Crime Chowder

by Hillary Avis

  He took a bite of each, savoring them like fine wine. “Hm. Not bad. Your fry is spot-on, and we can work on the flavors. How do you feel about early mornings? We start frying at four a.m.”

  “Early mornings are fine. I’m up with the birds.”

  “Great! Let me give”—he checked her resume again—“Mr. Vadecki a call over at the Grotto. If he has good things to say about you, you can start on Monday!”

  Bethany’s stomach clenched at the mention of Alex, but she nodded. “Great. I’ll see you then.” She held her head high as she pushed her way out of the doughnut shop, but she wanted to crumple on the spot.

  No way Alex will give me a good recommendation. He said he would make sure I never work in Newbridge again!

  Hopefully, the next restaurant wouldn’t be a stickler for checking references. She slipped the page from the newspaper out of her purse and checked the next address. Only a couple blocks up—she didn’t even need to unlock her bike. It was a hipster restaurant called Toast with the Most. She spotted it easily; the front door of the restaurant was shaped like a giant piece of bread.

  Bethany scanned the menu posted in the window. Toast, toast, and more toast. Toast with jam, toast with cinnamon-sugar, and of course, toast with avocado.

  And I thought frying was boring—toasting isn’t even cooking! But a job was a job, so she pushed through the bread-door and walked straight up to the counter.

  “Can I talk to the manager? I’d like to apply for the Toast Engineer position.”

  The woman behind the counter had blonde hair in two braids, and freckles dotted her nose. The wooden nametag pinned to her apron said her name was Clementine. “Um, we don’t really believe in managers at Toast with the Most. We’re kind of a collective, so nobody is in charge, you know?”

  Bethany did not know. She was used to a typical restaurant kitchen, with a dictatorial head chef and a bunch of underlings doing his or her bidding. She had no idea how a restaurant without a leader could possibly work. Guess I’m about to find out.

  “OK, so who does the hiring? Can I talk to that person?”

  Clementine smiled patiently. “We all have to agree.”

  “I have to interview with everyone who works here?” Bethany blinked, glancing around the restaurant in an attempt to count employees. “How many is that?”

  “Let’s see.” Clementine looked up as she counted mentally. “There’s Jared, Brianna, Hester, John B., Cheryl, Sunshine, Savannah, John C., Kyler, Larkin, and Gretel. So eleven? Plus me. Twelve. You’d be lucky number thirteen in our toast family.” She beamed at Bethany.

  Bethany sighed. Nothing like a twelve-person interview panel for a gig making toast. She stuck out her hand. “Let’s do this thing. I’m Bethany Bradstreet. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Instead of shaking Bethany’s hand, Clementine stepped back, looking horrified. “You’re not the one, are you? The one from the newspaper who killed her boyfriend?”

  “I didn’t kill him!” Bethany said quickly, looking over her shoulder to see if any of the restaurant patrons had overheard.

  “The article said you did. It said you hid the gun in your soup, too!” Clementine shuddered and reached for the phone. “I don’t think we can have someone like that working here. We respect our ingredients.”

  Bethany almost burst out laughing. “You think I’m going to hide a murder weapon in the avocado or something?”

  “We do work with knives.” Clementine waved the phone at Bethany. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to call the police if you don’t leave. We really can’t have you hanging around here and taking hostages or something.”

  Bethany held up her hands. “I just need a job. I’m not trying to bother anyone.” She backed slowly out of the restaurant, keeping her hands in the air. When she pushed through the giant piece of bread onto the street, she dropped her hands by her sides, defeated.

  Two down, one to go. Maybe the third time’s the charm? She pulled the newspaper page out of her purse to check the last advertisement Kimmy had circled.

  “Pickle packer at the Big Dill?! That’s not even a cooking job!” The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she looked around hurriedly to see if anyone was paying attention. Thankfully, no one was passing by on the street, but Bethany noticed Clementine staring suspiciously out the window at her.

