Chocolate Most Deadly (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 2)

by Mary Maxwell

  “Oh, so you’re very close in age?”

  “Yeah,” Buford said. “And we look pretty much alike, but most ladies tell me that I’m more handsome.”

  While he filled me in on a few more details about his brother, I put away my phone and dug for the car keys.

  “I should get going, Buford. I have a long drive back home.”

  “Be safe on the roads!” he offered. “And thanks for making time for Tick-Tock!”

  I waved and headed for the door. As I pushed against the handle, Buford called out from behind the counter.

  “Ma’am?”

  I turned and nodded.

  “I just remembered one more thing about Jake,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I heard him talking about being in trouble with the police before,” Buford said solemnly. “It sounded like maybe he had been behind bars and everything. And you know what that makes him?”

  I shook my head.

  Buford leaned closer and lowered his voice. “That makes him a very, very bad man.”

  CHAPTER 33

  After leaving Tick-Tock Donuts, I filled up the car, put an old Sheryl Crow disc in the CD player and headed for Crescent Creek. My back ached and my brain throbbed. In a perfect world, I would return home to a hot bubble bath and chilled glass of wine before slipping into bed. But sleep would have to wait; it was time to dig a bit deeper into the world of Jake Breen and Anton Hall. I wanted to take a quick peek to see what Google might reveal about the pair of colorful characters.

  When I arrived home, I kicked off my shoes, made a cup of tea and fired up the laptop. Then I entered the two names in the search box and waited. In less than a minute, the results returned with more than four-hundred thousand entries.

  “I haven’t got that much time, dear Google,” I groaned, squinting at the screen. “Can’t you just…”

  I scrolled down, scanning the familiar blue text that summarized the results.

  “Okay, none of these are relevant,” I muttered, bypassing the cast and crew listing for a television show, a newspaper article from North Dakota and dozens of obituaries posted by university alumni in Ohio. “Maybe I should just go to bed and try again tomorrow.”

  I leaned back against the sofa and sipped my tea. It was warm and soothing, sending gentle waves of comfort through my body.

  “Or maybe I should just drop this whole thing.” I closed my eyes and contemplated the option. “Detective Caldwell will figure out who killed Delmar Singer soon enough.” I enjoyed more tea before putting the cup back on the table. “And Viv’s brother is probably just fine,” I mumbled. “He’ll turn up eventually with some explanation for his disappearance.”

  As I continued sifting through the results, one entry on the sixth page caught my eye: Bolts of Brilliance Find Dramatic Victory. When I clicked on the link, a new window opened to reveal an eight-year-old blog post. It was about a group of high school theater students in Omaha—known as Bolts of Brilliance—that staged a fundraiser to help one of their teachers after he was struck by a car while riding his bike. The accompanying photograph, a grainy black-and-white image taken on an empty theater stage, showed twenty youthful faces—and twenty pairs of white Chuck Taylors with lightning bolts drawn on the toe caps.

  In the center of the front row, with their arms looped together, I spotted Heidi and Lois, the women that I’d met at the AA meeting on York Street. They were identified as “Heidi ‘Hopelessly Heroic’ Zimmer and L. ‘Lovably Literal’ Jordan,” so I now knew their last names. There was no sign of Heidi’s twin sister Hannah, something that struck me as intriguing. I’d only known one set of twins before my nephews were born—Cole and Cameron Brand, a pair of snobby classmates at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As I studied Heidi Zimmer’s expression in the high school photo, I remembered the Brand twins describing the exhilarating rush of freedom both felt when they explored life as individuals rather than one-half of an established duo.

  “Aha!” I said triumphantly. “I guess this explains where everybody got those snazzy sneakers and learned to be so theatrical.”

  In the photograph, Heidi and Lois looked happy and animated, grinning proudly for the camera after their selfless act of generosity. It was impossible to know if Heidi’s hair was green or not, but I clicked on the photo to enlarge it and inspect her fingers.

