Scary Sweets

by Jessica Beck

  “That’s commendable of you,” I said as Trish approached. “I’m just not sure I can do that.”

  “I admit that it’s difficult for me as well at times,” Momma said with the hint of a smile. “Still, it’s nice to have lofty goals, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so, as long as they don’t get in the way of you living your life,” I replied.

  When Trish reached us, I saw that she was carrying two glasses of sweet tea, though we hadn’t ordered anything yet.

  “I thought you two looked thirsty,” she said as she placed them in front of us.

  “We are,” I said with a smile after I took my first sip of the deliciously sweet concoction. “Are we hungry, too?”

  Trish pretended to study us, each in our turn, before answering. “I’d say two manager’s specials would be perfect.”

  “That sounds good to me,” I said.

  Momma wasn’t quite so eager to accept her recommendation, though. “What exactly is the special today?”

  “We’re having turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce,” she said. “I know Halloween is approaching, but I asked the girls to make us a Thanksgiving treat early. How does that sound to you?”

  “Delightful,” Momma said.

  “Are the potatoes sculpted into the shape of a ghost?” I asked Trish.

  “I suppose we can do it if that’s the way you’d like them,” she said. “Why would you want that, though?”

  “I just figured George and Cassandra would be asking you to pump up Fright Week with your menu,” I said.

  “I agreed to go along with the theme, but I’m not starting until tomorrow. Don’t tell me they got to you, too.”

  I grinned. “Actually, Emma decided we needed to go all out before they could manage to even ask. We’re selling donut-hole eyeballs and donuts with cobwebs all over them, and that’s just the start.”

  “Apparently everybody in town is getting on board,” Trish allowed. “That Cassandra is a force to be reckoned with, isn’t she?”

  “So then, what will be on the menu tomorrow?” Momma asked.

  “We’re featuring ghost soup, which is really just our potato soup without the carrots, and finger sandwiches, cut out in the shapes of actual fingers.”

  “That sounds difficult to do,” I said.

  “You’d think so, but it’s amazing the types of cutters you can find online these days.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “We’re using several different ones at the shop ourselves.”

  Trish was summoned up front to collect the money on another tab, so she left us to see to business. “I’ll have your food out to you in a second.”

  After she was gone to take care of business, Momma asked me softly, “Is it my imagination, or is Trish overly interested in what we’re up to?”

  “It’s hard to judge. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s her normal amount of inquisitiveness. Why, do you think it’s odd?”

  “I’ve never known her to be so aggressive trying to learn what you were doing in the past, but maybe it’s just me,” Momma said.

  I gave it some thought, and then I said, “You know something? I think you might be right. She seems to want to know more than usual. Do you think that means she knows more than she’s letting on about the dead stranger?”

  “I know how fond you are of her. I am, too. I’m just pointing out that it might not be a bad idea to hold a few things back from her until we know the lay of the land.”

  I patted my mother’s hand, a gesture that conveyed a great deal of love with it. “That’s good advice, Momma. Thank you.”

  “You don’t really think she’s involved, do you?” Momma asked me. “What I was saying earlier was just sheer speculation.”

  “I don’t know, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I’ll try to be a little more circumspect in the future.”

  As I said it, Trish suddenly appeared, carrying two plates. “Sorry about the wait.”

  “It’s amazing how fast you are,” Momma said.

  “Everything’s already been made in back. We just plate it and serve it. I hope you enjoy your meals, ladies.”

  As promised, the plate also sported a dollop of cranberry sauce as well. “Goodie. Thanksgiving dessert,” I said.

  “We didn’t make pumpkin pie. I’m sorry,” Trish said.

  “I was talking about the cranberry sauce,” I said as I poked it with my fork and grinned.

  “Gotcha. I was hoping to join you so we could chat more, but things are surprisingly busy for this time of day.”

  Momma glanced at me with arched eyebrows, but Trish couldn’t see it from her vantage point. “Next time for sure,” I said.

  After she was gone, Momma said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

  “Don’t start quoting Lewis Carroll to me,” I said, “no matter how much I agree with the sentiment.”

  I took a bite of turkey and smiled. I knew that after the coming holidays I’d be thoroughly tired of eating it, but at the moment, it served as a nice change of pace from meatloaf and hamburgers. One thing was certain. Without power and water at my cottage, I wouldn’t be making anything except reservations for the next several days. Staying with Momma wasn’t about to improve the hope of me making a home-cooked meal, either. After all, it was my mother’s kitchen, and I was allowed in only on a case-by-case basis. Then again, I could just be a complete freeloader and let her cook for all of us. Goodness knew she enjoyed it. Still, there was something about being a grownup that made me bristle at the thought of my mother feeding me on a daily basis again.

  As I scooped up a bite of mashed potato, I heard someone from a nearby table say, “It’s not right holding this spooky celebration when a man died not thirty feet from where we’re sitting.”

  “The mayor’s lost all sense of judgment,” an older woman answered. “What is he thinking?”

  “I’m not sure that he’s thinking at all,” the man replied. “That woman has cast some kind of spell over him. He hasn’t been himself since she showed up.”

