“You want one?” She asked, and popped the lid, then held them out to the skinny, young lady bedecked in black velvets. So, this was a member of the famed Walter’s family. She didn’t seem that bad.
She probably hadn’t started that rumor about Cat being the killer, though. Or had she?
Catherine jiggled the cookie box at the girl.
“Thanks,” Rachel said and grinned. She leaned in and snatched up a treat, then crunched it between her lips. “Mom’s got me on this crazy diet ever since I got back from college.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. She wants me to be little miss perfect you know? I am so not that kind of girl.”
Lacy took a cookie and inhaled it for the sugar rush. She licked the crumbs off her fingers. “What are you studying?” She asked.
“I’m, ugh, hate it. Pre-law.” Rachel snorted and twirled a finger at her head. “Can you picture me as a lawyer? I don’t think so.”
Catherine didn’t help herself to a cookie. “So, you didn’t get on with your parents?”
“Nope. They’re all high society. Lame. I swear, the only person who understood me in this entire family was Gramma Beth,” Rachel said, then reached for another choc chip. “I can’t believe she’s gone now.”
“You were close to her?” Catherine asked. This was useful information. Maybe she could call that handsome and slightly rude detective and give him a few leads for his case.
She couldn’t have the whole of Charleston under the impression that she’d murdered the darling of the town.
“We were close since I got back from college. She took me fishing a few times. It was weird. I’ve never been fishing before,” Rachel said, between bites of cookie. “These are so good, by the way –”
“Rachel,” a man snapped. He stepped through the open arch which led into the living room, then smoothed his crisp, black suit. “What are you doing?”
“Just what you told me, dad. Chilling. Acting normal. That’s what you said, isn’t it?” Rachel narrowed her eyes at him and pouted.
“Go to the bathroom and take off that ridiculous makeup,” Mr. Walters said, then grabbed the half-eaten cookie from her. He threw it back into the Cat’s Cookies box.
“Hey,” Cat said. “There’s no need to be rude. She was just –”
“Now,” Walters said and pointed out of the doorway.
Rachel shrugged and pressed her lips into a thin, black line. “I’ll see ya around,” she whispered, then hurried from the room.
“That was uncalled for,” Cat said.
“Your presence is uncalled for,” Mr. Walters replied, and folded his arms. He stared down his nose at her. “You will leave now.”
“Excuse me?”
“You will leave my premises now. You’re not welcome here,” Walters growled.
“I –”
“If you don’t leave in the next five seconds, I’m going to call the police.”
Cat stared at Mr. Walters, anger burning through her mind. How dare he treat her like this? She’d come to pay her respects to Beth. She’d –
“Five,” he said, and shifted on the spot, distributing his weight, evenly. “Four.”
“All right, all right. Keep your toupee on,” Cat replied. “Come on, Lace. Let’s get out of this coffin and into the sun.”
“Coffin!” Mr. Walters gasped and pressed his palm to his chest.
Cat didn’t give him a chance to strike up another bout of reprimands. She tucked her arm through Lacy’s and led her assistant down the hall and onto the front porch.
Chapter 4
“What a horrible dude. And I think you’re right about the hair piece. Nobody has hair that glossy,” Lacy said, and turned her face to the sun. They stood on the sidewalk, in front of the white Walter’s mansion.
Cat burned for answers. Shoot, she pined for them. Walters was either convinced she’d hurt Beth, or didn’t want her around for another reason. Keeping up appearances? Hiding something?
She had to know.
“No,” Lacy said, in a long drawn out groan.
“What?”
She peered into Cat’s face. “You’ve got that look again. You’ve got that look you get before you do something crazy.”
“Not crazy. I’m just going to go back in there and take a look around.”
Lacy buried her face in her palm. “That’s the definition of crazy, I swear. He’ll catch you and then the cops will come and then you’ll end up in jail. And I don’t have money for bail, Cat. I have student loans to pay off. You can’t. Please, I –”
“Lacy, breathe. Just breathe.” Cat grasped her forearm, unable to tear her gaze from the open front door. “Have I ever let you down before?”