  “Looks like this was before your acrylic nail phase, Miss Zimmer,” I said, stifling a yawn. “Although I think the South Park T-shirt and frayed Daisy Dukes are lovely.”

  I quickly scanned the other faces peering into the camera. I found Anton Hall at the end of the middle row. His arms were crossed and he glared defiantly with a sour-faced sneer. Just behind him and slightly toward the center, was Jake Breen. He’d obviously lost some weight in the years since high school, but the smug, lopsided grin was the same.

  “Okay, so this explains how the four Musketeers know one another,” I said, zooming in on Jake’s face to study his expression. I shifted my eyes slowly around the image, suddenly realizing that Jake’s left hand was pressed against his thigh with the middle finger extended in a juvenile and obscene salute. “And it also proves Buford’s theory, Mr. Breen. You are a very, very bad man.”

  CHAPTER 34

  On Monday afternoon around four, Julia was in the kitchen at Sky High, carefully weaving strips of dough into a lattice top for a Bumbleberry Blossom Pie. It was an hour after closing; the aroma of chocolate chip cookies perfumed the air, the dining room was set for the next day and Harper was at the counter enjoying a scone with apple butter. After praising her diplomatic skills with a disgruntled toddler—a grouchy little gnome who became enraged about the amount of whipped cream on his ice cream sundae, I’d walked into the kitchen, leaned against the counter and admired Julia’s deft talents with the crinkle-cut strips of dough.

  “You mentioned my lattice crust the other day,” she said. “What gives?”

  “Can’t I flatter you twice?”

  She smiled. “Absolutely! But I can tell you’re up to something.”

  “How?”

  The answer surprised me. Julia said that between the tone of my voice, the way my eyes widened when I praised her baking skills and my excessively casual stance, she knew there was a follow-up to the kind words I’d said about the pie.

  “Guilty as charged,” I said. “Do you mind if I take off now?”

  She glanced up with a smile. “You run the place, Kate. Don’t you think you can come and go as you please?”

  After waving at Harper and reminding Julia that Minnie Battdorf was stopping by to pickup a special order for her real estate agency meeting, I grabbed my purse and headed for the car. On the drive to Denver, I listened to a CD of Sherlock Holmes classics performed as radio theater. It was a huge change from my usual highway soundtrack, but Nana Reed used to play them when she baked at Sky High and I pulled them out every so often.

  Traffic was on my side, so the drive to Tick-Tock Donuts took just under ninety minutes. I pulled up in front and peered through the plate-glass façade. The place was empty, but Buford was behind the counter holding a wrinkled white cloth and spray bottle filled with something orange.

  “It’s you again!” he called when I came through the door.

  “Yep, me again. How are you, Buford?”

  His face turned the same bright red as the filling of a cherry donut. “You remembered my n-n-name?” he stuttered.

  “How could I ever forget?” I said, reaching for my phone. “When I came in the other night, you fixed me up with some of the best donuts I’ve ever tasted.”

  He smiled, revealing teeth as uniform and white as parallel rows of Chiclets. “Thank you, ma’am! That makes me feel really good.”

  “I’m Kate, by the way,” I said. “And I have a feeling that I’ll be here on a regular basis.”

  “Sounds good, Kate.” He put down the rag and spray bottle before grabbing a sheet of waxed paper from beneath the counter. “What woul
d you like today?”

  I glanced at the seemingly endless array of doughy treats. “You know what?” I said. “Do you mind if I ask a couple of questions before we get to the main event?”

  He chuckled. “Fine with me, ma’am.”

  “Remember when I was here the other night?”

  He nodded.

  “Anton Hall and Jake Breen were in that last booth,” I said. “A woman was with them, but she was in the restroom the entire time I was here.”

  He frowned. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I don’t really keep tabs when people use the facilities.”

  I smiled. “Is the woman in this picture?” I held up my phone so he could see the drama club photo I’d found online.

  Buford fixed his eyes on the image, squinting and whispering to himself as he slowly studied the faces. Then he looked at me, smiled and nodded.

