I went to check on Zoey but didn’t have to go far. I found her standing just out of sight inside the kitchen.
“You heard?” I asked.
“Everything.” She was still pale, and I could see her trembling.
If I were a better chef and a better friend, I’d know what to do for her. That’s when I thought of Harry Potter.
“Sit here!” I said as I jumped into action. I pulled a stool over to her and then ran into the walk-in pantry. “Where, where, where?” I asked myself as I scanned the shelves. “There!” I grabbed a bar of chocolate and sped back out to the kitchen, back to Zoey. I figured if chocolate could cure what ailed you after being visited by a Dementor, surely it could help Zoey after seeing Max.
I broke off a piece of the dark, rich baker’s chocolate and handed it over.
Zoey scrunched her face after she took a bite. “Needs sugar.”
“Sugar. I’m on it.” I sped back to the pantry, searched, and came back a moment later with a box in my hand. Smiling proudly, I held out the box. “Sugar cookies.”
Zoey smiled, and I knew that we were out of the woods. She was going to be okay.
“I can’t believe he waltzed in here like that, acting like everything was fine.” She took a bite of chocolate and then of cookie. “A week. He’s been back a week and this is the first time he’s reached out to me.”
“Has he tried to call?”
“Yes, but I didn’t answer.”
“Does he know where you live?”
Zoey shrugged her shoulders. “After I sublet that monstrosity of an apartment he’d wanted, I didn’t tell him where I moved.”
“Ladies,” Jack said, appearing in the kitchen doorway, “it’s time for me to get back to the bank. Zoey, I wish you the best. Kylie, you have a customer.”
“Thanks, Jack.” He disappeared as silently as he’d appeared. “You going to be okay?” I asked Zoey.
“Yeah… You mind if I make myself a sandwich?”
Making a customer happy with food that I didn’t have to make. A dream come true! “Sure!”
I left Zoey to it and headed back out into the café. It didn’t take long for me to wish I hadn’t.
“Hey, you the new owner? I’ve been hearing things about you.” A tall, lanky man had taken a seat at the bar next to Agatha. He had high cheek bones and blond hair that sat in tight ringlets all around his head, and he had a small soul patch on his chin. The light color of his hair made it almost unnoticeable.
“I am,” I said. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know exactly what he’d heard about me. I made quick work of stacking all the egg dishes left over from the morning’s eating competition into an under-the-counter bin. I’d take it into the kitchen later.
He leaned forward with a big Cheshire cat grin on his face. “Well you’re not ugly at all. In fact, you’re right pretty.”
Talk about your backhanded compliments. He took a breath to say something more, but stopped when Zoey walked around the corner and into view.
“Ohhhh, I’ll have that,” he said.
I frowned. I was pretty sure what he meant, but I had to ask anyway. “You want a sandwich?”
“Nooo, I want what’s carrying the sandwich.”
Zoey had been through enough this morning. The last thing she needed was to put up with this jerk, but to my surprise, she sat down on the stool next to him.
“I’m Cameron. Cam for short,” he said, all eyes for Zoey.
Zoey didn’t give any sign that she’d heard him, even though there was no way she hadn’t. “Could I get one of those Cokes you had earlier?”
“Sure,” I said. “Ice?”
“Nope. Bottle’s fine.”
Score two for two. I’d been able to make someone happy with my food twice in a row! I got her a soda, popped the cap, and set it on the counter next to her.
“Cam, what can I get you?” If he answered “Zoey,” I was going to pick his too-scrawny butt up and toss him out the door.
“I just wanted to meet the person I was going to be putting out of business,” Cam said.
Back up. What? “How’s that?”
Cam slid his arm around Zoey in a very boyfriend sort of way at the same time that an engine revved out in the street. I looked, and I was pretty sure the sound was coming from the oversized shiny black SUV sitting right outside the café’s door.
