Cappuccinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse (A Cape Bay Cafe Mystery Book 1)

by Harper Lin

  “But I was supposed to pay for dinner tonight!” I shut the door and followed him.

  “Oh yeah!” he said innocently. “I completely forgot!”

  “You lie!”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.” He put the pizza on the counter. “What goes with pizza? Red or white? What do you have?”

  “I have red,” I said, stalking across the kitchen to the wine rack.

  I pulled out a bottle I thought would go well with pizza and slapped it into his hand. I pulled open the draw where I kept the corkscrew and handed it to him. Matt opened the bottle as I got two glasses. He filled them generously and handed me one. I wasn’t actually mad at him for buying dinner yet again, but I didn’t want to take advantage of him.

  “I got margherita. I hope that’s okay. I figured it was simple and classic enough I couldn’t really go wrong.”

  Margherita was fine by me. As far as I was concerned, simple and classic was the only way to go with pizza. We sat and ate at the kitchen table, sipping our wine between bites.

  “So what was it you wanted to tell me?” Matt asked when we were finished.

  I took a deep breath and anxiously played with the stem of my wine glass. This was big news, and I wasn’t quite sure how to tell him.

  “Franny?” he said after I had remained silent for a good minute or two.

  “I managed to talk to Karl Richards—that guy who was also dating Mary Ellen. He was kind of weird, especially when I mentioned your dad’s murder. He basically just got up and walked away. So I looked him up online.”

  “And?” Matt prompted when I fell silent again.

  I took another deep breath. “And it turns out he’s a convicted felon. Robbery, but he spent twenty years in jail. I-I think he might have killed your dad.”

  Matt looked at me in silence. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. When I noticed the way he was working his jaw, though, I had a pretty good idea.

  “You think he killed my dad over Mary Ellen?” he asked after a moment.

  “That, and I think it’s possible that your dad found out about Karl’s criminal record and tried to use it to pressure him to break up with her.”

  “You have evidence of that?” he asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “But I think it’s something the police need to be aware of. I thought I’d go talk to Mike about it tomorrow.”

  Matt nodded. “I think that’s a good idea. They should look into it as soon as possible. If he killed my dad, I want him in jail, not out walking the streets.”

  “I’ll go first thing in the morning,” I assured him. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “No, I’ll let you handle it. I—” He seemed to be looking for the right words, maybe to say that he wanted to think about the circumstances of his father’s death as little as possible. He shook his head slightly. “I’ll let you handle it.”

  We talked for a little while longer, some about his dad and some about other things. I told him about my plan to sort through all of my mother’s and grandparents’ things and redecorate the house in more my style. He suggested that I work on his dad’s house when I was done at mine. He was making a good effort to keep up the conversation, but I could tell his mind was elsewhere. Eventually he admitted it and said he should probably just go home so he could be alone with his thoughts.

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I asked as I walked him to the door.

  “Yeah. I just need to go home and chill out and get some rest.”

  I eyed him warily. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Matt had never been the violent type, but he’d never before dealt with the possibility of knowing the identity of the man who had killed his father.

  “No! No,” Matt scoffed. “That’s for the police to handle.” He rubbed his face. “I just need to go home and turn on the ball game or something and chill out. No offense.” He put a hand on my shoulder.

  “None taken. We all need personal time.”

  He pulled me into a hug. “Thank you for looking into this. I know the police are too, but I know it’s personal for you. It makes it a little easier knowing someone who cares so much is on it.”

  “Of course, Matty,” I said. “You know I’ll do anything I can to help get this all wrapped up for you. You shouldn’t have to deal with your father’s murder being unsolved for one second longer than you have to.”

  “Thank you.” He rubbed his hands up and down my back. He finally let me go and headed out to his car.

  I went straight upstairs to review my notes again before bed. I had a big day coming up, and I wanted make sure I was ready.

  I woke up excited and raring to go. I wanted to look professional, like someone whose opinion a police officer would take seriously, so I pulled out one of the outfits I used to wear to make presentations to clients in New York and put that on. I styled my hair a little more than I’d been doing to go to work at the café. All in all, I thought it came together nicely. I got my notes together and made sure they were in order so I could refer to them quickly if Mike had any questions. I gave myself one last glance in the mirror and headed for the police station.

  “Is Mike Stanton in?” I asked the woman at the front desk.

  She looked at me over her glasses. “Who can I tell him is here?”

  I gave her a big, professional smile. “Francesca Amaro.”

  She looked at me again then pulled off her glasses. “Fran? It’s me, Margaret. Margaret Robbins. From high school.”

  I stared at her. The name sounded familiar, but the face didn’t register.

  “Cheerleading squad?” she prompted.

  All of a sudden, it clicked. I could see her in my mind’s eye in a short cheerleading skirt with her long hair pulled up into a high ponytail. “Margaret! I’m so sorry! I’ve just been running into so many people I haven’t seen in years, and it’s taking a while to place everyone.”

  “Oh no, I understand. I didn’t recognize you until you said your name.” She paused. “I’m very sorry about your mother. And you found Gino Cardosi’s body, didn’t you? Is that what you’re here to talk to Mike about? Let me call him for you.” She picked up her desk phone and punched a few buttons.

