orbs. I didn’t want them to obstruct anyone’s view in the dining room or make it difficult for Harper when she was delivering meals to the customers.

  “Be right back,” I called to Julia.

  She answered with a thumbs up and big smile. Even though we’d only been working together for a few days, we were beginning to build a good rapport. She’d worked for my parents for a couple of years before I took over Sky High Pies, so I knew she had a solid track record. I’d also come to appreciate her willingness to pitch in and get the job done without griping or complaining.

  When I joined my sister and Muldoon in the dining room, they were
near the front of the café.

  “Right over here,” Olivia was saying. “If we start by the windows and tie them to the back of every other chair, I think we can create a really fun visual effect.”

  I hurried across the room. “Actually, Liv,” I said. “I think you’ll create a really frightening visual nightmare.”

  Olivia glowered at me. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I wanted to see what you had in mind for the balloons.”

  Muldoon smiled. “You two are sisters, right?”

  “More or less,” Olivia answered.

  His forehead crumpled in confusion. “Huh? Does that mean one of you was adopted or something?”

  I reached out and grabbed the balloons. “No, it means we’re sisters when we get along,” I said. “And vicious rivals when we don’t.”

  Olivia put one hand on her hip. “Well, I should’ve known you’d spoil my fun,” she groaned. “It was my idea to get decorations in the first place.”

  “Yeah, and I appreciate that,” I said. “But I don’t want the place to look like a carnival funhouse, okay? If we use them sparingly in the dining room, maybe we can tie a few to the front porch railing.”

  My sister grumbled. “Whatever,” she said. “I can see you’re going to insist on having the last word about everything while I’m here helping you.”

  As Muldoon began untangling the thin white ribbons tied to each balloon, I glanced down at his boots. They were splattered with dull splotches that looked potentially sticky.

  “Hey, Muldoon,” I said. “Make sure you don’t track whatever you’ve got all over your boots across my clean floor, okay?”

  “My boots?” he said, looking down to study both feet. “Oh, man. I spilled the hot sauce when me and my girl went for Thai food last night.”

  Between his paint-spattered coveralls, tousled hair and the misspelled balloons from the day before, I didn’t doubt that Muldoon was accident prone. After seeing him with Ben Carson, I also suspected the guy was a hothead with a mean streak a mile wide.

  “Jeez, Katie,” my sister scolded. “Give the guy a break. He had to make two separate trips just to get our balloons delivered.”