I knew that SUV. I’d seen it before. I had thought that it was driven by Rachel Summers’ killer, but her killer was in jail. So what was the SUV doing back here again?
The sound of air exploding from Cam’s lungs drew my attention back to him. I was pretty sure it was from the sharp elbow that Zoey slammed into his ribs. As for Zoey, she hadn’t missed a beat. She just took another bite of her sandwich, and her sandwich looked good.
I made a mental note to start offering them. She’d made it fast with what looked like no cooking. Maybe I’d even be able to charge full price for them instead of the discount items I listed on the “Oops” board. Everything I messed up, I listed on the “Oops” board, which of course was everything.
Cam rubbed his side as he glared at Zoey. “Don’t be like that, baby. I’m a new business owner. Be nice to me and there could be some steep discounts in it for you.”
That’s it. I’m throwing him out… But that was the moment Cam screamed and jumped up off his stool.
“What the!” he shouted while rubbing his hip. It was the hip on the side next to Agatha.
“Oh, won’t you look at that,” Agatha tsked as she repositioned a long-needled brooch back in the scarf that swept around her neck and laid decoratively over her shirt. “It must have slipped.” Her smile was demure yet completely evil.
“You b—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. I was ready to climb the counter if he finished that sentence.
Cam threw up an arm. “I’m done with y’all.” Then to me, he said, “I felt bad for you at first, but no more. My new café is gonna be the end of this sorry place. Consider this being put on notice to find something else to do with your life, because all this”—he pointed around him—“it’s going away.”
Chapter 3
Early morning turned into early pre-noon. A few customers came and went, Zoey finished her sandwich, and I made notes on a napkin about the different kinds of sandwiches I could make.
Agatha clapped her hands together as a group of women walked into the café. “Ahh! There are my ladies.” All of them had a carry-along of some type, each one bigger than a purse. Agatha hopped off her stool, picked up a carpetbag, and the group of women headed to the cozy corner of the café with the plush chairs and the small fireplace. Once seated, each woman opened her bag and pulled out yarn, knitting needles, and whatever project she was working on.
I knew better than to offer food or drink immediately. The women came for the company, and food was an afterthought. I’d give them an hour to work up an appetite. I knew from experience that finger foods were the most appreciated. No grease. No sauce. No mess. Nothing was allowed to interfere with their knitting.
“I’m going to head out,” Zoey said. She put a ten on the counter to pay for her sandwich.
That didn’t feel right. She was a friend. You’re supposed to feed your friends. But the café was a business. I had to get comfortable with that.
She reached into her pocket and pulled something out. “Here are your keys.”
I’d forgotten she had them, and I picked them up off the counter where she laid them. “Are you sure you don’t want to go upstairs? Max wouldn’t be able to bother you up there.”
“Naw, I’ve got a client scheduled in a half an hour. They’re having networking problems, and I need to be able to remotely log into their system to troubleshoot.”
I understood about half of the words she’d said. Words like “client,” “the” and “hour.”
“Mind me asking how much you charge?” Curiosity was getting the better of me. My mother had raised me to be more polite, bu
t my mother wasn’t here.
“Two seventy-five an hour.”
I gulped. I was pretty sure she didn’t mean two dollars and seventy-five cents. I suddenly felt a lot better about accepting the ten dollars she’d left for me on the counter. “Do you have to be good to be able to charge that much?” Maybe I was in the wrong line of work.
“Very good.” She winked and zipped up her jacket.
I should have already known the answer. I’d seen her apartment with her seven or eight monitors tapping into surveillance systems throughout the country in her hunt for Max. I had worried that she was a little unhinged when I saw the lengths that she’d gone to in order to find him. But then again, I’d never been ghosted by someone who had told me that they wanted to spend the rest of their life with me.
Whatever she decided to do to Max—which I was sure would be something—he was going to be getting off easy.
“Your phone’s ringing,” Zoey said.
“Huh?”
“Your phone.”