  I remembered something else about her as she murmured into the phone—it had always been hard to get a word in edgewise when talking to her.

  She hung up and smiled at me. “If you want to have a seat over there, Mike will be out in just a minute.”

  I thanked her and sat in one of the ancient pleather chairs lining the walls of the lobby. I took a deep breath. I was actually getting a little nervous. I felt good about my theory—it was solid—but I wasn’t sure how Mike would feel about me doing my own investigating. I didn’t want him to feel as though I was invading his turf, but I’d felt strongly that I needed to help Matt. I had a duty to him as his friend and to his father as the one who found his body.

  Mike stepped into the lobby and glanced around the room for me. He gave me a tight smile when he saw me. “Fran? If you’d like to come with me?”

  He held open the door that he had just come through. I felt unnervingly as though he were calling me back to be questioned instead of me coming to give him information. I walked through the door, and he led me to a small, windowless room that I suspected they used for interrogations. It didn’t lessen the weird feeling I had in the pit of my stomach.

  “Have a seat,” Mike said, gesturing at the lone metal chair in the room.

  I sat and put my notes on the table. I noticed that my hands were shaking. I’d never been in the interrogation room of a police station before. The atmosphere must be getting to me.

  Mike perched on the edge of the table. “So what can I help you with today, Fran?”

  This was a different Mike from the one I’d seen in the initial stages of the investigation. That Mike had been warm and jovial, the guy I grew up with. This Mike was stern and terse. I had a feeling that if this were a good cop/bad cop situation, I would be dealing with the
bad cop. I had to look up to talk to him and couldn’t help but wonder if that was an intentional power move, like when a talk show host’s chair is ever-so-subtly raised six inches above his guests. Even though I was there of my own volition, it all made me nervous.

  I inhaled deeply and spread my hands on the table to steady them. “Well, Mike, I’m here because—” I took another deep breath and looked him dead in the eye. “I’m here because I know who killed Gino Cardosi.”

  Chapter 17

  MIKE RAISED his eyebrows and was silent for a moment longer than I was comfortable with. “You know who killed Gino Cardosi,” he finally said slowly.

  I nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  Mike looked at me silently for longer than I would have liked. “And who is that?”

  “Karl Richards. You might not know him. He’s new in town, but I did some investigating, and I’m confident that he did it.”

  “You are,” Mike said, more as a statement than a question. The way he kept using that flat tone of voice was making me nervous.

  “Yes.” I flipped through a couple of pages of my notes, looking for the one that had my findings about Karl. “See, he and Mr. Cardosi were both dating Mary Ellen Chapman, which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a huge motive for murder, but I did some research online…” I hesitated when Mike stood and started walking back and forth on the other side of the room, his arms crossed. I wasn’t sure what that was about, so I just kept going. “And I found out that he has a criminal record. A major one. Six months ago—”

  Mike spun around and slammed his hands on the table. “Do you think I don’t know that?” He sounded really pretty angry.

  “Um, I don’t—I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think what?”

  “I didn’t think you knew the thing about Mary Ellen. I only found out because Matt and I went looking for Mr. Cardosi’s cell phone because Chris at the cell phone shop told me Mr. Cardosi was looking for a new one, and when Matt and I found it, there were just a bunch of calls to Mary Ellen’s number—” I was rambling, but Mike was making me nervous.

  “Have you ever heard of phone records, Fran?” Mike asked, sounding exasperated.

  “Yes.” Of course I had. That was what the phone company sent me every month with my cell phone bill—a complete record of everyone I’d called. Oh.

  “We’re the police. The first thing we do when we have a murder victim is pull his phone records. We don’t have to go looking for his cell phone. The phone company knows all that. Hell, the phone company can give us the contents of all his text messages. Sent and received.”

  I was starting to feel a little bad. As soon as Mike said it, it made perfect sense that they had pulled Mr. Cardosi’s phone records and knew everyone he’d talked to. But the thing about Karl Richards—that had to be new information, right? Against my better judgement, I said it. “But Karl Richards—?”

  He rubbed his face. I got the sense he couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

  “Karl Richards just finished serving twenty years in prison. You think he’s going to kill somebody so he can get himself sent right back?”

  “You think he’s not?” I asked, a little indignant. He couldn’t just blow off my theory because he thought Karl would abide by the law so he could avoid prison. Prison hadn’t seemed to scare him very much over the fifteen years he was stealing jewelry and hoarding the evidence. “You don’t think Mr. Cardosi could have found out about Karl’s criminal record and threatened to out him to Mary Ellen? You don’t think Karl could have killed him to stop him?”

  “No, I don’t,” Mike said firmly.

  “And why not?” I asked.

  “Because he was at his doctor’s office in Boston when Gino Cardosi was killed.”

  Oh. Well, that changed things. I went from feeling a little bad to a lot bad. And like maybe my detective skills weren’t as good as I thought they were. The metal chair I was sitting in suddenly felt very cold and hard. I tried to think of where I had gone wrong, what lead I’d failed to track down. Apparently I’d forgotten to check Karl’s alibi, but it had seemed like such a slam dunk!

