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

by Mary Maxwell

  A roguish grin appeared on the cop’s face. “Any dead bodies up there that you haven’t noticed yet?”

  My jaw clenched instantly, but I took a deep breath and ignored his remark. “I worked for a private investigator in Chicago,” I said. “Based on my experience, I’d say the knife was planted here to divert attention from someone else to me.”

  Bennington’s grin melted into a flat line. “You think so?”

  “That’s my theory,” I said. “But you’ve got the badge. What would you say?”

  He raised one eyebrow, shifted from left to right and kept staring at the knife and the trail of reddish-brown droplets on the stairs. Then he reached up to his shoulder, clicked the button on his radio and asked the dispatcher to call Detective Kincaid and the CSI tech.

  “So?” I asked when he finished. “Do you have a theory?”

  He looked at me and smiled. “Lots of ’em, Miss Reed. But I should probably wait to share anything until Trent or Dina can take a look.”

  CHAPTER 25

  An hour later, I was in a booth in the Sky High Pies dining room. Trent sat across from me and Dina stood to my right. They were following their official roles as deputy chief and senior detective, quizzing me on every detail I could remember about finding the bloody knife.

  “Again?” I asked. “I’ve already told you three times. And I talked to Bennington about it before you guys arrived.”

  “One final time,” said Trent. “Walk us through everything you remember about the knife.”

  I glowered at him. “Do you mean from the moment it was originally purchased?”

  He smiled. “Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Kate. But you know what I mean; take us back to when you first noticed the knife was missing.”

  For what seemed the umpteenth time that morning, I retraced my steps. I explained that the knife wasn’t in its usual place when I came downstairs during the night. I described searching for it all over the kitchen and dining room. And then I quickly ran through the events of the morning.

  “And was Julia already here when you left the apartment?” asked Dina, flashing a smile with her dazzlingly perfect teeth. “Or did she arrive after you found the knife?”

  I concentrated for a moment, trying to remember the exact sequence of events. “I don’t know for sure,” I said with a shrug. “I know that she called out to me when I was still at the top of the stairs. And then I made my way down while she came over from her car.”

  Trent asked me if I noticed anything unusual about Julia’s behavior that morning.

  “You mean besides nearly puking at the sight of the bloody knife?” I asked, feeling instantly guilty at my tone. “Hey, I’m sorry,” I added quickly. “This whole thing has me pretty spooked.”

  He nodded. “As it would anyone, Kate. You’ve been through a lot in the past few weeks. It’s understandable if you’re on edge.”

  “Oh, I’ve gone way over the edge,” I said. “Lack of sleep, pressure to keep this place humming along, finding a murder weapon on my steps before I’m fully awake. I think that’s enough to make anyone go a little batty.”

  Dina smiled again. “You’re not batty, Kate. You’re human. This kind of thing isn’t easy for most people to process.”

  The tone in her voice was soothing and compassionate. It was a side of Dina that I didn’t know. The Dina that I remembered was eighteen and snooty, a slim brunette with flawless porcelain skin, curves in all the right places and a reputation around Crescent Creek for being as perfect and wholesome as an apple pie. Even after she stole Trent from me, most people somehow figured it was my fault. I’d left for Chicago with a burning desire to pull every hair from her head, but now I was slowly beginning to realize that she wasn’t Medusa in a DVF wrap dress.

  “Let’s get back to Julia,” Trent suggested.

  I shook my head. “Let’s not. She’s a peaceful, kindhearted woman who can turn flour, butter, eggs and a few other ingredients into works of art.”

  “Lots of people lead double lives,” said Trent.

  I squared my shoulders and smiled. “Like you did back in high school?”

  Dina snickered. “Here we go,” she said. “I knew at some point the past would rear its ugly head.”

  My face suddenly felt like it was on fire. “I’m sorry about that,” I said quietly. “I’m just so stressed.”

  “It’s fine,” said Dina. “And you’re fine, okay? Don’t even think about apologizing. When we were kids, I wasn’t very nice. I didn’t care who I hurt. And when we all ended up at that party, with the kegs and the bottles of Absolut that Colby Mason took from his dad’s liquor cabinet…” She pulled a chair over from a nearby table and sat beside the booth. “I’m really sorry, Kate. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and that was—”

  “I was a mistake?” Trent interjected, checking the text that he’d just received.

  Dina leered at him. “Zip it,” she said in a light tone. “I’m trying to be serious here.”

  “I get that,” he said, frowning at his phone. “But we also have a job to do.” He glanced around the dining room. “Actually, all three of us have jobs to do. Beginning with the message I just got from Stinson.”

  The name triggered an instant flood of memories. “Do you mean Jacob Stinson?”

  Trent nodded. “Yeah, remember him?”

  “How could I forget?” I answered. “He drove me home that night.” I stopped briefly, realizing I was talking about the past again. “But we’re not going to chase that dog right now.”

  “Right,” said Trent. “Dina and I need to get going.”

  “What about the bloody knife?” I asked. “Don’t you want to grill me about that for another five or six hours?”

  He flashed a gracious smile. “You’re off the hook, Miss Reed. But don’t leave town. And don’t transfer any large sums of money from your bank to an offshore account.”