And that’s when I heard it. Not a ring tone. Not music. Not chimes. An old-fashioned telephone, the kind that usually hangs on the wall.
I looked frantically all around me for the source of the sound.
“Under the counter.” Zoey pointed to a spot about midway down the bar.
I bent over and walked the length until I spotted the phone. When I found it, I pulled it out and slammed it down on top of the counter triumphantly. Zoey waved goodbye as I answered it.
“Sarah’s Eatery,” I said into the phone. I’d actually already renamed the café The Berry Home, but I couldn’t afford to make it official by changing the logos and signs. Until then, I’d keep it simple and call it what my cousin Sarah had named it.
“Do you do catering?” a woman’s voice asked. It was such a shocking question that I had to pull the phone away from my face and stare at it. The best I could figure was that whoever was on the other end of the line had been living under a rock for the past several weeks. My ex-aunt Dorothy had been poisoning the whole town against me since I’d arrived. I’d been sure that everyone had heard about how badly I had destroyed the once-beloved café.
I was tempted to call Zoey back inside. The news that someone didn’t know how bad a cook I was had to be shared. She was out the door, though. The stalker SUV had moved across the street, so at least I didn’t have to worry about someone jumping out and abducting her.
“The café is under new ownership, and we aren’t providing catering services at the moment. We may offer catering in the future, though.” I was talking on autopilot as I watched Zoey walk past the café’s street-front windows. I squinted, not sure that I could trust what I was seeing. Cam was coming the other way, heading right for Zoey. When he got shoulder-to-shoulder with her, he whisked her into his arms and spun her around. He looked like Fred Astaire, trying make Zoey his Ginger Rogers.
The woman on the phone babbled on. I’d said no, but she must not have heard it. “It’s a very simple affair, I promise. We want an elegant cheese course with a variety of hors d’oeuvre. Nothing too extravagant, only ten to fifteen different kinds. A selection between hot and cold, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients.”
The woman talked, but my head was full of Zoey. She was getting spun around, dipped, and twirled. I waved my free hand frantically in the air to try to make it stop. Of course it accomplished nothing. Zoey was bent half backwards with her hands pressed against Cam’s chest and her arms extended to their full length. Cam’s arm was looped around the small of her back, holding her close. He wasn’t letting go.
“You see,” the woman continued, “our son has just graduated college.”
People were beginning to gather on the other side of the street to gawk at Zoey’s ordeal. I struggled to pull off my shoe, deciding to chuck it at the window. Maybe it would distract Cam long enough for Zoey to wiggle free.
Zoey twisted in Cam’s grasp. She put her back to him, then she elbowed him in the face and broke free. Cam fell, then jumped back up.
Zoey extended her hand, I saw a spark of light, and Cam fell again. This time he flopped on the ground like a fish. Zoey stayed bent over him the whole time, holding something against him. A dark stain on the front of his jeans told me he’d wet himself.
Looking satisfied, Zoey straightened up. She stuck what I was pretty sure was a stun gun in her jacket pocket, turned and walked away.
A half second later a disoriented Cam stood up. He walked into the café window, bounced off, and then staggered off in another direction.
“Hello? Hello?” the woman’s voice on the phone called.
“Oh! I’m so sorry. I, uh, got distracted. Hectic day. Congratulations on the birth of your son!”
“Graduation,” the woman corrected. She did not sound pleased.
“Right. Graduation. Um, when are you needing this catered?”
“Next Tuesday.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do next Tuesday.”
“What’s the soonest you could do?”
I ran the mental calculations in my head. “A year from Tuesday. I might be able to do it then.”
The woman hung up.
Chapter 4
Come on, Sage,” I said, holding open the door leading into the café’s kitchen. I was waiting on the smoky gray and white tortoiseshell kitten to follow me through. I had woken the little girl up earlier than usual this morning. Brenda wasn’t going to be in, and that meant that we had to open the café.