  “You can’t go poking your nose in police business,” Mike said, interrupting my thoughts. “There’s a reason why we don’t just leave it to civilians to solve crimes. Hell, there’s a reason we don’t just let rookies investigate crimes on their own! It’s hard. It takes training. A lot can go wrong, and you can ruin someone’s life by accusing them of a crime. It’s not something to be taken lightly!”

  I couldn’t remember ever seeing Mike so worked up, except maybe on the football field in high school. It made me realize why police interrogations worked so well. Normal Mike was a pleasant enough guy, but this version of him was a little scary. If I’d committed a crime, I’d be shaking in my boots from watching him pace around and rant and rave.

  He took a deep breath, as if he was trying to calm himself down. “Look, I know you were just trying to help Matt figure out what happened to his dad, but you can’t just go messing in people’s lives. Do you know how freaked out Karl was after you talked to him? He thought you were going to tell the whole town that he was a convicted jewel thief. He thought he would have to pick up and move again to get away from the rumors. He’s an old man, Fran, and he’s paid his debt to society. It’s not up to you to make him continue paying.”

  I barely heard the rest of what Mike said after he mentioned that Karl had been freaked out after I’d talked to him. How did he know that? I held up my hand to stop him. “How did you know I talked to Karl?”

  Mike sighed. “He came in here and told me.”

  I was confused. “He just walked in here and told you that? Why?”

  “Like I said, because he was worried.”

  “So he just came in here and confessed that he was a jewel thief and said he was worried that I was going to drive him out of town?”

  Mike looked at me as if I wasn’t getting something obvious. “I’d already questioned him, Francesca.”

  He’d used my full name. That was bad.

  “When I identified him as a suspect, I pulled his criminal record,” Mike said. “I interviewed him and asked him about it. Then when you showed up, talking to him about the Cardosi case, he got worried and came in to talk to me. He moved here to start a new life where people didn’t know his name and his face, and you took that from him. You think something like that will stay a secret for long in Cape Bay? And what do you think Mary Ellen’ll do when she finds out? You think she’ll just be cool with it? God, Fran, you’ve got to just leave it alone from here on out, okay? No more investigating, no more slinking around asking people questions. You’ve got to cool it, okay?”

  I nodded. I was embarrassed to say the least. I thought I’d been slick enough that Karl hadn’t realized I suspected him of anything, but apparently I was wrong. I’d accidentally tipped him off to my sleuthing, which wasn’t exactly a brilliant investigative technique, and possibly ruined his newfound anonymity and romantic relationship. I hadn’t set out to ruin anybody’s life—at least, no one other than the person who’d killed Mr. Cardosi—but apparently I’d done that, or nearly done it anyway. “I’m sorry, Mike.”

  “I’m not the one you owe an apology,” he said curtly.

  I nodded. I did owe Karl an apology. I might not be able to fix what I’d done, but I could at least let him know I was sorry.

  Mike stood there for another minute or so before he asked me if there was anything else I wanted to share with him.

  “No,” I said quietly. “There’s nothing else.”

  “Do you need a minute, or are you ready to go?”

  Apparently I was more visibly shaken up than I realized. “I’m ready to go.” I gathered up my papers.

  Mike put his hand on the doorknob then looked back at me. “Just so you know, I’m not mad at you. Like I said, I know you were just trying to help Matt, and I know it’s personal for you because you found the body. And that’s on
top of you already having a rough summer. Just try to chill out a little, okay?”

  I nodded as I picked up my notes and walked to the door. Mike patted my back as we went out.

  “I’ll see you around,” he said as he bid me good-bye in the lobby.

  “See you,” I replied.

  I walked outside and stood on the sidewalk, facing the park. I could go straight across the park toward home, where I could crawl back into bed or curl up on the couch to watch some crappy daytime TV court shows. Or I could turn left and go to the café to bury myself in work for a while. But I turned right to go down the street to Paul Hamilton’s electronics shop. I wanted to apologize.

  Chapter 18

  AFTER MY FIRST VISIT, I knew not to expect anyone at the electronics shop to appear immediately upon my arrival, but it still took so long that I was hunting for the bell before Karl came out to greet me. He didn’t exactly look excited to have a customer in the first place, but his face got even more miserable-looking when he saw me.

  “If you’re here about your radio, it’ll be ready tomorrow,” he said by way of greeting.

  “That’s actually not why I’m here, but thank you.” I had butterflies in my stomach. I always got nervous when I had to admit to screwing up or doing something wrong, but when I had to admit to a man that I had thought he was a murderer and had even gone to the police to tell them, I was extra nervous.

  He just stared at me. I guessed if I wasn’t there about my grandfather’s radio, he wasn’t interested in finding out what I did want. Not that I blamed him, under the circumstances. I tried to smile. We were standing barely a couple of feet apart with only the counter between us. I wasn’t sure if anyone was in the back, but I thought I heard some shuffling. Assuming that whoever was back there didn’t know about Karl’s history, I didn’t want to negate my apology by filling them in.

  “Karl, I understand that I owe you an apology,” I said quietly.

  He gave no indication that he’d heard me but none that he hadn’t either.