  His silly remark actually made me laugh. And it felt good.

  “What’s up?” Dina asked, noticing the expression on Trent’s face.

  He tapped his phone and nodded slightly. “When it rains, it pours.”

  I asked if he could interpret the cryptic comment.

  “Earl Dodd found a body at the Moonlight Motel,” Trent explained, scooting out of the booth. “We need to head over there now, but Bennington and Palmer will be here for a while longer.”

  “Are they going to ask me about the knife again?” I said.

  Trent grinned. “I’ll make sure they don’t,” he answered. “Dina? You ready to roll?”

  She nodded, promised to call me later and followed Trent across the dining room. I stared at her for a moment or two, admiring the impeccable outfit, statuesque presence and regal glide. Then I got up from the booth, zipped to the kitchen and popped a pair of mini cream puffs into my mouth.

  “Stress eating works for me, too,” Julia said.

  I turned and held out the plastic container. “Want one?”

  She shook her head. “I already had four.” She covered her mouth and giggled. “Thank goodness I made an extra large batch yesterday!”

  CHAPTER 26

  During the rest of the day, between serving customers, taking special orders by phone and joining Julia in the kitchen, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to what Trent had announced before he and Dina left. The longer I rolled the news around in my mind, the more it became a three-part mantra of intrigue and suspicion.

  Earl Dodd.

  Found a body.

  At the Moonlight Motel.

  It wasn’t a stretch to wonder if the bloody knife that I found on the stairs was connected to the victim at the motel. After working with Rodney for so many years, I instinctively started considering seemingly disparate elements as part of the same incident. A body found in one location could absolutely be associated with the razor-sharp kitchen knife discovered several miles away.

  “Do you mind if go out for a bit?” I asked Julia as soon
as the last customers had departed and the front door was locked. “There are a couple of things that I need to check on.”

  She nodded. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, why would you ask that?”

  “Because the look on your face says something’s going on.”

  “The look on my face says my tank’s about to hit empty,” I joked. “No sleep, too much sugar and mountains of stress tend to wear me out.”

  Julia giggled. “Okay, then. Be careful wherever you’re going. I’ll finish up the last couple of things on the prep list before I go.”

  I grabbed my phone and purse. “You’re the best, Jules! I’ll see you in the morning!”

  CHAPTER 27

  The Moonlight Motel huddled beside Lone Elk Road like a refugee from a bygone era. While big hotel chains had popped up around Crescent Creek over the years, the town’s original hospitality outpost was a one-story red brick building with a neon sign featuring twinkling stars and a crescent moon. The No Vacancy sign hadn’t been used in decades, but the family that owned the Moonlight kept the place clean and inviting. Earl Dodd, the current proprietor and a fellow classmate from Crescent Creek High, was behind the registration desk in the office when I came through the door. A bag of Cheetos and a can of Mountain Dew sat just beyond his left elbow.

  “Howdy there, weary traveler,” he droned in a flat monotone. “Welcome to the—” He stopped and squinted, shifting forward on his high back stool. “Katie?” His voice had become lighter and more cheerful. “Is that you?”

  “In the flesh,” I said. “How’re you doing, Earl?”

  He glanced down at his Maroon 5 T-shirt, brushing stray orange crumbs onto the floor. His fingers glowed with Cheetos dust and he quickly wiped them on the legs of his jeans.

  “I’m g-g-good, Katie.” His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously in his throat. “I’d heard that you were back, but I said it couldn’t be true.”

  I walked over to the counter. “Truth can be stranger than fiction, right?”

  He narrowed his gaze. “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I came back because my parents retired to Florida.”

  Earl nodded. “I’d heard that, too.”

  “How are your mom and dad?”

  “Happily never after,” he said. “Mom took up with a guy from Salt Lake City about five years ago. My dad’s still reeling from it. He’s in the back if you want to say hey.” He gestured toward a door marked OFFICE with one thumb. “He keeps to himself most of the time, playing poker online and Skyping with his Internet pen pals from Romania and stuff.”

  “I’m sorry to hear they got divorced,” I offered.

  Earl shrugged. “They didn’t. Dad’s holding out for reconciliation.”

  I decided to abandon the subject, pointing at the bag of Cheetos and the can of soda. “Looks like your snack food choices are the same,” I said, smiling. “I remember when you used to eat that every day in the cafeteria at school for lunch.”

  “Some old English writer dude once said that the only completely consistent people are dead.” A dark, soggy laugh followed the statement before Earl wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “But you know what? I like consistency; my routine helps me get everything done that I need to do. And, you know what else? That writer guy’s dead now, so who gives a rat’s rear?”

  Since the change in subject hadn’t lead to any more stellar conversation, I decided to get right down to business.

  “Hey, Earl. I wanted to ask you a few questions about Ben Carson.”

  His gaze was flat and vacant. “Who’s that?”

  “The man that you found yesterday,” I said delicately. “The murder victim.”

  Earl winced. “Oh, man. I don’t wanna talk about that, Katie. It was…” He stopped to suck in a long, deep breath. I noticed that his lips were covered with a thin sheen of orange Cheetos dust.