  I was about to speak up in George’s defense, despite a niggling bit of me agreeing with them, when someone did it for me. Trish must have heard them chatting too as she’d been offering refills of sweet tea. I hadn’t even noticed her standing there, but when she started talking loudly, there was no mistaking her. “Robert, you and Cynthia Lynn should know that I won’t have treason spoken at my restaurant.”

  “Treason? We didn’t say anything bad about the country,” Robert protested.

  “Maybe not directly, but you were slamming my mayor, who also happens to be my friend. I believe in free speech as much as the next gal, but I also believe in my right to refuse to serve anyone I please, for whatever reason I choose.”

  The overt threat hung in the air between them for a moment before Cynthia Lynn spoke softly. “We didn’t mean anything by it, Trish. George is a good man.”

  “You’d better believe he is,” Trish said, and then she smiled as she added, “Can I top off your sweet teas?”

  “Please,” Robert said softly.

  Trish did as she’d promised, and she even managed a smile for the pair before she left them. “I’ll have your bills ready for you in a second.”

  As Trish stopped at our table to top our own glasses off before she walked back up front, I said, “Thanks. I was about to say something myself.”

  In a soft voice, Trish said, “They’re not completely wrong though, are they? You should have a talk with George.”

  “Do you think he’d actually listen to me?” I asked her.

  “I’m sorry. I was talking to your mother,” Trish said, looking directly at Momma now.

  “Me? What makes you think the mayor would listen to me?”

  “Come on, Dot, this is no time to be modest. Your voice carries a lot of weight around here.”

  “And what exactly am I supposed to say, Patricia?” Momma asked sternly, using my friend’s full given name.

&
nbsp; Trish suddenly blushed, and I wanted to leap to her defense, but before I could, she said, “You’re right. I just hate to see him making a fool of himself, even if he is doing it because he’s in love.”

  “How do you believe he is making a fool of himself?” Momma asked, not letting up on her.

  “Sometimes I wonder if Cassandra has suddenly become his co-mayor,” she said, voicing aloud what I’d been wondering myself. “He’s a dear friend, but that doesn’t mean he gets a free pass when it comes to the good of April Springs.”

  “Then if you feel so strongly about it, you should speak with him yourself,” Momma said, finally softening up a bit. “I believe he’s still doing what’s best for our town. April Springs has made a rather large financial commitment to Fright Week, and to cancel it now would be ruinous for the budget.”

  “There are more things in life than money, Momma,” I said.

  “Yes, I’m well aware of that fact, Suzanne. My point is that shutting the festivities down at this time won’t help that unfortunate man.”

  Trish looked at me, and all I could do was shrug. “Thanks anyway,” Trish said as she made her way back to the front to prepare Cynthia Lynn and Robert’s bills.

  “You were kind of tough on her just then, weren’t you?” I asked Momma after swallowing another bite of food.

  “Perhaps. I’m just growing weary of being asked to champion every unpopular opinion just because I supposedly have clout in this town.” In a softer voice, she added, “Besides, if Fright Week were to be cancelled, we might never find out what happened to the moon-faced man.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling him that,” I said, shivering a little at the sound of the temporary moniker we’d given the dead man.

  “When I know his proper name, I shall use it, but in the interim, we have to call him something.”

  My meal was nearly finished, but the truth was that my appetite was gone, anyway. Momma had eaten less than half her meal, but that was standard operating procedure for her. There was a reason I was fifteen pounds overweight and she still weighed what she did in high school.

  Trish clearly wanted to talk more when we approached the register, but three other diners decided to leave just after we did, and there was quite a line vying for her attention.

  “Keep me posted,” was all she could manage as we started to walk out.

  “We’ll do our best,” I said, not sure that was true at all. I hated lying to my friend, but I didn’t feel as though I had any choice, especially if Trish might be tied up with the man who’d so recently passed away.

  The moon-faced man, as Momma had said.

  I hoped Chief Grant discovered his name, and soon.

  A cause of death would be even nicer.

  If he’d died from something natural, Momma and I could quit instantly, but until we knew what had really happened to him, we had no choice but to move forward.

  And that meant tracking Gabby Williams down and finding out the real story behind that Halloween-colored scarf.

  CHAPTER 7

  “How can she just disappear like that?” Momma asked after we spent a frustrating hour trying to find Gabby Williams. We’d checked ReNEWed again, her place, and even a few of her friends, including Margaret.

  If anyone knew where she was, they weren’t sharing the news with us.

  “You’d be surprised how easy it is. She might have even left town to avoid talking to us,” I said as we sat in front of Donut Hearts in dejection.

  “Suzanne, don’t be overly dramatic.”

  “Momma, you’d be amazed if you knew the number of people who go out of their way to avoid me when I’m working on an investigation.”

  “Don’t you ever get disheartened by it all?” my mother asked gently.

  “I try not to take it personally,” I explained.

  “And are you successful in achieving that goal?”

  “I’ll let you know if it ever happens,” I answered her with a grin.

  “So what do we do now, just give up?” Momma said, clearly unhappy about the sad state of our investigation.

  “If we do that, we might as well throw in the towel and quit altogether,” I said.