“No, but –”
“Have I ever gotten you into a sticky situation that you couldn’t get out of?”
“There was the one time, with the cookie dough and that group of kids at the charity event,” Lacy said.
Cat rolled her eyes. “You’ll never let me forget that.”
“Oreo won’t either,” Lacy replied, and started her hyperventilating again.
Cat released her friend’s arm, then brushed off the modest black silk blouse and tailored pants she’d chosen for the service. Music started up inside. A tune played on the piano.
“Is that… Hallelujah?” Lacy asked, between breaths.
“Here,” Cat said, and shoved the box of cookies into her hands. “I’ll be right back.”
“But –”
“Wait in the car and keep a low profile.” Cat darted up the front path and onto the porch, then stepped into the cool interior for the second time in the span of ten minutes.
Voices rose in a chorus in the living room. Everyone was distracted.
Beth’s true murderer could be in that room at this very moment, pretending to care about a woman who’d cared about everyone and everything.
Cat balled her hands into fists, then took off up the main flight of stairs. She hit the second floor landing and glanced left and right. Her heart pounded against the inside of her ribcage and she held her breath.
Footsteps stomped down the hall, around the corner.
“Shoot,” Cat whispered, then rushed into the room directly opposite the stairs. She squeaked the door shut behind her, and pressed her ear to it. Silence. Apart from the rush of blood in her head, of course.
Catherine forced out a sigh of relief, then turned and pressed her back against the pale wood. Her eyes widened. Her rush to find information of use had led her directly into…
“The study?”
Bookshelves lined the far wall, stacked with dusty books, their spines faded by the sunlight which streamed through an open window. Cars rushed by outside.
Cat walked to the shelves and narrowed her eyes at the titles and author names. Shakespeare, Tolkien, Jordan, Hemingway, Hiaasen. An eclectic mix of authors and books, but none of them had been touched in ages.
Apparently, the Walters weren’t readers.
“Wait, what’s that?” Cat muttered.
One of the books had a dust-free spine. She slipped it out from the end of the row, then frowned at the plain, leather cover. No title.
“Intriguing.” She flipped back the cover, then slipped her fingers between the vellum pages. She opened the book on the first page, then gasped.
Death. Death. Death. Death. Death.
The word scrawled across the pages in black ink. Cat paged through it, and her stomach turned. Every single page carried the words. Over and over again. Handwritten, scraped into the page at some parts.
Cat closed it and gripped the journal between her fingertips. They turned white from the pressure.
Whoever had written it, clearly had an obsession. This was her first piece of solid evidence.
Chapter 5
Music blared through the old TV set, a tune to match the Venetian waltz.
Cat shook out her arms, then held them in a stiff frame. She raised her head, lowered her shoulders,
and stared at the thick, fabric of her curtains.
“And, on the count of three, we’ll begin,” the woman on the screen said.
Butterflies fluttered in Cat’s belly. She’d bought the dance DVD ages ago, but she hadn’t mastered the Venetian waltz. She hadn’t come close.
“One,” the woman said.
Oreo meandered through the living room door and froze, mid-step. He flicked his tail once.
He hated it when she did dance practice without him. Or maybe he hated it that she’d moved his favorite armchair out of the way to provide more floor space.
“Two.”
Oreo meowed at her, then sat down and gave her two flicks of the tail.
“Not now, Oreo, I’m trying to figure this out.” The two things that calmed her after a stressful day were dance and baking cookies. She’d already baked a ton of cookies to get rid of the memory of reading that death book and speaking to Mr. Walters.
“Three.”
The music started fresh, and Cat launched into the slow, sweeping steps of the waltz. She traveled and turned, grinning at the invisible audience.
If someone glanced through her window, now, they’d think she was a loon.