  Talking to myself on the street corner is definitely not helping my cause. She pulled out her phone so she could pretend she was making a call. She dialed her voicemail box and held the phone to her ear.

  “How can I find a job in this town if my references sabotage me and my face is on the front page as the prime suspect in a murder investigation? Charley and Coop know I had nothing to do with it, but how can I get everyone else to believe that, if the only thing they know about me is what they read in the newspaper?” She stopped short and hung up her fake call.

  Of course.

  If the only person people listened to in this town was Robin Ricketts, then that’s who she needed to talk to.

  Chapter 18

  Thursday

  THE OFFICES OF THE Newbridge Community Observer were shabbier than Bethany expected, housed in a crumbling storefront behind the warehouses at the marina. She double-locked her bike to a light pole and cautiously made her way to the dark glass door.

  Inside, fluorescent lights lit worn carpet. The reception desk was empty except for a telephone and a sign that said “Please Call Your Party’s Extension.” Bethany ran down the short list until she found “Crime” and dialed the two-digit number.

  “Crime desk.”

  “Hi. I’m in the lobby. I need to speak with Robin Ricketts about the murder of Todd Luna. Is she in?”

  The voice laughed. “Honey, I’m the whole department. Come on back. Third one on the left.”

  Bethany headed down the hallway as instructed. The door to the third office on the left was open, and she could hear strains of country-pop filtering out. When she stuck her head in, Robin motioned for her to enter.

  “Bethany Bradstreet! What a nice surprise. I take it you saw my piece. Front page!” She patted a purple chair and then sat in another one behind the orange melamine desk. A huge aquarium burbled behind her, filled with darting fish in neon colors. “Sit, sit.”

  Bethany sat. “I wouldn’t call it a nice surprise. The article is kind of a problem for me, actually.”

  Robin opened her eyes very wide and tilted her head to the side, batting her eyelashes innocently. “How so?” Her hand snaked across the desk and turned on her voice recorder.

  Bethany eyed it warily and chose her words with care. “Some of the...inaccuracies in it have made it difficult for me to get a job, for example.”

  “Inaccuracies? Like what?” Robin pushed a copy of the paper across the desk toward her.

  Bethany scanned the article, trying not to look at the terrible photograph of herself while she did so. “Well, for example, Todd and I actually broke up. He wasn’t my boyfriend when I catered the gala.”

  “An ex takes revenge,” Robin murmured, scribbling notes on her desk blotter.

  Bethany smacked the desktop with her hand. “See? That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about! I didn’t take any kind of revenge. And that awful quote you printed!”

  “Angry ex takes revenge.” Robin scribbled out something and scrawled another line on the blotter.

  “I wasn’t angry at him.” Bethany crossed her arms.

  “Coldblooded ex takes revenge?”

  Bethany wanted to scream with frustration until she saw the twinkle in Robin’s eye. “You’re not serious.”

  “No. Obviously not. I talked to the cops, and they said you had nothing to do with it.”

  “Then why spin it like I was involved? Why print that nasty quote? I didn’t even know it was Todd when I said that!”

  “You’re the one who said it.” Robin shrugged. “It seemed pretty callous no matter who was strapped to that stretcher.”

&
nbsp; “And it got you the front page,” Bethany said bitterly.

  “That, too. And hopefully the front page story will shake a few witnesses loose. We all want that, don’t we? Isn’t that why you’re here—to help solve Todd Luna’s murder?”

  “Turning the whole town of Newbridge against me isn’t very helpful in that respect.”

  “So what do you want from me?” Robin asked, leaning back in her chair.

  “I’m here for a retraction!”

  “Not going to happen. Everything in that article is true.”

  Bethany snorted. “Truth is in the eye of the beholder, then. I don’t see how that article is going to lead anyone closer to finding the real murderer! Todd had a million enemies in town, but I wasn’t one of them.”