  “I honestly don’t know what else we can do,” she said. “We’ve spoken to everyone we think might have known the moon-faced man, and now Gabby is on the run.”

  “Maybe her taking off is just a coincidence,” I said, though I rarely believed in them. Still, sometimes they happened despite my lack of willingness to embrace happenstance.

  “How can you possibly explain that?”

  “You know Gabby. She’s been known to close her shop on the slightest whim. If that’s not it, she could have a sick relative, she might have decided at the last minute to take a trip, or she could have left town to get away from the Fright Week activities,” I said. “The mayor and Cassandra told me that she’s about the only shopkeeper in town who hasn’t embraced the festival.”

  “I still think we should ask Van Rayburn about her,” Momma said. “Last week I saw them out in the park canoodling like a pair of teenagers.”

  “We could try, but I heard through the grapevine that she and Van were taking a break,” I said. I’d overheard the gossip in my donut shop a few days before, but I’d been reluctant to approach Gabby to see if it was actually true.

  “What can it hurt to ask him, Suzanne?” Momma asked as she got out her cell phone and made the call. After a minute, she frowned as she ended it. “It went straight to voicemail, and then there was a message that said he’d be unavailable for the next few days. For all we know, they could be off together somewhere reconciling.”

  “I suppose anything is possible. We also have to consider the possibility that Jenny was lying to us earlier.”

  “Why on earth would she do that?” Momma asked me.

  “What if she knows more than she claims to about the man I found this morning?” I was doing my best not to call him the moon-faced man, but it was hard not to, given the fact that we didn’t have a name for him yet.

  “If she lied to us about the scarf, wouldn’t Gabby be able to easily refute it the moment we asked her?” Momma asked me.

  “You’d be surprised how some people will tell a lie without thinking it through completely,” I assured her. “I’ve caught more than one bad guy in the past because of it.”

  “Then we need to speak with Jenny again and press her a little harder,” Momma said with clear and firm resolve.

  Before she could get out of the Jeep though, I put a hand on her arm. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s wait until we speak with Gabby again first. If we confront Jenny and call her a liar, which is what more questioning about the scarf would be at this point, we’re not only liable to lose a potential witness but a friend as well.”

  “I wish we had a way of compelling her to talk to us,” my mother said, quite out of character for her. It was obvious that she was getting frustrated with the situation, but then again, why wouldn’t she be? She was a woman of action if there ever was one, and the way we had to investigate clearly wasn’t working for her.

  “That’s the police’s bailiwick,” I said. “We have to question folks using only cleverness and guile.”

  “It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?” Momma asked.

  “It can be,” I admitted.

  “So, if we can’t make answering our questions compulsory, and we are missing the one person we need to speak with before we do anything else, what is there left for us to do?”

  “We could always search for clues,” I said.

  “I’m all for that course of action, but where do we even start?”

  I thought about it for a few moments, and then I said, “Let’s leave the Jeep right here and start walking toward the clock. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something.”

  “Haven’t the police already searched the immediate area?” Momma asked me a little petulantly. Her frustration was coming through clearly.

  “I’m
sure they’ve searched some of it, but what else do we have to do at the moment? The men are no doubt busy destroying the cottage, so we can’t exactly count on them to entertain us.”

  “Very well, then. Let’s take a walk and see what we can see,” Momma said.

  We got out of the Jeep, locked it up, and started walking toward the town clock where I’d found the stranger’s body just a handful of hours earlier.

  “This is absolutely useless, Suzanne,” Momma said after we’d covered both sides of Springs Drive all the way to the town clock and back again without seeing a single thing of significance. I’d even ducked around the side and the back of Cutnip to see if I could spot something the mysterious scarfed person might have dropped, but nothing unusual or noteworthy caught my eye. We were finally back to where we’d started, beside the Jeep, which was still parked in front of Donut Hearts. It looked as though it belonged there to me.

  Momma sighed, and then she asked, “We aren’t going to find a thing, but even if we do, how do we know if it is significant or not? A gum wrapper might be able to yield a dozen clues, but we’d have no way of knowing it.”

  “We’re just amateurs, so we can’t do forensic analysis,” I admitted, “but most clues are a little more overt than that. I’ve found all kinds of things in the past, just because I took the time to look.”

  “I thought that was what the police were for,” Momma said.

  “Hey, even the best cop needs a hand sometimes. I helped your husband occasionally, mine more than once, and even the current police chief a time or two. There’s nothing wrong with adding another set of eyes and, in this case, two to the case. So what if we didn’t find anything? At least we had a nice walk in perfect weather.”

  “There is always that,” Momma said. “What should we do now? I don’t know about you, but I’m curious as to whether our men took my conditions to heart. Aren’t you?”

  “I’ve spent much too much of my time this afternoon trying not to think about that,” I said. “Of course I want to know.” I glanced across the park toward the cottage and spied a pale teenaged girl sitting on a bench wearing short shorts despite the cool weather, though she did have on an oversized letter jacket, presumably on loan from her boyfriend. She didn’t notice us at all. How could she, being as obsessed with her cell phone as she was?