I didn’t try to do the things that Brenda normally did. She’d left some instructions for what I should attempt. She’d seasoned a pork roast and left it in a pot. All I had to do was put it in the oven, which I did.
I did spot cleaning next, in both the kitchen and the café. It was the one daily task relevant to the café that I was good at.
Outside, the still darkness of predawn was giving way to the soft glow of morning. We were deep into the winter months, and I knew it would be toe-numbingly cold outside.
I glanced at the clock. It was time to open for business. Even though I knew no customers would arrive for another hour, I unlocked the café door and pushed. I liked to invite fresh air inside every day. I believed it helped to keep the insides of the building healthier. But the door wouldn’t budge.
Push came to shove—literally—as I eased my shoulder into it. The awning over the café’s entrance bathed the front door in shadow. I could see that a package had been left against the door. It looked like a rolled-up carpet.
I pushed harder, shoving in hard bursts with all my might. The door opened enough for me to squeeze through. I needed to drag the thing away from the door so customers would be able to get in.
I reached down to grab the carpet’s edge and yanked up, but what came away was much lighter than expected. It threw me off balance, and I tumbled backward onto my butt.
Sitting on the frozen cement, I stared at what I had in my hands. It was an arm. A man’s arm, still attached to a man’s body. There was no rug.
I threw the arm up in air, but the shoulder-hinged limb flew up only to swing back down and slap me in my face. I couldn’t stop myself. I threw it again, and it slapped me again.
I stopped. I closed my eyes. I breathed. The hand had been cold and waxy. The body was dead. I was hitting myself with a dead person’s hand.
Instead of trying to move the dead body, I moved me. I rolled away, stood up, and then staggered backward into the street. I wanted to cry and scream. I wanted to beg for help. The wimpiest of little whimpers was the best I could manage.
An old pickup truck driving by had to swerve wide to keep from hitting me. The driver honked and flipped me off, and I did my best not to run after them and beg for help. They were out of reach. I had to think things through. I had to get back inside the café so that I could call someone. My cell phone was still upstairs. The café phone was under the counter.
I reached into my pocket and my fingers wrapped themselves around the café’s keys.
The café sat on the corner of two crossroads. I ran down the side street and let myself in through the café’s back door. I was on the phone to 911 a minute later. Seven minutes after that, flashing squad cars and an ambulance arrived.
My heart stopped when I saw the ambulance. I hadn’t checked his vital signs. I hadn’t tried to save the person’s life. Then I remembered that cold, clammy, waxy hand slapping my face. Whoever that poor soul was, he was dead. I knew it.
People gathered around the body, shining flashlights, taking pictures, and talking on radios clipped to their shoulders. Nobody was attempting CPR. Then crime scene tape was stretched to quarantine the area.
The body was moved further from the door. The crime techs laid out a bag for the body, and Brad stepped inside the café.
He took off his flat-topped policeman’s hat. “Kylie.” He said it in the same way a person would say good morning, and he nodded.
“Hi, Brad. Can I get you coffee?”
“Have you made it yet?”
“No.”
“Good. I’ll make it.”
I wasn’t going to argue. I wasn’t even going to take it as in insult that he wanted to make the coffee himself.
He got to work making the coffee. I sat down on one of the bar stools.
“You’ve got a dead body shoved up against your door, Kylie.”
Oh God, the person really was dead. I didn’t know if that made me happy or sad. At least I hadn’t messed up by running back inside the café without offering help first.
But another murder. Connected to me. That couldn’t look good. Maybe it wasn’t murder. Maybe the person passed out drunk, froze to death, and a good samaritan pushed them up against the shopfront so that no one would trip over them and get hurt. “How’d they die?”
“Strangled.”
Boogers!
“Know of any reason why someone would leave a dead body against your door?”
I glanced outside through the glass-lined front of the café. The sun was halfway up, and everything was lit in a soft glow.
A Berry Murderous Kitten_A Laugh-Out-Loud Kylie Berry Mystery Page 2