  Robin leaned forward, tapping her manicured fingernails on the desk thoughtfully. “Tell you what. You tell me what you know, and I’ll do my best to point suspicions in the right direction. Maybe we can break open this case together.”

  Bethany hesitated, unsure whether she could trust Robin. The best route to clearing my name—and Amara’s—is to find the real murderer, though. Bethany nodded, and Robin opened her laptop.

  “Let’s start with those enemies you mentioned. Who disliked Todd so much? He seemed like an upstanding member of the community, invested in improving rundown neighborhoods.”

  “He was,” Bethany said. “Sort of. But he’s also very interested in making money. A lot of the people on Hosanna Street weren’t big fans of the development, but he didn’t really take their feelings into consideration. He bribed homeowners to go along with it, too.”

  Robin, who had been typing at Bethany talked, paused. “Bribed? What do you mean?”

  “He gave money to people with historic homes—for improvements or additions. That was partly so they’d have goodwill toward the development, and partly so they’d make updates that might knock them off the historic register so the city council would approve the project. That didn’t make him any friends at the historical society, either.”

  “I see.” Robin made a few more notes on her computer. “How do you know this? Do you have proof?”

  Bethany shook her head. “He just told me. But his secretary, Shirley, might have some paperwork to back it up.”

  “Do you think you can get it from her?”

  Bethany thought back to the last time she’d seen Shirley. She’d definitely heard their contentious breakup through the office door. “Doubtful. She wasn’t a big fan of me, and the last time I saw her, Todd and I had just fallen out.”

  “Well, I think the historical society probably has a copy, too,” Robin said. “Maybe we can get it from them.”

  “What? Why would the historical society have a copy of Todd’s files?”

  “Not his files—the sale agreement. They already had paperwork drawn up.” Robin must have noticed the confusion on Bethany’s face. “The historical society was planning to buy the church from Todd if the development deal wasn’t approved by the city council. You didn’t know?”

  “No!”

  Robin nodded. “It was kind of a big deal. They were fundraising like crazy to come up with the money to buy it.”

  “So they had even more reason to block the deal. No wonder Fancy Peters was so crabby at the gala. She’s an odd character. Todd said she was always hanging around Hosanna Street, taking pictures and harassing his people.”

  Robin waved her hand. “Fancy’s harmless. She takes so many photos because she uses them for her souvenir stand. I’m pretty sure she runs the historical society for the sole purpose of getting monuments put up around town. Then she takes pictures of them and sells the postcards at her kiosk in the train station.”

  “Doesn’t that give her a strong motive to kill Todd? She’s probably pretty happy now that the condo development won’t happen.”

  “Maybe. Although maybe she would have made more off her photos of the church if it had been demolished. And who knows what will happen with the church now that Todd’s dead. His investor might follow through with the project. Just because the development is derailed doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually. Hm, ‘Derailed Development.’ Could be part of a good headline.” Robin tapped a few keys.

  “So, question,” Bethany said. She reached over and clicked off the voice recorder. “If you don’t think Fancy is involved, and you don’t think I’m involved, who’s your prime suspect?”

  Robin closed her laptop and leaned her elbows on it. “Isn’t it obvious from my article?”

  “I thought you were pointing the finger at me!”

  Robin shook her head. “Nope. Read it again.”

  Bethany picked up the paper and skimmed the article again. When she got to the last line, she gasped. “Amara! You said to call the police if they knew where Amara was, because she might have information about me.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said she might have information about the murder. Everything in that article is true.”

  “Almost everything,” Bethany reminded her. “Anyway, you lead the reader to believe that I’m the main suspect, and Amara might know something about what I did.”

  “That’s right. Nobody will turn her in if they think she might have done it. But they will if they think it will help catch another person who did.”