  “I told Trent and Dina all about it anyway,” he continued. “Why don’t you ask them?”

  I waited while he gulped some Mountain Dew. Then I asked if he remembered a guy with freckles and red hair.

  “Last room before the ice machine,” he muttered. “Checked in a couple of weeks ago. Said he was new to the area and had found a temporary job at that party store until he could get something more permanent.”

  I felt a small surge of triumph; it reminded me of the good old days in Chicago, tracking leads and gathering clues. I’d been so engrossed in Nana Reed’s pie recipes for the past two weeks that my inherent love of detective work sparked to life with a rush of adrenalin.

  Until Earl burped, speckling the counter with orange dust and drops of Mountain Dew.

  “Jeez, Katie,” he said, covering his mouth. “Sorry about that! I tried to stop it, but you know how it goes. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about the inevitable.”

  I smiled. “How about the red-haired guy?” I asked. “Was anyone staying with him in the room by the ice machine?”

  Earl’s mouth ruptured into a roguish grin. “Yes, ma’am! And she was hot.” His lower lip trembled with excitement. “Tall and blonde, right? And she wore these really high heels, like maybe two feet high or something. And she talked like those people on Downton Abbey.”

  “So she’s British?”

  “I do believe you would be correct,” he said in the worst British accent I’d ever heard. “And she called me ‘love’ whenever she called from their room. ‘Can I get some fresh towels, love?’ ‘Do you know if there’s a sushi place nearby, love?’ ‘What time does the gun range open, love?’”

  I asked Earl to clarify the last one.

  “She wanted to know when Buck’s opened,” he explained. “That’s the gun range out on Poplar and Hemlock.”

  “Where the farmer’s market used to be?”

  He nodded. “Yep, that’s the spot. Buck Murphy bought the land and converted it into a gun range about six, seven years ago.”

  “And the British woman was—”

  “Did you know that in England girls are called ‘birds’?” Earl asked.

  I smiled. “I’d heard that, yes. But I’m more interested in—”

  “And ‘bloke’ is what they call their boyfriends,” he said quickly. “And ‘snog’ is the same as—”

  “Right,” I said, leaning forward for emphasis. “It’s the British slang for ‘kiss,’ but I’m not really looking for that kind of information right now, Earl.”

  He frowned. “Sorry, Katie. I just kind of got excited. She’s the first British person that’s ever stayed at the Moonlight, so I thought it was pretty cool.”

  “Did you get her name?”

  “Hmmm,” he murmured. “I can call over to the room and ask if you want.”

  The black sedan with the tinted windows wasn’t in the front parking lot, so it seemed that Muldoon and his gal pal weren’t in at the moment. I thought for a moment; maybe Earl could call the room and covertly ask for clarification about the registration card. But then I realized he’d probably bungle the clandestine nature of the mission.

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll just ask Trent or Dina.”

  Earl reached for a Cheeto. “Yeah,” he said, crunching happily on the orange nugget. “You can ask ’em, but I doubt if they’ll know.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “On account of she climbed out the window and walked into the woods when they were here yesterday,” Earl said. “The guy with the red hair was right behind her.” He smiled, licking the tips of his fingers. “But from the way they were laughing and everything, I didn’t think they were aware of what had happened in the dead guy’s room.”

  I tried to conjure the layout of the motel in my mind. I knew the ice machine was toward the north end of the building, which would mean Muldoon and his bird would’ve headed toward the old railroad tracks that ran through the woods a few hundred feet from the motel. If you knew they were there, it was an easy shortcut to town.

  “Where was
he staying?” I asked. “The man who was killed.”

  “The Presidential Suite,” Earl answered. “That’s the first room on the end, down by the driveway.”

  “I didn’t know you had a Presidential Suite. I guess the Moonlight went upscale while I was living in Chicago.”

  “Pretty much. We put a king sized bed in there with that squishy kind of mattress. The one that remembers your body and stuff. And my mother made new curtains out of my grandmother’s old fancy tablecloth. Plus we installed a Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom and new shag carpeting.”

  I smiled. “Sounds very presidential.”

  “Basically,” Earl said. “Mind if I ask you a question, Katie?”

  I nodded.

  “What’s the secret ingredient in your grandmother’s Peach Cobbler Crumble?”

  I smiled, but kept quiet.

  “My wife thinks it’s whiskey,” Earl said. “Is that right?”

  “I can’t divulge that information. It’s top secret; my Nana Reed would come back from the grave and throttle me with her rolling pin.”

  Earl glowered. “Now, is that fair? I just told you all about the British bird and her main squeeze. And you can’t tell me one little thing?”

  “It’s secret,” I explained. “Thus, we call it a ‘secret ingredient’ on the menu.”

  He grabbed the bag of Cheetos and put them somewhere under the counter. Then he wrapped his dust-covered fingers around the Mountain Dew can.

  “I get it,” he said. “It’s just like when we were in school together.”

  “But you were—what? Two years behind me?”

  “I can’t divulge that information,” he said sheepishly. “It’s top secret.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Earl. I’ll tell you the secret ingredient.”

  His face brightened. “You will?”

  I nodded, leaned forward and whispered in his ear.