  “That’s a yes?” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” he said with a jumpy laugh. “That’s the woman who comes in here with Anton and Jake.” He pointed at Lois Jordan in the front row. “Although I never understood why she bothers. She never has donuts, only her bag of candy.”

  He tugged nervously on the collar of his starched white shirt, swiveling his gaze around the empty shop as if to verify we were alone.

  “Was she eating Rowntree’s Jelly Tots?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know what they’re called. But she’s never in here without a bag of them.”

  “How often does she come in with Jake and Anton?”

  Buford started to answer the question when the front door opened. A middle-aged woman and two teenaged boys came into the shop.

  “Hi, Mrs. Wanamaker!” Buford said cheerfully. “I see you’ve got a couple of hungry men with you there!”

  The boys skulked across the room and slumped into a booth. One pulled a phone from his pocket and began texting while the other folded his arms and scowled angrily at the woman.

  “Yes, indeed,” she said in a scratchy voice. “We’re driving to the airport to pickup their father. They promised not to be complete terrors if I bought them a donut beforehand.”

  I smiled at Buford and thanked him again for his time.

  “You’re welcome!” he said. “Is that all you needed?”

  “For now,” I answered. “But I’ll be back soon for more donuts.”

  “Okay, Kate. Thanks for making time for Tick-Tock!”

  While he waited for the woman to announce her selections, I headed for the sidewalk. Strolling toward the car, I called Detective Caldwell.

  “As I live and breathe,” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”

  “How’s it going, detective?”

  He groaned.

  “That good, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a massive headache,” he said. “And miles to go before I rest.”

  “Then I’ll make this brief. I’ve been doing some digging and think I have a theory about who killed Delmar Singer.”

  “I’m listening,” Caldwell said.

  “Did you know that Jake Breen and Anton Hall went to high school together in Omaha?”

  “I did, actually. One of our guys put together a file on them. He mentioned they were from Nebraska. Based on the trail of background checks for apartment rentals, Anton moved to Denver five years ago and Jake followed six months later. They worked legit minimum wage jobs for the first eighteen months, but then the trail of withholding taxes from their employers suddenly went cold.”

  “Suggesting that’s when they crossed over into illegitimate employment?”

  Caldwell laughed. “Suggesting, yeah. Nothing’s been proven yet.”

  “But I thought Breen had been to jail or prison.”

  There was a pause and papers shuffled in the background.

  “Nothing here on that,” said Caldwell. “Where’d you get that idea?”

  “Tick-Tock Donuts.”

  “A very reliable source.”

  “Hey, I like Buford,” I said. “Don’t indict him for unconfirmed reports.”

  “How is Buford?”

  “You know him?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Caldwell answered. “He’s as much of an institution as the Triple Threat Apple Fritter.”

  My stomach quivered at the mention of the legendary Tick-Tock treat. It was a massive lump of fried dough laced with too-sweet apple filling that’s dipped in white chocolate before being drizzled with gooey strands of raspberry-flavored dark chocolate.

  “So?” Caldwell said. “Did you learn anything else about Breen and Hall?”

  “Yes,” I answered, opening my car door. “They were both in the drama club at high school.”

  “If you hear me yawning,” he said, “it’s not because I don’t care.”

  I smiled and climbed behind the wheel. “Well, I would never think otherwise, detective. The reason I mentioned the drama club is because that may be where Jake and Anton met two women named Lois Jordan and Heidi Zimmer. In turn, Heidi probably introduced them at some point to her twin sister Hannah.”

  “Okay, sure. It’s a cast of thousands, right? But what’s the connection to the murders of Delmar Singer and Toby Wurlitzer?”

  As I sat and watched traffic stream down the street, I walked Caldwell through my theory. I explained that Tim England and Delilah Benson attend AA meetings with the Zimmer twins. Then I described my encounters with Heidi, Hannah and Lois Jordan.

  “Okay, so far it’s a bunch of names,” Caldwell said when I finished. “How are they related to Delmar and Toby?”