  Very clever, Ms. Reporter. Bethany realized she’d underestimated Robin Ricketts, and she debated for a minute whether to grab the voice recorder and try to erase it before she left, to avoid having her own words used against her. But Robin seemed to hear her thoughts. She picked up the recorder and tucked it away in her desk drawer.

  “You think Amara was trying to stop the development?” Bethany asked.

  Robin shook her head. “From what her neighbors say, she didn’t really care about the development. I think she was just angry about her home being destroyed.”

  “And Todd is the one who set the fire.”

  Robin swiveled her chair and dropped some fish food into the aquarium. The fish crowded to the top of the tank to gorge themselves. “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you must think it.”

  “I don’t think anything. I just report what other people think.” Robin swiveled back around to face Bethany and smiled.

  “But you said you thought Amara killed Todd!” Bethany protested.

  “That’s not what I think—that’s what the police think. The law enforcement theory is that Todd caused the fire, and Amara killed him as retribution. I have no opinion, although all the facts thus far support that theory. That’s why I asked readers to contact the police department, not me.” Robin stood. “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Bradstreet. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “I have?”

  “Oh, yes.” Robin held out her hand to shake, and Bethany stood up awkwardly to grab it. “Let me know if you get your hands on any of Todd’s paperwork. I’d love to see it. The quicker we can break open this case, the quicker we can repair your image.”

  “Thanks.” Bethany felt dubious that Robin Ricketts had any intention of helping her, but at least she offered a shred of hope that this nightmare would all be over someday. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Bethany left the newspaper office reeling with all the new information. She couldn’t believe half of what she’d heard in Robin’s office. Todd was in talks with the historical society to sell the church to them?!

  He’d seemed so confident about the project being approved. Making a “plan B” wasn’t like him. He must have really been convinced that the development deal wouldn’t be approved—or maybe the sales contract was just a ruse to get the historical society off his back while he got approval another way. Just another one of his strategies.

  As she unlocked her bike from the light pole, she wondered about Robin Ricketts’s strategies, too. Why was she asking Bethany to poke around Todd’s office for paperwork, when clearly she had contacts all over town? And why had she given Bethany so much information—far more information than she’d gleaned? />
  It must be some kind of test—or a trap. But Bethany wasn’t about to step into it without some due diligence. Maybe Robin was lying, feeding her false information so she’d be willing to take a risk she wouldn’t otherwise—like sneaking into her murdered ex-boyfriend’s office. Before she did anything stupid, she needed to confirm Robin’s story. Maybe Todd hadn’t made a sale agreement with the historical society at all.

  Only one way to find out.

  Chapter 19

  Thursday

  FANCY’S SOUVENIR STAND was cluttered with photo postcards, figurines, spoons, pamphlets on different historical topics, umbrellas, cast iron pans, old-fashioned lanterns, and t-shirts. There were even shirts for Historic Hosanna Street. The kiosk was so cluttered that Bethany didn’t even see Fancy inside until she spoke.

  “Why are you here?”

  Bethany spotted her behind a rack of maps and smiled in her general direction. “In the train station?”

  “No, in my kiosk,” Fancy said dourly. She was dressed all in black, like a Victorian widow, complete with a hat and veil. “I don’t see a ticket in your hand, and the next train isn’t for an hour, so I expect you came to see me.”

  “You’re right,” Bethany admitted. “Your comments about the church at the gala sparked my interest in Newbridge history. I thought this would be a good place to start learning more about it.”

  Fancy’s face brightened under her the black netting of her veil. She pulled a map from the rack and held it out. “You’re right, this is a good place to start. Open it. All the places of historic significance in Newbridge are marked on it. I have pamphlets and postcards for every one, and you can pick them up individually as they interest you.”

  Bethany unfolded the map and pretended to study it. “Ah, the church is listed here! I wonder what will happen to it now that Todd Luna is gone.”

  Fancy pushed back her veil. “The historical society is going to purchase it for land value! We plan to convert it into a museum and cultural center. It’ll make Newbridge a destination for history tourists!”