Oreo blinked up at her, then meowed again.
“Give me a break, Oreo. You just had your milk.” Cat changed direction and swept toward the TV, instead.
Another meow, louder this time.
Catherine stumbled and flung her arms out. She caught the edge of the tiny bookshelf, and it wobbled. The leather-bound journal dropped out and landed face down on the floorboards.
“Great,” Cat said. “Just what I wanted to see, right now.”
Oreo meowed for the millionth time.
“Fine, fine, fine. What do you want, kitty?” Catherine asked.
Oreo stopped wagging his tail, immediately. He rose onto all fours then padded down the hall.
“Oreo?” Cat grabbed the remote and paused her DVD. “Hey, what are you up to?”
He meowed back at her.
Catherine strode across the room, then stopped beneath the lintel. “What’s gotten into you?”
Oreo stood at the gate which separated her apartment from the top of the stairs which led right down into the bakery. He paced across the entrance, then turned a circle on top of a slip of paper on the polished wooden boards.
“What?” Catherine frowned, then hurried to Oreo’s side. She bent and stroked his fur, smoothing the black fluff back. She twirled his tail between her fingertips, and he purred and rubbed against her shins.
She lifted the square of paper, then opened it on its center fold.
You will pay, or you will die.
Cat gasped, and it shuddered through her chest and down her arms. Her fingers trembled. She ran them across the neatly inked words and read the text again. “Pay?” She asked. She had nothing to pay off.
No debts or unpaid loads. Unless she had to pay in another way. But for what?
Catherine rose, slowly, gaze glued to the page. Oreo twirled between her legs, purring and meowing.
“I’m okay, Oreo. Thanks,” she said, absently. She glanced down at the bottom of the stairs, but the bakery was quiet.
She’d locked up the front and back ages ago. Shoot, it was already past 9 PM.
Cold shivers ran up and down her spine. Someone had been in her bakery because the note certainly hadn’t been on the landing when she’d come up earlier.
“A break-in?” Catherine bit her bottom lip, then grabbed the door handle and slammed her front door closed. She turned the key in the lock, then slammed the bolt into place for good measure.
The clack of metal on metal didn’t give her much comfort.
The person who’d left the message could still be downstairs. “It’s a lure,” Cat said. “They want me to go downstairs and check it out. They’ll probably try to overwhelm me if I do.”
Oreo meowed and sat down beside her foot.
“Don’t worry, Oreo, I’m not going down there. I’m impulsive, but even I have my limits.” Cat lifted the note and examined the text again. That was it! The text.
She darted back down the hall and into the living room. She ignored the dance instructor, frozen on the TV screen, and snatched the creepy, fallen death journal from the floor.
She flipped it open, then placed the letter on one of the pages and spread it open.
Catherine squinted and compared the text. “Nope,” she whispered. “Not the same handwriting.” That didn’t tell her much.
Catherine placed the book and the note on top of her shelves, then paced back to the sofa. She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. Oreo galloped through from the hall and leaped onto the sofa cushions.
“No needle massages today, kitty,” Catherine said. “I need to think.”
Beth was gone. A murderer was on the loose, and the cops thought she’d committed the crime.
“That’s it,” she whispered. She grabbed her cellphone off the sofa, then dialed a number she’d saved under emergency contacts, two years ago.
“Charleston Police Department,” a man said, on the other end of the line. His gruff voice didn’t instill much hope.
“Hi there, I need to speak with Detective Jack Bradshaw. It’s in connection with the murder of Beth Walters.”
“Uh, just one moment please,” the officer replied.
A shrill tune squeaked across the line. Catherine held the phone away from her ear and stared at the journal on top of the bookshelf.
“Hello?”
Cat placed the phone against her ear again. “Detective Bradshaw? This is Cat Kelley. Someone just broke into my house and left me a threatening message. I think it’s in connection with Beth’s murder.”