  “Did you know that patience is a virtue?” I asked.

  Caldwell snickered. “Did you know that virtue is the seventh highest order of the nine-fold celestial hierarchy?”

  I waited for the punchline.

  “Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that one,” added Caldwell. “My grandmother married a theological scholar about ten years after my grandfather passed away. I learned all about those things from him.”

  I waited a few seconds more. Then I asked if he was done showing off his whiz-bang knowledge of celestial hierarchies.

  “Yep,” he said sheepishly.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Do you want to hear the rest?”

  “Please.”

  “Okay, so Lois Jordan shares an apartment with Hannah Zimmer,” I said slowly. “And I believe she may have an affinity for a particular type of imported British candy called Rowntree’s Jelly Tots.”

  “Which she can order online,” Caldwell said quickly. “Unless she buys them at a British tea shop on Havana Street in Aurora.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Because attentiveness is also something I know a thing or two about,” he answered.

  “The candy package by Toby Wurlitzer’s body?”

  “Bingo,” he said.

  “Did you already know about Lois Jordan?”

  “Double bingo. Our forensics team found the package that you must’ve seen. And they checked for local retail shops that sell that particular type of candy. The place on Havana is the only remaining store that carries them now that a shop on Washington Street in Capitol Hill went out of business about three months ago.”

  “And they sold Rowntree’s Jelly Tots,” I said.

  “They did. And clerks at both stores remembered Lois Jordan. Although I can’t imagine why you’d need to go to that much trouble when every drug store and mini-mart in town sells plenty of other junk if your sweet tooth is itching.”

  “They’re actually pretty tasty,” I said. “Have you tried them?”

  “Rowntree’s?” he said. “I have not. How about you?”

  I explained again that my friend in Chicago bought them when we went to the movies. Then I told him that Buford confirmed that Lois Jordan visits Tick-Tock Donuts with Jake and Anton where she refrains from the Triple Threat Apple Fritter in favor of Jelly Tots.

  “Bringing us back around full circle,” Caldwell said when I finished. “All road
s lead to Tick-Tock.”

  “Not quite,” I said. “That’s all circumstantial. And it might connect Lois to Toby Wurlitzer’s murder, but it doesn’t help us link her to the poisoned cupcakes.”

  “Not to mention Delmar Singer being suffocated in his hospital room with a pillow.”

  We sat and let the unanswered questions linger in the air for a moment before Caldwell asked if Viveca had heard from her brother.

  “Not yet,” I said. “My guess is they’ve gone deep undercover waiting to find out if anyone else is going to be murdered in their apartment building.”

  Caldwell sighed. “Unless that’s part of a bigger ruse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s simple; maybe Tim England isn’t so blameless,” Caldwell said. “Maybe he’s responsible for the poisoned cupcakes. He could’ve put his name on the box and made up the story about a secret admirer leaving them on his doorstep.”

  I sighed. “Did you know that Tim England’s allergic to chocolate?”

  Caldwell scoffed. “According to who—Tim England?”

  “His sister told me,” I answered. “Besides, I’ve got a theory about the cupcakes.”

  “Involving?”

  “The green-eyed monster.”

  Caldwell sighed. “Is that your nickname for Jake Breen?”

  “No, the green-eyed monster is another way of saying jealousy.”

  “Then why not just say it?”

  “Because when I was a little girl, my PopPop taught me to say ‘the green-eyed monster’ instead of ‘jealousy.’”

  “I’m not even going to ask why,” Caldwell said. “Can we move along? You think someone killed Delmar Singer because they were jealous of him?”

  “No, the intended victim was Tim England. He’s a classic bad boy—handsome, sings in a band, breaks hearts from here to Timbuktu, has girls swooning over him nonstop.”

  “Have you met the guy, Kate?”

  “No, but I know the type.”

  Caldwell chuckled. “Does that mean you fell for the classic bad boy at some point? Like maybe when you were living in Chicago?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But we’re talking about Tim England, not me.”