The detective sniffed then cleared his throat. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter 6
Detective Jack Bradshaw held the note at arm’s length and squinted at it. He tilted his head from one side, then swapped the angle out to the other.
“Is everything okay?” Cat asked.
“Yeah, fine. I forgot my reading glasses,” the Detective said and gave a sheepish grin. He zipped it off his lips a second later.
Bradshaw had arrived at the bakery in record time. Not ten minutes after she’d made the call had passed, and he’d rapped his knuckles on the front door downstairs. Only then, had she been brave enough to go down into the bakery and open up for him.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any reading glasses. Otherwise, I’d give them to you,” Catherine said.
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll have to take this to the station, though. It’s evidence.” Detective Bradshaw folded it up and placed it on top of the coffee table. He glanced at the TV and the dance instructor frozen mid-step. His eyebrows did a dance, but he didn’t say a word.
“That’s it?” Catherine asked. “You’re just going to take the note in? What about the break-in? There could be someone in the bakery, right now.”
Bradshaw pursed his lips. “Right. You stay here. I’ll go check it out. Give me five minutes.” He walked out of the room and down the hall before she could reply.
Catherine shook her head. Manners clearly weren’t Jack Bradshaw’s strong point. She rose from the sofa and crossed to the bookshelf, then lifted the ‘death journal’ from the top.
She turned it over in her hands and stroked the leather cover. This was her only piece of evidence now. She had to figure out who’d killed Beth, not just for herself, but for the woman who’d given her hope in her darkest moments.
Cat tucked the book against her chest. “This is personal.”
Jack’s footsteps clomped up the stairs. Catherine hurried back to the sofa, then shoved the journal beneath one of the cushions. She sat down on top of it and crossed her ankles.
Detective Bradshaw entered the living room and clicked off his flashlight. “No one in the bakery,” he said. “But I found the back door wide open.”
“That’s impossible. I locked it this evening.”
�
�Are you sure?” Detective Bradshaw asked, in a monotone. “Because the lock wasn’t broken.”
“I am positive, detective.” Cat glanced at the curtains which obscured the road from view. She shut her eyes for a second, then opened them and focused her gaze on Bradshaw’s. “Someone’s trying to pin this murder on me.”
“It’s too early to make those kinds of assumptions, Miss Kelley.”
“Call me Cat,” she said, then blinked. “And it’s not too early. That note insinuates as much.”
Jack touched his palm to his top pocket. “I’ll have to examine it back at the station, Miss Kelley.”
“Cat.”
“I believe you attended Mrs. Walter’s memorial service?” He asked, and tucked his arms behind his back.
Catherine kept a straight face. “Yeah, I attended, all right. And the Walters were exceptionally rude to me. Beth was my best friend. No, she was more than that. Obviously, I attended the service.”
Jack Bradshaw bobbed his chin up and down, once. He opened his mouth to say something. Another question, no doubt.
“You said Beth was hit over the head and pushed off the pier?” Cat asked.
Bradshaw snapped his mouth shut. “Yes, that’s correct but –”
“And you don’t have the murder weapon?”
“No, not yet, but it looks like she was hit with something heavy. Perhaps, a tackle box,” Jack said. His cheeks colored and he clicked his teeth together.
“A tackle box? Does that mean your main suspect is a fisherman? Or a fisherwoman?” Cat asked. She’d never questioned anyone before. It was fun. Intimidating, but fun.
“No,” Jack replied.
“Then why do you suspect a tackle box to be the murder weapon? What information led you to believe that?” Cat asked, and put up a smile – the brightest she could muster while talking about her friend’s murder.
“We’ve had some reports of a stranger hanging around the pier,” Bradshaw said. His eyes widened, and he pressed his lips together.
“A stranger?”
“That’s enough,” the detective said. “This is an ongoing investigation, and I’m not at liberty to share that kind of information with you. Is that understood?”
Chewy Chocolate Chip Murder: A Cookie Lane Cozy Mystery - Book 1 Page 2
